ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Thursday, January 30, 1997 TAG: 9701300065
SECTION: NATL/INTL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: WASHINGTON
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times
The Clinton administration, acting at the direction of the president and first lady, created a massive computer data system with federal funds in 1994 to keep tabs on as many as 350,000 people, including large political donors, Democratic campaign workers and visitors to the White House.
Despite guidelines and legal opinions advising that the system could be used only for official government purposes, the White House staff frequently retrieved data on large political contributors and turned it over to the Democratic National Committee to raise money for the president's re-election, internal documents and interviews show.
The use of the computer, dubbed ``WhoDB'' for White House Office Data Base, provides further indications that aspects of the Democratic Party's $125 million fund-raising effort were carried out in the White House and that some of its components were based there.
Also, the records reflect the assortment of perquisites beyond private coffee klatches with the president that the administration made available for prospective donors: seats aboard Air Force One, personal notes from Clinton, lunch in the White House mess and invitations to watch a movie in the East Wing.
It is entirely legal and customary for the White House to gather information from a variety of sources to help the president in his ``official'' capacity. But federal laws prohibit the administration from providing such data to a nongovernment organization, particularly a political committee such as the Democratic Party, for partisan purposes.
White House spokesman Barry Toiv said that the computer system serves as an electronic social calendar by storing lists of people who have been invited to presidential events or received holiday cards from the first family.
``The database is not a tool for tracking contributors,'' Toiv said. ``Nobody outside the White House was given access to it.'' He said that the program logging perks was developed for the computer but never actually used.
However, a former top Democratic official said in an interview that he and his staff routinely used WhoDB to identify likely candidates for increased donations. For example, he said, the staff found out how many White House invitations certain donors were receiving, so they could arrange more invitations for those targeted for increased contributions.
This began in 1995 when the party was striving to raise money early for Clinton's re-election in the wake of the Republican landslide the year before.
``I started checking back with the White House just as a routine matter,'' said Truman Arnold, a Texas oil executive who served at Clinton's request as finance chairman of the Democratic National Committee during most of 1995. ``It didn't seem to be very privileged to me. It was open to a lot of people.''
Experts in campaign finance said that the national committee's use of the information stored in WhoDB raises questions about whether the administration went over the line in using government equipment and personnel for political purposes.
``This is a very sophisticated, state-of-the-art information file that is of great use internally to the White House staff and the president,'' said Herbert Alexander, a USC political science professor and director of Citizens' Research Foundation. ``But using that file for political purposes with an outside agency like the DNC is beyond the law and ought to be the subject of an investigation.''
Since July, a House Government Reform and Oversight subcommittee has been investigating WhoDB. The subcommittee is at odds with the White House over the release of computer records and is threatening to issue subpoenas for more material.
Democratic officials said they were not able to confirm Wednesday whether the committee had used the White House computer for fund-raising.
Internal memos obtained by the Los Angeles Times reveal that the administration took steps to keep the White House database secret.
In a Jan. 26, 1994 memo, deputy assistant to the president Marsha Scott wrote that all WhoDB equipment and records were located in a locked room in the Old Executive Office Building next door to the White House and that she had taken precautions to ensure that the project was not subject under the Freedom of Information Act.
LENGTH: Medium: 80 linesby CNB