[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 35 (Thursday, March 24, 1994)]
[House]
[Page H]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: March 24, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
                    MORE CLINTON ADMINISTRATION NEWS

  (Mr. DORNAN asked and was given permission to address the House for 1 
minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. DORNAN. Mr. Speaker, I am going to have to try and squeeze two 1-
minutes into one, because of the rush of news today.
  Last night on this floor, I called for the resignation or firing of 
Joycelyn Elders. I have just asked permission to put into the Record 
the letter written by Cardinal Hickey, the Archbishop of Washington, 
DC., and environs, to the President demanding that he disavow and 
censure Joycelyn Elders, the Surgeon General, for her remarks which 
appeared in a homosexual publication, The Advocate. This is the second 
time in just 8 months that an Archbishop has written forcefully to 
condemn the remarks of this Surgeon General. At this point I would like 
to submit that letter.
  Now I find in the paper a second issue, which I missed yesterday: 
``Of the 1,000 FBI background checks of White House personnel, more 
than 500 revealed derogatory information that would have prevented 
these people from obtaining FBI security clearances. The FBI found 
cases of past drug use, drug convictions, years of unpaid taxes, unpaid 
debts, and financial irregularities, all discrepancies that are grounds 
for Secret Service questions.'' The White House denies this and says it 
is only 100.
  Do you remember my words here last September and October, Mr. 
Speaker? I said that Bill Clinton could not have gotten a security 
clearance to serve in any agency of any administration. Only by getting 
elected President could he obtain a clearance.
  The flower generation, the hippie sixties generation, has come to 
Washington, DC, and it is a nightmare. The Wall Street Journal today 
printed a letter written by Dan Glickman and Larry Combest, good men 
from the Select Committee on Intelligence. It is a letter asking CIA 
Director Woolsey what steps he has taken to ensure that classified 
material has not fallen into the hands of those who do not have proper 
clearance. It is a letter I asked him to write.
  I will include with my remarks the entire Wall Street Journal 
editorial with the letter from the chairman and ranking Republican of 
the Committee on Intelligence.

        [From The Wall Street Journal, Thursday, March 24, 1994]

               Review and Outlook--Patsy Takes the Fiske

       White House notoriety Patsy Thomasson actually showed up to 
     testify to Congress Tuesday, and proved herself charming. She 
     did little to still concerns about the administration's 
     security procedures, however, and on the matter of her 
     nocturnal visit to Vincent Foster's office in the wake of his 
     death she pleaded the Fiske.
       Ms. Thomasson ``would like nothing better,'' she said, than 
     to tell the subcommittee ``what I did that night in that 
     office.'' But due to Special Counsel Robert Fiske's probe 
     into Mr. Foster's death, she couldn't possibly comment on 
     that. Ms. Thomasson, in case you've spent the last month as 
     an orbiting astronaut, is the FOB from Arkansas who was once 
     the top aide of FOB bond dealer and drug convict Dan Lasater, 
     and who has risen in life to be director of the Office of 
     Administration at the White House, where she oversees 
     personnel, computers and some security operations.
       These responsibilities seem to weigh heavily in this 
     administration. The White House Counsel's office is 
     responsible for security passes, the immediate responsibility 
     of Associate Counsel William Kennedy III, the former Rose Law 
     Firm partner now tottering on the brink of resignation (maybe 
     by tonight's 7:30 press conference?) over a nanny-tax issue. 
     Last night, the White House said Mr. Kennedy would no longer 
     handle passes.
       The security situation is so dire that Congressmen Dan 
     Glickman and Larry Combest, Chairman and ranking minority 
     member of the House Intelligence Committee, have written the 
     Director of Central Intelligence (see text below) more or 
     less suggesting that he cut the White House off from 
     classified information.
       More specifically, they asked CIA Director James Woolsey 
     what steps he had taken to ensure that White House staffers 
     without clearances hadn't had access to classified material. 
     The two Members said they were troubled, and that ``The 
     urgency of this matter has been highlighted by the arrest of 
     Aldrich Ames,'' (for astronauts, the recently apprehended KGB 
     mole in the CIA).
       When Ms. Thomasson responded to similar concerns expressed 
     this week by House subcommittee chair Steny Hoyer, a Maryland 
     Democrat, she was hardly reassuring. ``We don't think we have 
     any Aldrich Ameses at the White House,'' Ms. Thomasson 
     responded. ``But we certainly could.'' Ms. Thomasson admits 
     that she lacked a permanent White House pass or security 
     clearance until earlier this month; despite that, she has had 
     24-hour access to the West Wing. At one point in her 
     testimony, she also said she had ``no need'' to have the 
     combinations to any safes in the White House; they are in the 
     possession of Charles Easley, a security officer who works 
     for her.
       She also revealed that while Mr. Kennedy was handling 
     clearances for White House passes, his own background check 
     was finished in March 1993, but he didn't receive his own 
     permanent pass until December. GOP Rep. Frank Wolf, who first 
     agitated these issues on the House subcommittee that oversees 
     the White House budget, told us that White House Chief of 
     Staff McLarty's background check was completed on January 22, 
     1993--two days after the inauguration. He didn't get his 
     permanent pass until just this past March 5, the day Mr. 
     Fiske's first subpoenas arrived at the White House. House 
     Members wanted to know what was going on.
       Ms. Thomasson, however, persisted in telling Rep. Wolf on 
     Tuesday not to worry. She said there was no reason for 
     concern that senior White House aides lacked permanent passes 
     because they nonetheless had gotten ``requisite security'' 
     approval. She holds that Mr. McLarty's case was ``fully 
     adjudicated,'' which apparently means the background check 
     was complete and accepted by Mr. Kennedy, who just hadn't 
     gotten around to forwarding the Chief of Staff's papers to 
     the Secret Service.
       This is ``malarkey,'' says Phil Larsen, who was 
     administrative officer in Jimmy Carter's White House and ran 
     personnel management under President Bush. The Secret Service 
     must clear a final financial check, and is part of an 
     adjudication. ``None of this makes any sense,'' he told us; 
     it would be ``astonishing'' if security clearances were 
     issued before passes were. ``The two always--and should--go 
     together.
       After sleeping overnight on Patsy's testimony, Rep. Wolf 
     and Rep. Bill Clinger, ranking Republican on the Government 
     Operations Committee, called for a GAO investigation of the 
     White House pass problem.
       At 8:15 p.m. last night, AP reported Press Secretary Dee 
     Dee Myers had suddenly issued a ``fact sheet'' indicating 
     that more than 100 White House staffers lack security 
     clearances and one-third of the 1,044 employees don't have 
     permanent passes.
                                  ____



                                     Office of the Archbishop,

                                   Washington, DC, March 21, 1994.
     The President of the United States,
     The White House,
     Washington, DC.
       My Dear Mr. President, I must take strong exception to the 
     recent remarks of the Surgeon General, Joycelyn Elders, 
     advocating homosexual behavior and the expressing support for 
     adoption by so-called homosexual couples. Furthermore, I 
     deeply regret her apparent intolerance of people whose 
     religious faith and moral values collide with her own ill-
     considered views.
       The Surgeon General irresponsibly accuses religious leaders 
     of holding that human sexuality is solely for procreation. 
     Her words are a misleading caricature. In our Catholic 
     tradition the two fundamental purposes of human sexuality--
     the expression of the committed love of husband and wife and 
     openness to new human life--are linked together. Human 
     sexuality is a great gift from God which enables couples to 
     express their love for one another and in the context of that 
     love to create and care for a family. Such a view is 
     supported both by faith and reason; it does not involve the 
     suppression of human sexuality but rather its right use for 
     the good of individuals and society.
       The strength of our country, Mr. President, has always been 
     in the vitality of our families, not in the might of our 
     weapons. By contrast, the breakdown of the family has been 
     the root of so many of the social problems which, as a 
     nation, we now struggle to overcome. The comments of Surgeon 
     General Elders are destructive of a true understanding of 
     family life. It is one thing to defend the human rights of 
     homosexual men and women; it is quite another to encourage, 
     as she does, a life-style which puts so-called homosexual 
     unions on a par with marriage and family and condones 
     homosexual behavior among young people.
       Mr. President, I strongly urge you to take responsibility 
     for the Surgeon General's harmful and offensive remarks and 
     publicly to disavow them. Respectfully I ask that you urge 
     Dr. Elders to be more tolerant of religious teachings with 
     respect to human sexuality. Whether she knows it or not, the 
     religious teachings, leaders and institutions which her 
     remarks attack are vitally important to solving many of our 
     nation's social ills.
           Sincerely in Christ,
                                            James Cardinal Hickey,
     Archbishop of Washington.

                          ____________________