Excepts from House Oversight Committee Report:
The full report can be found HERE
Report Summary:
Travelgate is a story about the failure of the Clinton White House to live up to the ethical standards expected of the highest office in the land. The wrongdoing of this administration lies not in the firings of the seven Travel Office employees. They served at the pleasure of the President. If the President chose to fire them to reward political cronies, that was his prerogative.
Rather, the wrongdoing occurred after the firings. It resulted from a desire to hide the truth about who actually fired them and why. The committee spent 3 1/2 years investigating not just who fired them and why, but the wrongdoing that followed. The resulting mosaic pieced together from the facts uncovered reveals the answers the White House refused to disclose. In the end, the actions of the Clinton administration following the firings may have a lasting and damaging impact on the Office of the Presidency.
The committee has found that the motive for the firings was political cronyism: the President sought to reward his friend, Harry Thomason, with the spoils of the White House travel business. A pretext for the firings was created, and the trigger was pulled.
When the public reacted to the firing with outrage, the roles of the President, First Lady and Thomason were minimized as the White House staff engaged in a colossal damage-control effort. First, it had to portray the victims of the firings as the wrongdoers. This was achieved by White House officials unleashing the full powers of the Federal Government against the seven former workers. The extraordinary might of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Internal Revenue Service and the Department of Justice- not to mention the prestige of the White House itself -all were brought to bear. These actions constitute a gross abuse of the rights of seven American citizens and their families. Second, an enormous and elaborate cover-up operation, housed in the White House Counsel's Office, sought to prevent numerous investigations from discovering not only the roles of who fired the workers and why, but also their efforts to persecute the victims. In the process…it obstructed and frustrated all investigations; it turned the Office of the White House Counsel into a political damage-control operation; it made frivolous claims of executive privilege; it abused its powers to smear innocent citizens; and most important, it failed to level with the American people. |
