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Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

White House Aide Quits; Nussbaum Takes Blame

From Wire Reports

Former White House counsel Bernard Nussbaum took the blame for the FBI files controversy Wednesday and the White House security chief resigned. But both insisted they were unaware a low-level aide was gathering background material on Republicans.

They told a House investigative committee that the problem was not caused by any sinister motive but by bureaucratic bungling and their failure to supervise an Army civilian employee who gathered the files.

“In the Clinton White House I knew, there was no enemies’ list,” Nussbaum said.

Congressional Republicans, meanwhile, seized on a new report about White House file-gathering to wonder aloud whether the Clinton aides were keeping lists of enemies.

In announcing his resignation Wednesday, White House personnel security chief Craig Livingstone maintained that Anthony Marceca - the Army employee Livingstone brought to the White House - had relied on an outdated Secret Service list to gather the FBI files to determine who was eligible for White House passes.

“I did not recognize the problem, and for that, I am truly sorry,” Livingstone told the House Government Reform and Oversight Committee.

Saying “I bear full responsibility,” Nussbaum issued a blanket apology to the hundreds of former Bush and Reagan administration employees whose FBI files were gathered in late 1993 and early 1994.

The testimony was greeted skeptically by committee Republicans. Chairman William Clinger, R-Pa., charged presidential aides in the Clinton White House were “amateur detectives rooting around for dirt.”

“It is extremely troubling to think the president could allow his staff to so cavalierly handle security matters,” he said.

The committee also released several documents Wednesday that Republicans said bolstered their case. Among them:

A White House memo indicating a presidential aide was assigned to spy on travel office employees during a trip to California just days before they were fired in May 1993.

An FBI e-mail message that suggested federal prosecutors were interested in timing the indictment of travel office chief Billy Dale so that charges would be brought just before the 1994 elections. Dale was acquitted of mishandling travel office funds last year. The Justice Department dismissed the memo as a “bunch of hooey,” saying the FBI author misunderstood the case.

Documents showing the White House chief of staff’s office checked out personnel files of the fired travel office employees and then turned them over to aides in other offices, prompting an objection from a White House aide. “This should not be happening,” Mary Beck of the personnel management division wrote in a memo.

The developments came a day after the White House acknowledged that some 700 investigative files were improperly ordered from the FBI in the first year of the Clinton administration.

But Wednesday’s witnesses described it as an innocent mistake and swore they had no political motive in obtaining the files, had not passed the information in the files to higher-ups and did not show the files to anyone not entitled to see them.

Even as the White House tried to douse this political embarrassment, another broke out over a report that presidential aides have been compiling a list of lawmakers, news media figures and campaign contributors, including personal data about their political loyalties, military records, college degrees and family relationships.

The computerized list was dubbed “Big Brother” by some White House aides.

White House official Barry Toiv said the computerized database was harmless and that he had never heard it described as “Big Brother.” The list, he said, is “used to create lists of people to invite to events at the White House, including social events, ceremonial events or issue-related events.” It also includes the White House’s extensive Christmas card list.

Toiv said the information included for reporters included only their names, work and home addresses, birth dates and Social Security numbers and news organizations. He said there was “precious little more than that” for other people.

But House Republicans charged Wednesday that the list could also be used, as Majority Whip Tom Delay, R-Texas, put it, “to keep track of its friends and enemies.”

Rep. John Boehner, R-Ohio, said the disclosure about the list caused him to “wonder if the White House is out of control.”

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