PIML 96061304 / Forwarded to Patriot Information Mailing List: [FBI/Clinton scandle and related Republican scandle.] PIML ================================================================== Date: 11 Jun 96 22:22:30 EDT From: Mike Johnson <102052.3716@CompuServe.COM> Subject: MJN:Shame on FBI William Safire on the FBI's role in the latest Clinton related scandal. The unauthorized release of over 300 confidential files on people the FBI had investigated. - Mike/North Central Florida Regional Militia It is safe to assume that any traffic going to or from this address is being recorded, stored and analyzed somewhere by government employees. Any other assumption is *not* *safe*. 10-Jun-96 18:51 EDT Sb: Shame on the FBI: Safire Fm: Brenda C. Jinkins [70762,154] June 10, 1996 ESSAY / By WILLIAM SAFIRE Shame on the F.B.I. [W] ASHINGTON -- Overlooked in the scandal of Travelgate has been the failure of F.B.I. Director Louis Freeh to protect the confidential files of citizens from political snoops. Say what you like about J. Edgar Hoover -- he never let the bureau become a doormat for White House aides. The background: when President Clinton claimed "executive privilege" to keep 3,000 embarrassing documents from investigators, Congress threatened White House Counsel Jack Quinn with criminal contempt. To avoid jail, he forked over a thousand of the least damning documents. One of them illuminates why Mr. Clinton has been stonewalling for years on the rest of the subpoenaed files. It is a requisition to the "FBI Liaison," ostensibly from then-White House Counsel Bernard Nussbaum, for the confidential files on Billy Ray Dale, the travel office employee who had been fired seven months earlier to make room for a Clinton cousin. The F.B.I. disgorged 22 letters and reports on Mr. Ray alone; he was then besmeared by White House officials in the press, unjustly prosecuted and financially ruined, before being acquitted by a jury in two hours. The requisition for the confidential F.B.I. files was unsigned. The name typed on it was Bernard Nussbaum, but Mr. Nussbaum now says he had "absolutely no knowledge" of such a request, and would presumably swear to that. The reason given on the fraudulent requisition was "access" -- as if Mr. Ray were trying to get back into the White House, which was untrue. That was the tip of the iceberg. Despite "executive privilege," Congressman William Clinger learned that as many as 341 such fraudulent, unsigned requests for confidential files and name checks were sent under the Nussbaum typed name to F.B.I. headquarters. Apparently the snoop was a Clinton political appointee who preferred anonymity. The cover story peddled by Clinton aides is that this was a "routine" updating of White House files by a stupid clerk that just happened to focus on holdover Republicans, as well as other Republican political suspects -- including a former Secretary of State whose aides once improperly snooped into Clinton passport files. Clinton's lawyers claim that the fraudulently obtained F.B.I. dossiers were put in a White House vault and nobody looked at them. What's being done in response to the most egregious invasion of privacy of U.S. citizens in a generation? Not much. Mr. Clinton says he's sorry, but continues to stonewall on 2,000 documents; the Independent Counsel adds this mess to his Travelgate list; and the F.B.I. announces a "thorough" investigation by its in-house counsel, who will rebuke some low-level agent and absolve the boss. Not good enough. After F.B.I. agents were jerked around to provide political cover for Clinton patronage moves in 1993, Attorney General Reno and the F.B.I.'s Director Freeh promised strict scrutiny of White House requests. They failed abysmally to keep citizens' confidential files safe from politicians' eyes. Think of it: Unverified slanders and gossipy tidbits in your F.B.I. file have been vulnerable to an unsigned form letter from a political partisan hiding behind another person's name. Under Freeh, the anti-encryption zealot hand-picked by the man whose name was used on the phony requisitions, the Justice Department's most confidential file room has become a walk-in closet for White House pols. Nobody at Freeh's unbuttoned F.B.I. bothered to ask: What individual wants this and for what lawful purpose? Can any anonymous bureaucrat requisition, rifle through and remove confidential records? How come not one agent was required by bureau policy to ask why not even initials appeared on hundreds of requests to check up on Republicans? What a scandalously sloppy way to run a police agency. To entrust the investigation of this unprecedented hemorrhage of F.B.I. confidentiality to the same easily manipulated Justice Department invites a whitewash. Summer civil libertarians shade their eyes when personal privacy is invaded by political allies, but this top-level failure to resist an abuse of power dismays F.B.I. agents in the field. When Clintonites send over for the file on me, Director Freeh, don't buy their baloney about "seeks access" -- I won't be going to the White House picnic this summer. Copyright 1996 The New York Times Company ---------------------------------------------------------- Brenda C. Jinkins ================================================================== Date: Wed, 12 Jun 1996 10:28:19 -0400 From: Terry McIntyre Subject: Re: L&J: MJN:Shame on FBI Reply-To: liberty-and-justice@pobox.com That's very nice of Safire to point out the flaws in the opposition, and in the FBI, but he ought also to look closer to home. There are plenty of "anti-encryption zealots" in the GOP who need to be mindful of the adage "remove the beam in your own eye". If the Republcans control Congress, and if they care about our rights, they could surely have stopped such "zealots" from passing anti- encryption laws, anti-free-speech laws, and so on. Instead, they joined right in. The so-called "Communications Decency Act" suffered a blow today, in a federal court in Philadelphia. This unconstitutional abridgement of the right to free speech on the internet was supported by 84 Senators ( including Dole ), lots of representatives, and signed by President Bill Clinton, in a bipartisan effort against all the rest of us. Let's tell them, come November, what we think of those who break their oaths to uphold the Constitution. =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Unsub info - send to majordomo@pobox.com with "unsubscribe liberty-and-justice" in the body (not the subj) of the msg. 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