[Noise] William Safire on the GAK bastards' other privacy violations.

[eric@clever.net (eric traudt)]

WILLIAM SAFIRE: Shame on the FBI


WASHINGTON (Jun 10, 1996 12:00 p.m. EDT) -- Overlooked in the scandal of
Travelgate has been the failure of FBI Director Louis Freeh to protect the
confidential files of citizens from political snoops. Say what you like about J.
Edgar Hoover -- he never let the bureau become a doormat for White House aides.

The background: when President Clinton claimed "executive privilege" to keep
3,000 embarrassing documents from investigators, Congress threatened White House
Counsel Jack Quinn with criminal contempt. To avoid jail, he forked over a
thousand of the least damning documents.

One of them illuminates why Clinton has been stonewalling for years on the rest
of the subpoenaed files. It is a requisition to the "FBI Liaison," ostensibly
from then-White House Counsel Bernard Nussbaum, for the confidential files on
Billy Ray Dale, the travel office employee who had been fired seven months
earlier to make room for a Clinton cousin. The FBI disgorged 22 letters and
reports on Ray alone; he was then besmeared by White House officials in the
press, unjustly prosecuted and financially ruined, before being acquitted by a
jury in two hours.

The requisition for the confidential FBI files was unsigned. The name typed
on it
was Bernard Nussbaum, but Nussbaum now says he had "absolutely no knowledge" of
such a request, and would presumably swear to that. The reason given on the
fraudulent requisition was "access" -- as if Ray were trying to get back
into the
White House, which was untrue.

That was the tip of the iceberg. Despite "executive privilege," Congressman
William Clinger learned that as many as 341 such fraudulent, unsigned requests
for confidential files and name checks were sent under the Nussbaum typed
name to
FBI headquarters. Apparently the snoop was a Clinton political appointee who
preferred anonymity.

The cover story peddled by Clinton aides is that this was a "routine"
updating of
White House files by a stupid clerk that just happened to focus on holdover
Republicans, as well as other Republican political suspects -- including a
former
secretary of state whose aides once improperly snooped into Clinton passport
files. Clinton's lawyers claim that the fraudulently obtained FBI dossiers were
put in a White House vault and nobody looked at them.

What's being done in response to the most egregious invasion of privacy of U.S.
citizens in a generation? Not much. President Clinton says he's sorry, but
continues to stonewall on 2,000 documents; the independent counsel adds
this mess
to his Travelgate list; and the FBI announces a "thorough" investigation by its
in-house counsel, who will rebuke some low-level agent and absolve the boss.

Not good enough. After FBI agents were jerked around to provide political cover
for Clinton patronage moves in 1993, Attorney General Reno and Freeh promised
strict scrutiny of White House requests. They failed abysmally to keep citizens'
confidential files safe from politicians' eyes.

Think of it: Unverified slanders and gossipy tidbits in your FBI file have been
vulnerable to an unsigned form letter from a political partisan hiding behind
another person's name. Under Freeh, the anti-encryption zealot hand-picked
by the
man whose name was used on the phony requisitions, the Justice Department's most
confidential file room has become a walk-in closet for White House pols.

Nobody at Freeh's unbuttoned FBI bothered to ask: What individual wants this and
for what lawful purpose? Can any anonymous bureaucrat requisition, rifle through
and remove confidential records? How come not one agent was required by bureau
policy to ask why not even initials appeared on hundreds of requests to check up
on Republicans?

What a scandalously sloppy way to run a police agency. To entrust the
investigation of this unprecedented hemorrhage of FBI confidentiality to
the same
easily manipulated Justice Department invites a whitewash.

Summer civil libertarians shade their eyes when personal privacy is invaded by
political allies, but this top-level failure to resist an abuse of power dismays
FBI agents in the field. When Clintonites send over for the file on me, Director
Freeh, don't buy their baloney about "seeks access" -- I won't be going to the
White House picnic this summer.