Freeh Says Fbi Was Victimized Director Comes Down Hard On White House In Report

FBI Director Louis J. Freeh bluntly reported Friday that the Clinton White House had no justification for seeking sensitive FBI reports on employees of previous administrations and the bureau had no excuse for providing them.

The unquestioning provision of those reports to Clinton’s aides, Freeh said, constituted “egregious violations of privacy” that he vowed would not recur as long as he is FBI director. He blamed himself, but he appeared to be just as harsh on the White House.

“The prior system of providing files to the White House relied on good faith and honor,” Freeh said in an unusually hard-hitting statement. “Unfortunately, the FBI and I were victimized. I promise the American people that it will not happen again on my watch.”

Concluding an intensive inquiry that he ordered last week, Freeh said he discovered that more than 400 files on employees of previous administrations - dozens more than previously suspected - had been requested and obtained by the White House in a two-month period ending in early February 1994. Many of the requests “served no official purpose,” Freeh said.

The FBI director said he has ordered extensive new measures, effective immediately, to prevent a recurrence. Chief among them is a requirement that the White House obtain the written consent of the individual whose file is being sought. If that is not feasible, the White House counsel must submit a letter “explaining why such consent cannot be obtained or should not be sought.”

Freeh’s statement, and an accompanying report by FBI General Counsel Howard Shapiro, emphasized that the bureau’s inquiry was limited to interviews of FBI personnel in deference to the wishes of Whitewater prosecutors working for independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr. “As a result,” Shapiro said in his report, “I have not reached a conclusion about the motivations of any White House employee.”

At the White House, spokesman Michael McCurry and other officials stuck by their description of the collection of FBI files as an innocent mistake that stemmed from the use of an outdated Secret Service list of people with White House access. Asked about Freeh’s remark that he and the bureau had been “victimized,” McCurry was at a loss for an explanation. “I do not understand that statement,” he said.

Although McCurry and others continued to insist the files were never misused, the White House clearly recognizes the mounting political peril its acquisition of the confidential material is causing. A sign of that was the White House’s release of a statement by Craig Livingstone, head of the personnel security office that obtained the files.

Livingstone said in the statement that he never disseminated any information from the files, nor did anyone ask him to. Earlier, presidential aides had insisted that they could not question Livingstone because to do so would interfere with Starr’s inquiry.

The FBI turned over the results of its inquiry to Starr’s office. Starr’s prosecutors have been looking into the White House’s request for files on two former travel office employees as a part of a more general inquiry into the White House travel office fiasco in May 1993. Seven travel office employees were summarily fired on dubious charges.

Deputy Attorney General Jamie S. Gorelick will also review Freeh’s report and determine if further investigation by the Justice Department is warranted, department officials said.

The controversy began late last month when the White House gave a House oversight committee 1,000 travel office documents it had been withholding under a claim of executive privilege. Included was a White House request for the FBI’s background files on Billy Ray Dale. It was dated seven months after Dale had been fired as head of the White House travel office.

Disclosure of the document led to the White House’s admission last week that it had improperly collected FBI reports on more than 300 past employees of the Bush and Reagan White Houses, including former Secretary of State James A. Baker III, Bush press secretary Marlin Fitzwater, and Reagan White House chief of staff Kenneth Duberstein.

“It is now clear that the system was very vulnerable to misuse,” Freeh said. “While I only learned about these problems a week ago, I do not stand on any technical defense or make any excuses. I was not vigilant enough.”