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Politics : Did Slick Boink Monica? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Hippieslayer who wrote (14230)	4/21/1998 9:23:00 AM
From: Zoltan!	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 20981

"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. nypostonline.com