White House Turns Over Travel Office Papers Clinton Claims Executive Privilege To Withhold 2,000 Pages

The White House delivered to Congress Thursday some 1,000 pages of documents it had withheld on the 1993 travel office firings, but declined to turn over twice as many more, leaving the House to consider whether to go forward with a threatened contempt of Congress citation against presidential aides.

Instead, the White House provided an 11-page list of the documents for which it is exerting a constitutional claim of executive privilege. All of them come from the White House counsel’s office. Many are notes made in preparation for congressional hearings or meetings with the special prosecutor who is investigating the travel office firings. Some analyze documents found in White House lawyer Vincent Foster’s office after his death in July 1993 and how presidential aides handled those papers.

The documents that were released provide little, if any, further insight into the three-year-old travel office controversy. Like other records already made public, they show that presidential aides fretted about the bad publicity over the firings of seven longtime travel office employees, and the involvement of first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton and Hollywood producer Harry Thomason in the decision to dismiss them.

The release of the documents came just hours before the House was to consider whether to cite White House counsel John M. “Jack” Quinn, former White House director of administration David Watkins and Matthew Moore, who was a Watkins aide, for criminal contempt for refusing to produce subpoenaed material.

Rep. William F. Clinger’s committee is investigating whether the White House wrongfully fired the entire travel office staff on May 19, 1993, to give its own people the jobs - then misled Congress over the reasons for the dismissals.

The House had been planning to vote Thursday on the contempt action. It did not drop the contempt action but reserved the right to bring it up at a later date.