TRAVELGATE — THE ALL-BUT-FORGOTTEN Clinton White House scandal of May 1993 — is about to reemerge with a vengeance. In an internal Clinton administration memorandum obtained by THE WEEKLY STANDARD, a senior Justice Department official accuses the White House of withholding key evidence in a probe of the FBI’s role in Travelgate — a handwritten notebook belonging to the late White House deputy counsel Vincent Foster.
“The fact that we have just now learned of the existence of obviously relevant notes written by Mr. Foster,” writes Michael J. Shaheen in the extraordinary July 24 memo to associate deputy attorney general David Margolis, “is yet another example of the lack of cooperation and candor we received from the White House throughout our inquiry.” Shaheen heads the Office of Professional Responsibility at Justice.
Moreover, information developed by Congressional investigators and lawyers for the former chief of the White House travel office suggests that the roles of First Friend Harry Thomason and longtime Clinton aide Patsy Thomasson (no relation) in Travelgate are more extensive than publicly known. Harry Thomason, who had a clear conflict Of interest, attended a previously undisclosed damage-control meeting the day the scandal broke. Patsy Thomasson has been linked to the disappearance of a key document. And court papers allege she urged another White House official to lie about the existence of another important memorandum — which, if substantiated, could raise the specter of obstruction of justice within the West Wing.
Travelgate first blew up after the White House fired travel office chief Billy Dale and six colleagues all at once, citing a host of financial irregularities. It was quickly revealed that some West Wing officials intended to throw White House travel business to a Little Rock travel agency with links to a distant Clinton cousin. The same offcials had been maneuvering to clean out the travel office for weeks before the firing. It was also disclosed that Harry Thomason, the Hollywood producer who made the celebrated “Man from Hope” convention film about his old friend Bill Clinton, owned a one-third stake in a company that hoped to get in on the lucrative business of transporting the White House press corps accompanying the president.
Five of the seven fired civil servants were later reinstated and given other government jobs. Four White House aides were subsequently reprimanded after an internal review headed by then-Chief of Staff Mack McLarty for making improper contacts with the FBI. The Bureau had been contacted directly by the White House a week before the firings to investigate possible criminal violations in the travel office — leading to charges that the law- enforcement agency was being used for political purposes.
The FBI’s involvement was the subject of Shaheen’s 1993 inquiry. In the memo he wrote two months ago, Shaheen said of the Foster notebook, “We were stunned to learn of the existence of this document, since it so obviously bears directly upon the inquiry we were directed to take. . . . Even a minimal level of cooperation by the White House should have resulted in its disclosure to us at the outset of our investigation.”
The memo notes that during the Office of Professional Responsibility’s interrogation of White House officials, “no one suggested, hinted or disclosed the existence of Mr. Foster’s notes” — including senior Clinton aide John Podesta, who had interviewed Foster as part of a White House internal management review.
It’s theoretically possible the White House hadn’t learned about the notebook until recently. But Shaheen and his associates apparently don’t believe this. In a private note, another staffer in Shaheen’s office suggested that the following language be included in Shaheen’s letter: “Thus, it is our view that this notebook was in the possession of the White House at each and every juncture of our inquiry.”
This intramural fingerpointing is among several new disclosures certain to be spun out in Congressional hearings later this fall, as well as at the trial of former travel office chief Dale, charged with embezzling $ 50,000 from news organizations, which reimbursed the travel office for the expense of flying their reporters around with the president. Dale insists he used the funds for legitimate travel office expenses. His trial is scheduled to begin in October:
In a motion filed in federal district court earlier this month, Dale’s attorneys assert they have obtained evidence that a missing petty-cash log they believe will exonerate their client was removed from Dale’s office by a ” Senior White House Official” before his firing. They cite a sworn affidavit from “a credible and disinterested third party” who says that on the very day Dale and the others were let go, the White House official gave him a sealed manila envelope matching the one in which Dale had placed the missing log. Several weeks later, the “Senior White House Official” took back the envelope.
Government officials confirm that the “Senior White House Official” cited in this document is Patsy Thomasson, now the deputy director of the White House personnel office.
In the same document and a second filing still under court seal, Dale’s lawyers assert that “the same Senior White House Official asked a witness to lie to investigators” about the existence of a White House memorandum urging that Dale and his colleagues be fired and replaced by Little Rock’s World Wide Travel, which had handled candidate Clinton’s air travel in 1992. The lawyers call this “evidence of an attempt to obstruct justice.”
When the firings were announced on May 19, 1993, press secretary Dee Dee Myers said the White House decided to act after a review of travel-office procedures by the accounting firm of Peat Marwick that found “gross mismanagement” inside the travel office. But in a meeting later the same day – – a meeting heretofore unknown — senior White House officials learned to their great agitation that the review hadn’t actually been completed. There’s no mention of this meeting in the chronology that had been prepared as part of McLarty’s internal management review. When Peat Marwick’s report was finally rushed to completion under White House pressure on May 21, it was critical of sloppy accounting procedures, but nowhere alleged “gross mismanagement.” In fact, some officials involved in the audit privately believe its findings weren’t sufficient to warrant any dismissals. Curiously, the Peat Marwick report is dated May 17 — two days before the firings and four days before its completion. (The White House has previously said a preliminary draft of the report had been prepared by May 17.)
One of the attendees at this meeting was Harry Thomason, whose involvement in the travel affair was a subject of considerable internal debate at the time. Senior adviser George Stephanopoulous told reporters that Thomason had no financial interest in the travel matter. Several other White House aides, however, privately disagreed with that assertion at the time, including Vince Foster. (Thomason, incidentally, has hired Washington superlawyer Bob Bennett to represent him.)
It’s now beyond reasonable dispute that some White House aides, notably Catherine Cornelius, a distant cousin of President Clinton, lobbied to have the travel office fired and funnel its air travel operations to political and business cronies. The 1993 White House review also concluded that Harry Thomason’s interest in travel office matters was inappropriate and contributed to “an appearance of financial conflict of interest.”
“The evidence is overwhelming,” says one official, “that they decided to fire these guys to give their friends some charter business, and then set about to come up with a reason to justify that decision.”
What’s left to determine is whether some White House staffers were actively engaged in a cover-up to keep the entire story from emerging. “There’s a lot of misrepresentation and lying here,” says one well-placed source. “It’s possible this still may be more bumbling than anything else. But all the signals point to something more serious than that.”
Previous investigations have been inconclusive, hamstrung by less-than- stellar cooperation from the White House — or a helping hand from Democrats in Congress and Congress’s investigative arm, the General Accounting Office. During the GAO’s 1994 investigation, GAO staffers allowed the White House to sit in on interviews and limit the scope of the inquiry by declining to make several key officials available. What’s more, says one official, GAO documents detail “an amazing amount of amnesia on the part of White House aides.”
Over the summer, investigators with the House Government Reform and Oversight Committee were assured of full cooperation by the White House. In recent weeks, however, the West Wing began to change its tune. White House officials demanded that a government lawyer be present at any interviews with administration officials — a precondition for cooperation the president’s lawyers failed to secure in the Whitewater matter. When committee staffers resisted, on the grounds that such a presence would create an obvious chilling effect, the White House refused to make any officials available and began canceling all interviews already scheduled with committee investigators. Even former White House officials no longer in the government have been urged by the White House to stiff the committee.
And the administration refused to produce critical documents for the investigators to review — until Sept. 14, when the White House counsel’s office backed off its threat to impose “executive privilege” on the documents and supplied House investigators with 400 of the 900 pages they requested.
Still, the White House has repeatedly asserted that documents relating to Harry Thomason are “beyond the scope” of the Congressional probe. And the fact remains that, as one source puts it, “their public statements and their private actions are quite different.” All this means that Rep. William Clinger, chairman of the House oversight committee, may be issuing subpoenas for White House officials. Travelgate is headed for the front pages once again.
Thomas M. DeFrank has covered the White House for Newsweek since 1970 and is the collaborator on the memoirs of James A. Baker III.
