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Authors: Ann Coulter
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On June 28, 1996, the
Washington Post
editorialized:
Washington Post
editorialized:
[T]he question of why hundreds of unjustifiably collected FBI reports on Republicans ended up in the Clinton White House remains unanswered. But another mystery now looms even larger. How did Craig Livingstone end up on the White House payroll? No one professes to know….At this stage, nobody at the White House will claim credit for Craig Livingstone. It gets you wondering… Are there no papers in the payroll part of the operation that indicate that Mr. Livingstone was actually hired or okayed by someone?The FBI files affair raises serious questions. They deserve and require serious answers and real ones.
7
Answers to these questions, however, never came.
Never in recent memory had any administration obtained background investigations of another president’s political staff. Yet the White House never investigated the files “snafu” and never provided Congress with answers to many enduring mysteries about the files.
With every other excuse having proved inoperative, Clinton senior adviser George Stephanopoulos gave the amazing defense that no one whose dossier White House employees had pawed over had actually been blackmailed. “There hasn’t been any evidence of political manipulation,” said Stephanopoulos. (That’s the thing about blackmail: the person being blackmailed usually doesn’t want to talk about it.)
THE FILESThe material in raw FBI background files
is not the stuff of nominating speeches or awards banquets. Quite the opposite. These files contain the raw sewage of background investigations.
8
White House appointees have to fill out questionnaire SG-86, which former White House Counsel A.B. Culvahouse describes as designed to “affirmatively encourage the furnishing of adverse or derogatory information.” The FBI perfoᆙrms background checks on a whole host of potential government employees to screen out individuals who might be vulnerable to espionage, theft, blackmail threats, or simple political embarrassment.
is not the stuff of nominating speeches or awards banquets. Quite the opposite. These files contain the raw sewage of background investigations.
8
White House appointees have to fill out questionnaire SG-86, which former White House Counsel A.B. Culvahouse describes as designed to “affirmatively encourage the furnishing of adverse or derogatory information.” The FBI perfoᆙrms background checks on a whole host of potential government employees to screen out individuals who might be vulnerable to espionage, theft, blackmail threats, or simple political embarrassment.
The raw file is the comprehensive pool of evidence, including every unsubstantiated rumor that diligent field agents are able to rout. This can include helpful observations from bitter ex-beaus, people who are certifiably mad themselves, or who confused the candidate with someone else. Not infrequently, raw files contain demonstrably false information. Even the true information can be something less than bragging material. Divorce, family problems, visits to the psychiatrist, debts—it’s all in there. FBI analysts with expertise in sorting out reliable evidence from the unreliable, and who are dulled to reading about other people’s deepest secrets, will eventually go over what the field agents bring in. The final report on the candidate will discount the improbable, the atypical, the vindictive—and the irrelevant.
So it was just a little bit unnerving for many former Republican appointees to learn that their raw files had been pulled by the likes of Democratic operatives Craig Livingstone and Anthony Marceca. Further, while these files were in Livingstone’s possession, they were handled quite casually, with no controls on how often they were copied, to whom they were faxed, or who took copies away.
Simply obtaining an FBI file without a proper purpose could be a violation of the Privacy Act. Giving information from the files to someone else with intent to silence or embarrass someone would be a clear-cut crime.
According to testimony by the elusive Mari Anderson, Livingstone’s secretary, someone in the White House wanted to see Billy Dale’s file around the time of the Travel Office firings. However, it was more than seven months after Dale and the others were fired, and their security clearances revoked, that Livingstone’s office filled out a request for Dale’s FBI file.
The nominal sender of the request was then-White House Counsel Bernard Nussbaum. Nussbaum has maintained that such forms, with his typed signature on the “from” line, were produced in bulk for the use of Counsel Office staffers. The person filling out the form used one word, ACCESS, to describe the reason for the request.
It has never been suggested that Billy Dale was being considered for any kind of return engagement at the White House that would have justified a review of his file; nor is there any apparent reason why, if Dale had been under consideration for a new White House role requiring clearance, the bureau’s normal vetting process would not have been sufficient, especially given Dale’s more than three decades of uncontroversial government service. Under the circumstances, the inference that the White House was seeking derogatory information for an after-the-fact justification of the firing is hard to repress.
THE MYSTERIOUS CRAIG LIVINGSTONEWho is Craig Livingstone?
What may loosely be called his political career goes back at least to 1984, when he worked on Senator Gary Hart’s presidential campaign. Livingstone was in charge of spreading dirt for what must be a very bitter Gary Hart. Dennis Casey, a Pennsylvania political consultant who met Livingstone on that campaign, told the
Washington Post
in 1996 that Livingstone had urged the use of information about sexual peccadilloes of labor bigwigs who supported Walter Mondale to help persuade them to switch to Hart. “I just got a very bad taste in my mouth” about Livingstone, Casey said. “He felt it was my duty to go to these people and try to coerce them into supporting Senator Hart.”
9
For the record, Livingstone disputes Casey’s account. (For the record, Livingstone also doesn’t know who hired him at the Clinton White House.) In 1988 Livingstone was a paid advance man for then-Senator Al Gore’s presidential campaign.
What may loosely be called his political career goes back at least to 1984, when he worked on Senator Gary Hart’s presidential campaign. Livingstone was in charge of spreading dirt for what must be a very bitter Gary Hart. Dennis Casey, a Pennsylvania political consultant who met Livingstone on that campaign, told the
Washington Post
in 1996 that Livingstone had urged the use of information about sexual peccadilloes of labor bigwigs who supported Walter Mondale to help persuade them to switch to Hart. “I just got a very bad taste in my mouth” about Livingstone, Casey said. “He felt it was my duty to go to these people and try to coerce them into supporting Senator Hart.”
9
For the record, Livingstone disputes Casey’s account. (For the record, Livingstone also doesn’t know who hired him at the Clinton White House.) In 1988 Livingstone was a paid advance man for then-Senator Al Gore’s presidential campaign.
Between working on losing Democratic campaigns, Livingstone worked at Washington, D.C., bars, including J. Paul’s and Annie’s in Georgetown, which would later earn him the omnipresent appellation “former bar bouncer.” Livingstone was fired from two jobs for misconduct.
10
10
When Livingstone signed up with the 1992 Clinton-Gore campaign, he had finally found an employer who would hang onto him. He was “senior consultant for counter-events”—in his own words—for the campaign.
11
This entailed dressing up as Pinocchio and “Chicken George” to disrupt Bush-Quayle events. Livingstone moved from his job with the Clinton-Gore campaign, to director of security for the Clinton-Gore inaugural committee, to security director at the Clinton-Gore White House.
11
This entailed dressing up as Pinocchio and “Chicken George” to disrupt Bush-Quayle events. Livingstone moved from his job with the Clinton-Gore campaign, to director of security for the Clinton-Gore inaugural committee, to security director at the Clinton-Gore White House.
Indeed, two years before the files story broke, Senator Dennis DeConcini (D-AZ), then chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, warned the White House about security problems at the White House and recommended appointing a “non-partisan individual responsible for overseeing all security-related functions within the office of administration.”
12
The White House ignored DeConcini’s advice, preferring to keep Craig Livingstone in charge.
12
The White House ignored DeConcini’s advice, preferring to keep Craig Livingstone in charge.
Someone must have wanted him badly, because he beat out a better-qualified competitor. (Not that dressing up as a chicken wasn’t apparently a strong qualification for the Clinton administration.) Of course, anyone who had formal security experience of any sort would be better qualified to head White House security than Craig Livingstone. Livingstone was chosen over Jacquelyn Dinwiddie,
13
who had held the White House security job during the Carter administration, had worked on the Clinton campaign, and had applied for the job in the Clinton White House.
13
who had held the White House security job during the Carter administration, had worked on the Clinton campaign, and had applied for the job in the Clinton White House.
Agent Sculimbrene said of Dinwiddie, “She had integrity, she was competent, and she ran a good shop.” Another FBI agent, Robert Cronin, told
Investor’s Business Daily
, “She had common sense combined with political sense that would have kept her out of a lot of these troubles.” Dinwiddie remarked without irony, “Obviously I was not the best person for the job, or I would have gotten it.”
“HILLARY WANTS HIM”Investor’s Business Daily
, “She had common sense combined with political sense that would have kept her out of a lot of these troubles.” Dinwiddie remarked without irony, “Obviously I was not the best person for the job, or I would have gotten it.”
Who hired Livingstone
remains one of Washington’s great mysteries. No one who could have hired him will admit to so much as knowing Livingstone prior to his showing up as White House security director. As far as the Clinton administration is concerned, Livingstone’s tenure in that job was part of the Lockean state of nature, or the Rawlsian original position. Or perhaps an effect of El Niño.
remains one of Washington’s great mysteries. No one who could have hired him will admit to so much as knowing Livingstone prior to his showing up as White House security director. As far as the Clinton administration is concerned, Livingstone’s tenure in that job was part of the Lockean state of nature, or the Rawlsian original position. Or perhaps an effect of El Niño.
In 1994 George Stephanopoulos said of Livingstone, “He does a terrific job. All I know is that anything that has anything to do with security or logistics—Craig’s going to take care of it. You don’t have to tell him how to do it, when to do it. Just that it needs to be done, and he does it. And he knows how to cut through the bureaucracy and get things done.”
14
After Livingstone’s demonstrated bureaucracy-busting skills came to light in the Filegate matter, Stephanopoulos said, “I don’t know him that well. He’s a guy that was around.”
15
14
After Livingstone’s demonstrated bureaucracy-busting skills came to light in the Filegate matter, Stephanopoulos said, “I don’t know him that well. He’s a guy that was around.”
15
The president and the president’s men—including former White House Counsel Bernard Nussbaum, who was nominally responsible for the office Livingstone headed—have all taken the position that none of them hired Livingstone, and none of them knows who did. Apparently no one is capable of finding out who did either, so could we all please drop the subject? Such claims are, according to the Rodino Report, the reason for the constitutional impeachment power:
[U]nder the… Constitution, the President “is of a very different nature from a monarch. He is to be… personally responsible for any abuse of the great trust reposed in him.”… [T]he predominant principle on which the Convention had provided for a single executive was “the more obvious responsibility of one person.” When there was but one man… “the public were never at a loss” to fix the blame.
16
What can be pieced together about Livingstone’s hiring, despite the best efforts of the president and his men, is this: One former FBI agent says Nussbaum told him—in an official interview, in which lying would be a federal felony—that Hillary Clinton had recommended Livingstone’s hire.
FBI Special Agent Dennis Sculimbrene took notes of the background check that he conducted on Livingstone as part of his routine examination of all new White House employees. Sculimbrene interviewed Bernard Nussbaum on March 13, 1993. According to Sculimbrene’s contemporaneous notes of the meeting:
Mr. Nussbaum advised… that he has known the appointee, Mr. Livingstone, for the period of time he has been in the new administration. Mr. Livingstone came highly recommended to him by Hillary Clinton, who has known his mother for a longer period of time.
17
Nussbaum has denied making such a statement, and Mrs. Clinton has denied ever knowing Livingstone before he came to the White House, for what that’s worth.
Before producing Sculimbrene’s notes to a House investigating committee, the FBI warned the White House about the revelation in the notes and sent two FBI agents to Sculimbrene’s home to have a little chat with him about how unhappy the White House was with the notes taken years before. Sculimbrene was then pressured out of the bureau, after serving in its White House detail for almost twenty years. Then-FBI General Counsel Howard Shapiro sent the agents, and he also warned the White House. Incidentally, Shapiro left the FBI in June 1996 under heavy GOP fire from the Hill because of his always-at-your-service posture toward the Clinton White House. He surfaced in the news again in March 1998, as attorney for private investigator Terry Lenzner, who, the White House admitted, is paid to gather dirt on perceived enemies of the Clinton White House.
(Noting that the White House’s earlier denial that “any private investigator” had been hired to “look into the background of… prosecutors or reporters” seemed to conflict with the eventual admission that Lenzner had been paid since 1994 to do just that—by collecting “public information” on the backgrounds of Starr’s prosecutors—journalist Stuart Taylor explained that the “Clintonian reasoning was that looking into public information about a person’s background was entirely different from looking into his background.”
18
)
18
)
Absurdly, the White House responded to Shapiro’s warnings about Sculimbrene’s notes by issuing a letter from White House Counsel Jack Quinn informing FBI Director Louis Freeh that the White House was “troubled” by Sculimbrene’s “false report.”
Sculimbrene could have had no imaginable reason to falsify notes taken in 1993 about who hired Craig Livingstone. There was no possible way of predicting that the question of Livingstone’s sponsor would ever become an issue—much less a matter of considerable embarrassment. Back in March 1993 Livingstone hadn’t done anything wrong yet. He might have gone on to perform heroic feats for the White House, leaving his superiors vying for the claim of having discovered young Craig. Indeed, over a year after Sculimbrene dutifully recorded in his notes that Nussbaum said Hillary was responsible for hiring Livingstone, George Stephanopoulos would still be telling the press what a “terrific job” Livingstone was doing.
Even before Sculimbrene’s notes became public in July 1996, another FBI agent, Gary Aldrich, had already written in his book
Unlimited Access
—released the previous month—that Associate White House Counsel William Kennedy told him the same thing. According to Aldrich’s book, Kennedy told him it was Mrs. Clinton who had Livingstone hired. “It’s a done deal,” said Kennedy according to Aldrich’s account. “Hillary wants him.”
Unlimited Access
—released the previous month—that Associate White House Counsel William Kennedy told him the same thing. According to Aldrich’s book, Kennedy told him it was Mrs. Clinton who had Livingstone hired. “It’s a done deal,” said Kennedy according to Aldrich’s account. “Hillary wants him.”
BOOK: High Crimes and Misdemeanors: The Case Against Bill Clinton
9.79Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
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