Eagleburger Orders Probe of Clinton Records Search

Acting Secretary of State Lawrence S. Eagleburger said Monday that he has ordered an investigation into possible misconduct in the department’s search for records relating to Bill Clinton’s activities during his graduate student days in Europe.

“I want to ensure that this matter will be fully and properly investigated,” Eagleburger said. “There has been and will be no cover-up of any facts relating to this matter.”

He said no deadline had been set for completing the investigation but promised it would be done rapidly.

“As one example, we are sending investigators to London and to Oslo on an airplane, I think today or tomorrow, so we are moving as fast as we can.”

A political appointee in the State Department earlier this month asked the U.S. embassies in London and Oslo to check their files for any information on Clinton from his student days as a Rhodes scholar at Oxford University in England.

The department said that it was responding to Freedom of Information Act requests from news organizations and that it had found nothing damaging to Clinton. But Democrats sharply attacked the searches as an Administration attempt to dig up dirt that could be used in the presidential campaign.

Eagleburger said he had asked the inspector general of the State Department to undertake the administrative investigation.

“Let me emphasize, please, that this is not a criminal investigation. The fact that I have requested this inquiry should not, I repeat, should not carry with it the assumption that any wrongdoing has occurred,” he said.

The acting secretary also said, “ . . . as head of the Department of State I am responsible for its actions and I am not going to tolerate letting junior officers or junior officials in the State Department be hung out to dry. If mistakes were made, here’s where the buck stops.”