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

To: Father Terrence who wrote (15237)	5/19/1998 9:52:00 AM
From: Zoltan!	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 20981

Proven: The Left-Wing Conspiracy: BILL COHEN: CAUGHT IN A COVERUP? By DICK MORRIS DEFENSE Secretary William Cohen told Fox newsman Tony Snow that Pentagon aide Clifford Bernath decided on his own to release damaging information from the confidential personnel file of Clinton accuser Linda Tripp to Jane Mayer, a reporter for The New Yorker magazine. Cohen lied. Ken Bacon, Bernath's supervisor, personally told Cohen that he had authorized the release of the information to Mayer. In a sworn deposition taken by the conservative group Judicial Watch on Friday, Bacon also testified that Cohen not only knew of his authorization to Bernath, but that Cohen's chief-of-staff actually called to scold him for telling Bernath to release the dirt on Tripp. The controversy began two months ago when Mayer wrote that Tripp, whose tapes of Monica Lewinsky started the whole scandal, had been arrested at the age of 19 but had failed to disclose the arrest on her confidential Pentagon personnel form. In this column, we first raised the question of how Mayer got the information. Responding to Snow's question, Cohen maintained that Clifford Bernath had released it on his own. But Bernath, in a sworn deposition, said that his boss, Ken Bacon, told him to release it and even insisted that Mayer's request receive "priority" attention. Now Bacon confirms that he authorized the file dump and that Cohen knew all about it before he lied to Snow. Bacon's deposition reveals the following additional information: Jane Mayer called Bernath to warn that she was being asked how she got Tripp's file. According to Bernath's date book, she "wants to know how to respond. Doesn't want to cause me any problem." After Nat Hentoff wrote an article criticizing the release of the Tripp file, Mayer asked Bacon if he thought she should write a letter to the editors of The New York Post and The Washington Post. By maintaining that he needed the file for "official business" when, in fact, it was just for Mayer's story, Bernath used subterfuge to pry Tripp's file loose from the Pentagon's Office of Freedom of Information and Privacy. Bacon, while denying any White House involvement in his decision to release the Tripp data, confirms that he has close ties to the White House and reported that he had been interviewed by Clinton aide George Stephanopoulos, White House press secretary Mike McCurry, and former press secretary Dee Dee Meyers before he was hired. Bacon, we should recall, hired Lewinsky after she was bounced out of the White House to keep her out of Clinton's reach. The Defense Department wasn't upset that Bernath had released the file despite clear evidence that doing so violated the Privacy Act: He got a big promotion and pay raise one week later. In other words, he was rewarded, by being selected from among three candidates for a job at the American Armed Forces Information Service, a promotion he had sought for some time. While Bernath's contemporaneous written notes state that Bacon told him that releasing Tripp's file data was a "priority," Bacon contends that he played a passive role, OKing the file release only after Bernath proposed it. When Mayer first called Bacon asking for data on Tripp, he told her that the information was covered by the Privacy Act and that he likely could not reveal it. Bacon said, in his deposition, that he regrets not insisting that the law be followed when he authorized release of the information. Neither Bacon nor Bernath have ever released data from anyone else's application for security clearance. Linda Tripp got her security clearance at the White House, where she worked prior to her transfer to the Pentagon press office. As revealing as Bacon's testimony is, it continues the unlikely claim that there was no White House involvement in the decision to release Tripp's file or the subsequent decision to blame the file release on Bernath alone. Most likely, Bacon, a loyal political appointee, is covering up for somebody. It seems unlikely that Jane Mayer knew to ask about Tripp's file or that Bacon saw fit to violate the law by authorizing its release without checking upstairs at the Pentagon or across the Potomac at the White House. For her part, Mayer's call asking Bernath how to respond to questions about where she got Tripp's file and her assurance that she "didn't want to cause any problem" show decided limits to her journalistic integrity and independence. This calls into further question her unlikely account that she stumbled onto an old friend of Tripp and learned about the Clinton accuser's arrest by happenstance. It has always seemed more likely that the White House private investigators - the secret police - dug up the information and fed it, directly or indirectly, to Mayer. "Honest Jane's" denials ring a bit hollow in view of her apparent dependence on the Pentagon press office for answers about her own behavior. Why is all this important? Because it shows a pattern of White House behavior in digging up dirt on political opponents even if it involves criminal violations of the Privacy Act and the misuse of government files. Those of us who objected to this pattern of behavior in the Nixon administration would be hypocritical not to see it as equally flawed in the Clinton presidency. This matter is now a test of the integrity of the Pentagon and of Defense Secretary Cohen: Will there be an official investigation of the illegal release of Tripp's file, followed by charges against those responsible? If the secretary falls short in this test, his lifelong reputation for integrity - already besmirched by his prevarication with Tony Snow - will suffer further damage. nypost.com