[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 117 (Friday, August 2, 1996)]
[House]
[Pages H9907-H9908]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




 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:

                [From the Washington Post, Aug. 2, 1996]

                   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

[[Page H9908]]

     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.''

                [From the Washington Post, Aug. 2, 1996]

                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.

                          ____________________