Partial Justice news:
By ROBERT BURNS
AP Military Writer
WASHINGTON (AP) - Top Defense Department public affairs officials violated the Privacy Act by releasing information from Linda Tripp's personnel file to a reporter in 1998, the Pentagon's inspector general concluded in a report released today.
In response to the finding, Defense Secretary William Cohen today sent letters to Kenneth Bacon, assistant secretary for public affairs, and to his main deputy, Clifford H. Bernath, "to express my disappointment" in their judgment.
Cohen termed both men's actions "hasty and ill-considered," but also said: "This was a departure from the very high quality of performance that you have otherwise exhibited."
Spokesman Rear Adm. Craig Quigley said Cohen considers the matter closed and will taken no further action.
Quigley said Cohen chose not to make his letters a part of either Bacon's or Bernath's permanent personnel file.
Bacon, who normally conducts news briefings at the Pentagon, chose not to attend today's because he knew the subject of the IG report would come up, Quigley said. Bacon felt it would be inappropriate for him to discuss the IG report and Cohen's letter, since he was the target of the investigation, Quigley said.
Later, in a brief interview, Bacon said he had attempted to maintain a balance between open government and privacy protection.
"Obviously at the time it did not occur to me that the Privacy Act would preclude disclosure of what a public official had said about her public arrest record on a security clearance form," Bacon said.
Tripp, who attracted national headlines by secretly recording conversations with former White House intern Monica Lewinsky, worked for Bacon in the Pentagon's public affairs office, as did Lewinsky.
In the midst of the Lewinsky scandal in March 1998, Bacon and Bernath were involved in informing a reporter for The New Yorker magazine that Tripp stated on a security clearance form she never had been arrested. In fact, Tripp was arrested for grand larceny as a teen-ager, a charge later reduced to loitering in an incident Tripp's lawyers called a youthful prank.
Tripp's secret taping of conversations with Lewinsky gave Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr evidence of a sexual relationship between Lewinsky and President Clinton. That evidence was used as a base for the impeachment trial against the president. Tripp was the only major figure in the scandal to face criminal charges.
On Wednesday, Maryland Prosecutor Stephen Montanarelli dropped wire tap charges against Tripp, saying a judge's decision severely limiting testimony from Lewinsky left him unable to prove that Tripp recorded a telephone conversation with the former White House intern without her consent in December 1997.
"There are no other witnesses to the conversation whom the state can call to testify and Tripp cannot be compelled to testify," Montanarelli said.
Starr today defended his decision to grant federal immunity to Tripp. "At the time, we needed the information and so we, consistent with Justice Department practices, granted immunity," he told reporters. "But it was a limited form of immunity."
In its report, dated May 4 but not released until today, the Pentagon's IG concluded that the harm to Tripp's privacy interests caused by the release of information from her personnel file outweighed any public benefit.
"Accordingly, the release constituted a clearly unwarranted invasion of her privacy," the IG report said, adding specifically that it believed the actions by Bacon and Bernath constituted a violation of the federal Privacy Act of 1974.
In a written statement released today, Bacon said he respects Cohen's decision to write a letter of reprimand. He said he disagreed with the inspector general's conclusion about the balance between private and public interests.
"In this case, I have consistently maintained that the balance weighed in favor of responding to a specific question involving a public arrest record," Bacon wrote. "I believe that ultimately my conduct will be found lawful."
Tripp is suing the Defense Department over the release of the information from her personnel records.
In his decision Wednesday to drop the wiretap charge, Montanarelli said that because of the judge's decision limiting Lewinsky's testimony, "There are no other witnesses to the conversation whom the state can call to testify and Tripp cannot be compelled to testify."
Prosecutors had to build a case against Tripp that did not rely on evidence she gave to Starr's office while she was under immunity.
Tripp said she began taping her friend's phone calls to protect herself because Lewinsky was pressuring her to deny knowledge of the relationship in an affidavit for Paula Jones' sexual harassment case against Clinton. The scandal came to light after her attorney played a recording of a Dec. 22, 1997, conversation for Newsweek magazine.
Maryland's wiretap law, which is infrequently prosecuted, forbids intercepting telephone conversations without both parties' consent. Tripp, who recorded the conversation from her home in Columbia, Md., could have faced 10 years in prison and a $20,000 fine if convicted.
Last December, Howard County Judge Diane Leasure ruled that the conversation between Tripp and Lewinsky did not fall under the immunity agreement.
But earlier this month, Leasure decided to suppress most of Lewinsky's testimony, which she considered tainted and not credible.
The judge said Lewinsky could not identify and authenticate the call because she likely relied on the Starr report to refresh her memory of the tape's date. That made it difficult for prosecutors to establish that the call took place before Tripp's immunity took effect.
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