FOR THOSE WHO BELIEVE IN THE Liberal Media Conspiracy, the lead editorial that ran in the Washington Post on June 17 must have come as something of a surprise. Over the course of 600 sarcasm-laden words, the Post dismissed the notion that the White House had committed anything so innocuous as a “bureaucratic snafu” when it sought the confidential FBI files of departed Republican staffers. The editorial was remarkably critical of the Clinton administration.
And remarkably soft on the FBI. Indeed, the Post all but exonerated the FBI for its role in the scandal, blaming instead political hacks inside the White House. Concluded the Post: “The FBI was had, big time.” By whom? By White House personnel security chief Craig Livingstone, a 37-year-old political flunky and one-time bar bouncer who has been characterized by a Senate investigator as “more or less clueless”? By Anthony Marceca, a former small-town constable the Post itself described as so dull that he once responded to an order to “keep a low profile” by driving around with his head Louis Freeh down?
This version of events has obvious appeal to those charged with maintaining the public image of the FBI. It helps explains FBI director Louis Freeh’s Oprah-inspired complaint that the Bureau had been “victimized” by the Keystone Cop-like Livingstone and his Curly-like second stooge, Marceca. But the portrait of a sadly abused FBI bears little resemblance to the way, in all likelihood, things actually happened. It is inconceivable that the FBI — widely and correctly considered among the most suspicious and politically savvy agencies in Washington — could have been tricked into giving confidential files over to the bumbling likes of Craig Livingstone.
According to a recently retired special agent who spent more than 20 years working at FBI headquarters, the White House’s requests for the files would have been routed to at least one of three divisions within the FBI — the records department, the congressional liaison office, or the offce of the general counsel. From there, given the unusual nature of the White House requests (and taking into account, too, the self-protective habits of bureaucrats), it is likely they were seen and approved by quite a few people, including almost certainly one of the FBI’s deputy directors. Red flags would have popped up along the way. According to the retired special agent, “any offcial at headquarters who has any experience at all would take one look [at the requests] and go, ‘What the f is this?'”
It shouldn’t be hard to determine who those officials were, since their initials would appear on the requests, or on the attached cover sheets. On public versions of these documents, signatures and various significant marginalia are sometimes missing, whited out before release. Not so on the ” yellow,” or internal and unmodified, copies that now reside, each stamped with a serialized number to prevent tampering, in archives at FBI headquarters. Those files are there. It is time to pull them.
It’s remarkable how easily offcial Washington, which once regarded J. Edgar Hoover’s outfit with a suspicion and fear bordering on Oliver Stone-like paranoia, bought into the Freeh spin. No agency is more acutely aware of how potentially damning and politically sensitive background investigations can be than the FBI; it conducts those investigations, after all. Nor is this the first time it has dawned on FBI officials that confidential personnel files might be used for political ends.
As C. Boyden Gray, chief counsel in the Bush administration, recently explained, the FBI relies on more than “good faith and honor” (Freeh’s words) in its dealings with the White House. “If we had asked for the reports on Carter White House aides like Ham Jordan or Stuart Eizenstat,” Gray said, “I think the FBI would have said, ‘Why?'”
So how did the FBI allow this to happen? A 31-page report, issued June 14 after a brief internal investigation, purports to tell us. Prepared by Howard M. Shapiro, the Bureau’s general counsel, the report is an impressively self- justifying document, sure to be required reading for students of bureaucracy well into the next century. According to Shapiro, despite the fact that the requests for confidential files on a number of well-known, long-departed Republicans arrived from the White House in bulk and in alphabetical order, no one at the FBI noticed anything amiss. (The one exception, a footnote explains, was an analyst who “believes that the request for the files of James Baker may have caught her eye at the time.”)
Moreover, Shapiro says, the FBI office that gathers personnel files for the White House is nothing less than “a stunningly efficient operation” whose staff works “tirelessly and with admirable success in managing the constant dam-burst of incoming requests.” “It would be unconscionable,” therefore, “to now fault these employees for not having somehow discerned that these facially-valid requests from the White House were made without justification.”
If not the analysts, who then should be faulted? Who succumbed to stupidity — or, more likely, to political pressure, explicit or implied — and released these files to the White House? It is not clear from the report, which tends to be specific in its praise but awfully general when it comes to finger-pointing. Fortunately, the internal report, which was prepared for external consumption, is not the only evidence future investigators will have to consult as they search for a culprit — or more than one — inside the FBI.
Tucker Carlson
