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“THE PRESIDENT BEARS FINANCIAL RESPONSIBILITY FOR LEGAL BILLS OF FIRED TRAVEL OFFICE EMPLOYEES” mentioning the U.S. Dept. of Justice was published in the House of Representatives section on pages H9907-H9908 on Aug. 2, 1996.
The publication is reproduced in full below:
THE PRESIDENT BEARS FINANCIAL RESPONSIBILITY FOR LEGAL BILLS OF FIRED
TRAVEL OFFICE EMPLOYEES
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the gentleman from Virginia [Mr. Wolf] is recognized for 5 minutes.
Mr. WOLF. Mr. Speaker, I am concerned about a statement President Clinton made yesterday that he would not support legislation which would reimburse Billy Dale and the other White House travel office employees' legal bills. His statement is contrary to other White House statements, and I urge him to reconsider this position.
Without rehashing the developing Travelgate saga, Members will recall that Billy Dale and six other White House travel employees, all career employees, one a constituent of mine, were fired so that the President's cousin could take over the operation. Those career Federal employees had their good names and their reputations destroyed. One of those employees was charged and the other six were not charged. One was forced to fight the full investigative and prosecuting power of the Federal Government, and was finally acquitted of any wrongdoing by a jury of his peers.
Billy Dale and his colleagues racked up hundreds of thousands of dollars of legal fees. According to news stories, the President snapped at a reporter who asked a question about the legal fees, because the President is concerned about his own staff's mounting legal bills. Unlike those others who hold high political offices, however, the fired travel office employees are not able to hold glitzy Hollywood fund-
raisers and have the beautiful people donate $1,000 to their legal fees. Again, my constituent was never charged with anything.
So I call on the President to make sure that this is signed. The Golden Rule says, do onto others as you would have them do onto you. The President ought to be sure, because of the actions of the White House, these people have been hurt, that they are reimbursed. It is the fair thing to do. It is the right thing to do.
I said on this floor one other time, when talking about this case, everything that goes around comes back around. One could almost say, the administration's action with regard to these Federal employees began all of the White House's legal problems. History will judge whether this is right or not, but regardless, career Federal employees should not be punished for a political action taken by any administration, Republican or Democrat.
warning against potential politicizing of the fbi
Mr. Speaker, I also want to express concern for the potential politicizing of the FBI. I will be inserting two articles in the Record whereby it talks about how Mr. Shapiro, who is the general counsel of the FBI, has been doing and involved in activities that the general counsel of the FBI ought not be involved in.
I have been one of the strongest supporters of the FBI and the employees of the FBI in this body. Many of the FBI agents live in my district, and I have been supportive with regard to the benefits and pay raises and other things. But it is chilling, it is chilling when the general counsel of the FBI, Mr. Shapiro, does what he did.
The one FBI agent, Dennis Calabrini, who is also a constituent of mine, he sent two FBI agents out to interview him at his home; very, very chilling. Then he made the data with regard to the Livingstone data available to parties that should not have seen it. This is a conflict of interest. This is inappropriate.
Mr. Speaker, the FBI should be above and beyond all partisan politics. Under no circumstances should any high officials in the FBI use FBI agents to encourage or be involved in anything that could even smack of political partisanship.
Mr. Speaker, I include for the Record the following article.
The article referred to is as follows:
Many Notified After FBI `Heads-Up'
(By George Lardner Jr.)
The White House sent out what amounted to ``an all-points bulletin'' warning at least 16 people, including lawyers for embattled former White House personnel security chief Craig Livingstone, after the FBI alerted it to politically damaging information in Livingstone's FBI file, House Republicans complained yesterday.
``Those who needed to do damage control were notified first. Those who were investigating were notified last,'' Rep. William F. Clinger Jr. (R-Pa.), chairman of the House Government Reform and Oversight Committee, said at the windup of a six-hour hearing. He said FBI general counsel Howard Shapiro, who alerted the White House July 15 to the file's contents, should consider resigning.
FBI Director Louis J. Freeh said last night that Shapiro
``enjoys my full confidence.''
Democrats dismissed the disclosures as a sideshow ginned up after Republicans failed to document their original suspicions: that Livingstone's office had been seeking dirt on political enemies when it wrongly collected confidential FBI reports on hundreds of Republicans from the Bush and Reagan administrations.
``The committee has come to the end of the road and is now looking for new allegations to embarrass the Clinton White House,'' said Rep. Cardiss Collins (D-Ill.), the panel's ranking minority member.
Shapiro, the hearing's main witness, acknowledged making
``a horrific blunder'' in telling the White House of an FBI report that Livingstone had been ``highly recommended'' for his job by first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton.
A protege of Freeh, Shapiro gave White House deputy counsel Kathleen Wallman the ``heads-up'' shortly before Clinger's chief investigator was scheduled to inspect the material. He said he had only been trying to be fair and emphasized that the decision was his alone.
Asked what Freeh thought, Shapiro said: ``He wishes I hadn't done it.''
``So do we,'' Rep. Dan Burton (R-Ind.) said.
``So do I,'' Shapiro said.
Committee Republicans accused Shapiro of being ``too cozy'' with the White House on other occasions as well. Last February, he said, he gave White House counsel Jack Quinn a draft copy of the book ``Unlimited Access,'' by Gary Aldrich, a former FBI agent who had been assigned to the Clinton White House. Laced with allegations that have been widely discredited, it depicted Hillary Clinton as a driving force at the White House, usurping control of domestic policy and hiring decisions.
Shapiro said he gave Quinn the draft, four months before publication, because it was ``replete with sensitive internal information'' and because he suspected it would be published, as it was, without the requisite FBI pre-publication clearance. He said Aldrich made some changes the FBI wanted, but there were objections to ``six somewhat lengthy passages'' that were still in the book when it was published last month.
The FBI has recommended that the Justice Department file a civil suit against Aldrich to make him turn over his profits to the government. ``It's the only recourse we have,'' Shapiro said.
Shapiro, 36, also came under attack for giving Quinn advice about a July 25 letter he sent to Freeh. Shapiro told Quinn that one reference to the possibility that an FBI agent had
``falsified'' a report would be offensive.
The section was an allusion to FBI agent Dennis Sculimbrene, who conducted the 1993 background investigation on Livingstone. In an interview report discovered in Livingstone's file, Sculimbrene quoted then-White House counsel Bernard Nussbaum as saying Livingstone owed his job to the first lady.
Among those notified after Shapiro's call to the White House about the item were Hillary Clinton, her chief of staff and communications director, two lawyers for Nussbaum, deputy White House chief of staff Harold Ickes, senior policy adviser George Stephanopoulos and spokesman mark Fabini.
``We behaved appropriately,'' Fabiani said. When Clinger made Sculimbrene's account public, ``we were able to respond quickly.''
Nussaum denied making the remarks attributed to him. Hillary Clinton said she had nothing to do with Livingstone's appointment.
By July 16, when Clinger's investigator went to inspect the interview report, Shapiro and his top deputy, Thomas A. Kelly, had dispatched two agents to Sculimbrene's home to question him about the Nussbaum interview. Sculimbrene has decided to resign from the FBI, sources said yesterday.
House Appropriations Committee Chairman Bob Livingston (R-La.), who had been watching the hearing on C-SPAN, charged that the agents' visit was ``absolutely intended to intimidate'' Sculimbrene and ``constitutes, in my view, obstruction of justice,'' He told reporters that Shapiro
``should immediately resign'' and the Justice Department should begin an investigation ``to determine whether a criminal charge can be brought.''
In his statement last night, Freeh said he was ``satisfied that none of Howard's actions were done in bad faith or for partisan purposes. . . . Howard has been instrumental in every major investigation and issue handled by the FBI over the last three years.''
Clinton Loses Composure on Travel Office
(By Adam Nagourney)
Washington, Aug. 1--His eyes narrowed in anger, President Clinton today punctured what was supposed to be a Rose Garden ceremony celebrating good economic news by heatedly renouncing a White House promise to pay the legal bills of travel office employees who had been dismissed.
``Are we going to pay the legal expenses of every person in America who is ever acquitted of an offense?'' Mr. Clinton said, his voice even and steely as he plunged his hands into his pockets, rejecting a suggestion that he urge the Senate to proceed on stalled legislation that would reimburse the employees.
When a reporter reminded him that his own press secretary had previously pledged Mr. Clinton's support to the Senate legislation, Mr. Clinton shook him off:
``Well, he didn't talk to me before he said that,'' Mr. Clinton said. ``I didn't say that. I said, `I don't know what's going to be in it.' ''
At that, Mr. Clinton turned to his questioner, a Washington Times reporter, and said: ``I don't believe that we should give special preference to one group of people over others. Do you? Do you?
Mr. Clinton is renowned among staff members for his fast and frequent outbursts of anger, and, typically, equally fast cooling downs and apologies.
In this case, Mr. Clinton later called aside one of his targets, Bill Plante, a CBS White House correspondent who asked the initial question that The Washington Times reporter followed up, and apologized. Mr. Plante said the President attributed his fit of temper to fatigue and the stress he was feeling because of the destruction of T.W.A. Flight 800.
Still, the exchange came over an issue that has caused Mr. Clinton much difficulty in the past two years, the dismissal of seven employees of the White House travel office by Mr. Clinton's Administration shortly after he took office. The Washington Times has closely followed the situation involving Billy R. Dale, the director of the White House travel office, who was dismissed and then acquitted of embezzlement charges brought against him by Mr. Clinton's Justice Department. The reporter who asked the question today, Paul Bedard, said this afternoon that Mr. Clinton had not offered him an apology.
Within hours of the televised news conference, aides to Mr. Clinton's likely opponent this fall, Bob Dole, who have customarily had to deal with questions about Mr. Dole's temperament, pounced on this incident to raise questions about the temper of the man in the White House.
``We have to assume that in anticipation of Dole's pro-growth economic plan coming out next week, Clinton is coming unglued,'' said John Buckley, Mr. Dole's communications director, referring to Mr. Dole's pending release of an economic plan that has caught White House attention over the past few days.
``But there is the larger issue of the President's ability to control his temper in public. And they're going to have to monitor that very carefully at the White House.''
Mr. Dole's aides asserted that Mr. Clinton's exchange in the Rose Garden was the public relations equivalent of Mr. Dole's televised confrontation with Katie Couric, the host of the NBC News ``Today'' program, over Mr. Dole's ties to the tobacco industry.
``On the Katie Couric interview, Dole was asked several questions on the same subject and he showed a glint of testiness,'' Mr. Buckley said. ``But there's a far cry between that and the leader of the free world having a meltdown at a news conference.''
George Stephanopoulos, a senior adviser to Mr. Clinton, said in response to Mr. Buckley: ``Valiant spin. What else do you expect him to say in the face of historic economic growth?''
{time} 1730
I think there is a real question as to the propriety that Mr. Shapiro has taken. I for one will wait and see what will be done with regard to that. Because we cannot have a situation whereby the general counsel of an agency that has such a long and distinguished record does something like this that can bring blemish and concern with regard to the objectivity in the minds of the American people.
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