"The signal to release Tripp's file had to come from 1600
Pennsylvania Ave."
THE FOOTPRINTS OF THE
SECRET POLICE
By DICK MORRIS
HOW did confidential information from
Linda Tripp's Pentagon personnel file find
its way to Jane Mayer, a writer for The New
Yorker, in blatant violation of the federal
Privacy Act? And how did Mayer - at the
very same time - also happen to learn of a
Tripp arrest that had been sealed and
expunged more than 20 years before?
Was Mayer simply a diligent and inquiring
reporter who somehow stumbled onto these
inaccessible and protected records that
were so potentially damaging to the
credibility of a chief White House accuser?
Or, more plausibly, was she fed a carefully
orchestrated series of tips from the White
House based on material uncovered by the
private sleuths who work for the president's
men - the White House Secret Police?
Why do we care? Because if we do not
credit this story to Mayer's investigative
skills but rather to the White House's efforts,
a federal statute has been broken. The
federal Privacy Act bars the release of
confidential material from a federal
employee's job file. The modus operandi of
this use of confidential files closely parallels
that of the FBI file episode, potentially a
wider breach of civil liberties.
I wrote last month that The New Yorker's use
of the confidential information from Tripp's
personnel file suggested a White House
effort to disseminate illegally private
information to smear a Clinton adversary.
After the column ran, Jane Mayer called me
in a huff, denying any White House
involvement. She told me that:
She had learned of Tripp's arrest from an
old friend of Linda's. (Sure!)
She got the information from Tripp's file
from a Pentagon press officer. (Those
Pentagon boys just can't stop blabbing -
they're famous for wanting to share their
files.)
She simply called the Pentagon press office
and asked an experienced press officer
about whether the Clinton critic had
disclosed any arrests on her job
application. Later that day, the press officer
dutifully called her back to report that Tripp
had not. (Sounds easy, doesn't it?)
Mayer was particularly outraged that my
column had lent ammunition to Judicial
Watch, a conservative legal group, which
used the incident to successfully persuade
federal Judge Royce Lamberth to grant it
broader access to White House e-mails
and documents.
It's quite a conjunction: Mayer somehow got
an unusually talkative Pentagon official to
make a careless disclosure and
simultaneously discovered an expunged
arrest record from an old friend of Linda
Tripp. This supposed good fortune defies
credibility:
How did Tripp's friend find Jane Mayer?
While she is a respected reporter, she's no
household word. More likely, one of the
White House Secret Police uncovered the
friend and the fact of the arrest and steered
the friend to Mayer (or vice versa).
What went on between Mayer's original call
to the Pentagon press officer and his later
return call which provided Mayer with the
answer from Tripp's personnel file? Likely,
Mayer's request went up the chain of
command and then back down again. After
all, what Pentagon press official would take
it upon himself to violate the Privacy Act and
inject himself into the most intense
controversy in Washington? Indeed, since
when do press officers even have access to
personnel records?
How high up the chain of command did the
question of how to handle Mayer go? Did it
reach the White House? How could it not?
What Pentagon official would make the
political decision to release illegally
material from Tripp's file? The signal to
release Tripp's file had to come from 1600
Pennsylvania Ave.
Few presidents know all that is done in their
name. But the men around President
Clinton are the likely suspects in the release
of Tripp's file.
Why was Mayer so distraught about the
Judicial Watch subpoenas and Judge
Lamberth's affirmation of them? Perhaps
because a trail from the White House
private eyes to Mayer might show up in the
documents covered by the judge's order.
How else can we account for her concern
over the subpoenas? According to a
Judicial Watch staff attorney, she was never
mentioned in the court proceedings, no
documents were sought from her and there
are no plans to depose her.
Could concern over White House
involvement in the release of the Tripp file
also account for the Justice Department's
decision to fight the subpoenas?
Why has Defense Secretary William Cohen
been so quiet about this issue? After
Mayer's article was published, Cohen
discussed how serious an offense it is to lie
on a job application - but, surprisingly, he
failed to note how serious it is to violate the
Privacy Act. How come?
The last time a private citizen's confidential
records were reported to have been
released to the media, it was the disclosure
of Bill Clinton's passport application file
during the 1992 campaign. After Clinton
complained, a special prosecutor was
named to investigate the violation of the
Privacy Act. This time, nobody in
government has even questioned the
release of private information.
Journalists are certainly entitled to keep
their sources confidential. Nothing is worth
breaching this First Amendment protection.
Mayer was entitled to run her scoop. But the
White House violated the Privacy Act if it
fed her the story. The entire issue of the
White House's use of secret police
deserves congressional scrutiny and
hearings by the House Government Reform
& Oversight Committee.
Many Americans do not care about the
president's sex life or his involvement in
Arkansas real estate deals or in the White
House Travel Office firings. But what
American citizen cannot be worried if the
White House is using secret operatives to
do the dirty work once done at presidential
behest by the FBI, CIA and IRS? The use of
secret police by overzealous White House
staffers may be the only scandal of the
Clinton years worthy of investigating for
posterity.
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