Clintons Still Haunted by FBI Files Scandal
January 20, 2000
BY ROBERT NOVAK SUN-TIMES COLUMNIST
Federal District Judge Royce C. Lamberth, a Reagan appointee who often has ruled against the Clinton administration, may be nearing two decisions of profound importance for the president's legacy and for the first lady's future.
At issue is the most mysterious of the Clinton scandals: discovery at the White House of more than 900 secret FBI personnel files, including dossiers of prominent Republicans. For more than six months, Lamberth has had on his desk requests for sworn testimony by two people--a former White House aide's ex-wife who claims Hillary Rodham Clinton was associated with the files affair, and Mrs. Clinton herself. Lawyers familiar with Lamberth's court believe his decision is imminent.
The judge has more to consider than one woman's unsubstantiated allegations. Conservative Larry Klayman's Judicial Watch has collected at least 14 pieces of evidence in his class-action suit in behalf of people claiming exposure of their confidential files violated their privacy. His evidence certainly does not prove Mrs. Clinton's complicity, but suggests this was more than the FBI blunder described by the White House.
How could a sole controversial judicial activist uncover such material when special prosecutor Kenneth Starr in late 1998 gave President Clinton a clean bill of health on the files scandal? Sources close to Starr's investigation say the burdens of simultaneous prosecutions in Washington and Little Rock forced him to pick and choose. Uninhibited by such demands, Klayman has ploughed ahead, collecting affidavits on a matter that even Republicans have abandoned, but Democrats consider the most dangerous of all Clinton improprieties.
The most recent Judicial Watch affidavit was taken Jan. 7 from Deborah Perroy, a former National Security Council aide. In 1993, one evening after working hours, she said, "I came upon" her superior, NSC administrative director Robert Manzanares, and his assistant, Marcia Dimel, "looking through top-secret personnel background files" in the NSC's CIA liaison office--an off-limits area for them.
Asserting that Manzanares and Dimel were removing background files from a safe and "keeping some sort of list," Perroy said the files included FBI information on "virtually every top political and NSC aide to Presidents Reagan and Bush." She added that her colleagues "clearly reacted as if they did not expect me and had been caught doing something improper."
Although she left the White House in 1993, Perroy did not "come forward until now," she said, "for fear of retaliation by the Clinton White House." She added she was encouraged to speak out when she learned of an affidavit from another former White House staffer, Sheryl L. Hall.
Hall, a computer specialist who resigned last September, said her duties included helping Clinton administration lawyers reply to plaintiffs in the file scandal. Michelle Peterson of the White House counsel's office, Hall said, last spring "told me in her office that `our strategy' for the Filegate lawsuit was to `stall' because `we had just a couple of years to go.' " White House spokesmen had no comment on either Perroy's or Hall's deposition.
Lamberth now is considering the request for sworn testimony by the first lady and Leslie Gail Kennedy, who in 1994 was married to former White House Associate Counsel William Kennedy. Last June 11, Mrs. Kennedy told a Judicial Watch interviewer that she in 1994 observed her husband "on several occasions" transferring FBI files into his laptop computer. She expressed the opinion that Mrs. Clinton, her ex-husband's former law partner in Little Rock, was using the files against enemies of health reform.
To consider whether the first lady should be put under oath, Lamberth might ponder the Dec. 14, 1998, deposition by the ubiquitous Linda Tripp. She testified that on two occasions she heard Kennedy talking about transferring FBI files into the White House database and that senior White House staffer Marsha Scott told him "Mrs. Clinton wanted this done." Is this enough to suggest that Ken Starr overlooked the worst Clinton scandal?
Robert Novak appears on the CNN programs "Capital Gang" at 6 p.m. Saturday and "Evans, Novak, Hunt and Shields" at 4:30 p.m. Saturday and 10 a.m. Sunday.
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HOLY MOLY!!! CLINTON MET WITH CRAIG LIVINGSTONE THE DAY AFTER THE INFAMOUS 'WHITE HOUSE FBI FILES' WERE FIRST REQUESTED!!!
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