First Lady Blames Travel Office Firings On Miscommunication

First lady Hillary Rodham Clinton said Monday the ill-advised firing of White House travel office employees in 1993 might have occurred because presidential aides misinterpreted her concerns about how the office was operating.

In a radio interview, Clinton said her “mere expression of concern” could have been “taken to mean something more than it was meant.” The remarks expanded her earlier claims that she never ordered the firings of the seven employees, but only expressed concerns about “financial mismanagement” in their office.

The first lady was responding to a White House memo, discovered earlier this month, that suggested she instigated the firings. The author of the document, former White House aide David Watkins, wrote that “there would be hell to pay” unless the White House took “swift and decisive action in conformity with the first lady’s wishes.”

Watkins has been called to testify later this week before the House Government Reform and Oversight Committee, which has been investigating the May 1993 travel office shake-up that President Clinton later conceded was a serious mistake.

Clinton, interviewed on National Public Radio, also left open the possibility she might testify voluntarily before the Senate Whitewater Committee, whose chairman has said there are inconsistencies between other newly discovered documents and Clinton’s previous statements that she did only minimal legal work in the 1980s for a failed Arkansas savings and loan.

In an interview with the Los Angeles Times last week, the first lady suggested that Whitewater was “an investigation in search of a scandal.” She said the Republican-controlled committee, headed by Sen. Alfonse D’Amato, R-N.Y., is not a fair forum because many members “don’t want to know the facts.”