ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Monday, July 1, 1996 TAG: 9607010098
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-4 EDITION: METRO
THE WHITE House is far from being off the hook in the matter of its collection of confidential FBI files.
To be sure, last week went better than it might have for the Clinton administration. Craig Livingstone and Anthony Marceca, the figures at the center of the scandal, came off in House committee hearings not as malevolent enemies-list compilers, intent on digging up dirt on GOP luminaries, but as inept bumblers above their heads in their appointed jobs.
Livingstone resigned last week as head of White House personnel security after taking responsibility for the files flap. But he repeated, under oath, his insistence that hundreds of FBI files were collected because of a bureaucratic error arising from an outdated Secret Service list.
Marceca, who had worked for Livingstone on loan from the Army, is now claiming his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination. (That may be, ironically, because he improperly looked at his own background file.) But, in the House hearings, he seconded Livingstone's assurance that the files were collected mistakenly, to update White House security clearances; and that, as far as they knew, no improper use had been made of them. Testimony by other White House aides, not to mention common sense, bolsters the claim that this was a blunder, not a Nixonesque conspiracy.
Even so, questions linger. And until they are answered, they'll likely continue to raise doubts about the adminis-tration's explanations.
Did Hillary Clinton order re-investigations of career White House employees who were suspected of disloyalty? Gary Aldrich, a former FBI agent attached to the White House, says it happened. Last week, a former assistant White House usher told The Washington Post that he was subjected to a renewed FBI background check three years before he was due for one. He was fired in 1994, he says, because Mrs. Clinton said she was "uncomfortable" with him.
Did Hillary Clinton prompt the abuse of FBI background checks in an attempt to smear travel-office workers whom she wanted to replace with the Clintons' own people? The independent counsel is looking into this.
Is Hillary Clinton responsible for naming Livingstone to his job? No one is admitting to hiring him, though it's been suggested that Vincent Foster, the deputy White House counsel who committed suicide, may have done so. Livingstone reported to William Kennedy, the former assistant White House counsel and law partner of Hillary Clinton who resigned amid the travel-office scandal. Aldrich says Mrs. Clinton handpicked Livingstone.
Whoever hired him, it is dismaying - to say the least - that he, as well as Marceca, would be in a position to peruse FBI files of prominent Republicans. Both Livingstone and Marceca were political operatives, former campaign advance men. It's been alleged that Livingstone even performed "opposition research" for Gary Hart's 1994 presidential campaign, in at least one instance digging up personal dirt on supporters of Walter Mondale.
nWho else had access to the files? Livingstone testified that volunteers and interns went in and out of the unlocked vault where for two years the FBI files were kept. Amazing.
The final mystery is why the FBI unquestioningly acceded to a request to turn over the most confidential information it keeps on citizens.
Given Livingstone's and Marceca's backgrounds, and given the allegations of other abuse of background checks around the same time as hundreds of FBI files were requested, only the most partisan Clinton apologist can dismiss out of hand any suspicions regarding motives for the request. Maybe Livingstone wanted to check files on previous GOP appointees because numerous Clinton White House aides weren't getting their clearances quickly. Maybe he and Marceca were throwing out a big net to disguise a search for dirt on fired travel-office employees.
The point is: Even if one assumes the most benign motive - the security-clearance story sworn to under oath last week and yet to be repudiated by any evidence - that does not begin to explain why the FBI would routinely go along with this wholesale violation of privacy rights.
It is well that the special counsel and Congress are on the case. It is telling that the best result the White House and FBI can hope for is to uphold their claims of inexcusable incompetence.
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