Evidence has cropped up that Clinton staff members ordered the FBI to investigate the fired employees of the White House travel office. Following a backgrounder by Kwame Holman, Jim Lehrer is joined by Representatives William Clinger (R) New York, chair of the Government Reform and Oversight Committeeand James Moran (D) Virginia.
MR. HOLMAN: Yesterday Rep. William Clinger disclosed that the White House requested and got FBI background material on Billy Dale, the man ousted as head of the White House Travel Office in the early days of the Clinton administration. The disclosure was the latest in the ongoing political controversy known as Travelgate. In May of 1993, Dale and six other Travel Office staff members were fired by the White House, charged with incompetence and possible criminal activity. Office Director Dale later was tried on embezzlement charges but was found "not guilty" by a jury. The six other employees were exonerated and were offered jobs in other agencies of the government. But congressional Republicans accused the White House of pushing out those long-time staffers so that friends of the Clintons could take over the Travel Office, and they said White House officials asked the FBI to investigate criminal charges against the seven in order to justify the firings. As the ranking minority member of the House Government Reform and Oversight Committee, Clinger called for an investigation into the matter in 1993. It wasn't undertaken but five other investigations were conducted by government agencies, including the Justice Department and the General Accounting Office. Those inquiries did not substantiate any wrongdoing by the White House but did reveal a memorandum by former White House aide David Watkins that suggested First Lady Hillary Clinton called for the firings, a charge Mrs. Clinton has denied. Kenneth Starr, the independent counsel looking into the Whitewater matter, has said he'll also examine whether administration officials tried to block or mislead any of the Travel Office investigation. Last year, Rep. Clinger became head of the Oversight Committee and requested thousands of pages of White House documents related to the Travel Office. In May of this year, the White House Counsel's Office wrote a letter to Clinger invoking executive privilege over some of those documents, refusing to hand them over. Clinger's committee then voted to push for contempt of Congress charges against White House Counsel Jack Quinn and two former White House aides. That citation carries a $1,000 fine and up to a year in prison. But last Thursday, a few hours before the contempt charge was to be brought up on the floor of the House, the White House relented and delivered 1,000 pages of documents to Congress. But the administration did invoke executive privilege in refusing to send over other documents that had been requesting, providing only an index of that material. At his press conference yesterday, Clinger said that among the papers the White House released was a letter to the FBI sent seven months after Dale was fired. The letter had the name of former White House Counsel Bernard Nussbaum printed on it and requested background reports on Dale because it said the administration was considering whether to give Dale access to the executive mansion. Yesterday Bernard Nussbaum denied sending the letter, saying he never even knew of its existence. The White House said the request may have been made by mistake by junior officials trying to clear a backlog of security clearances.
