The White House is so outraged by the misconduct of its personnel security chief, Craig Livingstone, that it is — sending him on a vacation at taxpayer’s expense. What else would you call “administrative leave with pay”? That’s how Livingstone’s boss, White House counsel Jack Quinn, described the harsh punishment being meted out to the man who scoured, or supervised the scouring of, more than 400 FBI files he had no right to look at. Either Livingstone did something wrong, in which case he should be fired, or he was acting on orders from higher up, in which case the White House seems to be trying to buy his silence by keeping him within the family. Even Democratic congressman Tom Lantos says Livingstone should be fired. After all, even Boris Yeltsin fired his internal security chief, Aleksandr Korzhakov. How long can the White House continue to use taxpayer funds to pay Mr. Livingstone to do nothing?
