Keeping the State Dept. Above Politics

For the second time in less than a week, acting Secretary of State Lawrence S. Eagleburger has been compelled to order an investigation into alleged improprieties by officials of his department, with the possible wrongdoing in this case directed against the mother of Democratic presidential candidate Bill Clinton.

A report by the staff of the House Foreign Affairs Committee says that three State Department officials last month spent 10 hours over a two-day period searching inactive passport records, including Gov. Clinton’s, stored in suburban Maryland. The search of those records, along with an effort to obtain any information on Clinton held by U.S. embassies in London and Oslo, was characterized as “a mistake” by a department spokesman when it became public knowledge, and Eagleburger ordered an investigation.

A second inquiry by the department’s inspector general is now under way following the disclosure that mid-level department officials also went through the passport records of Clinton’s mother, Virginia Kelley.

The department originally said its look at Clinton’s files resulted from a number of requests from the press, filed under the Freedom of Information Act. No such claim has been raised in connection with the reported prying into the Kelley files, because no such claim would be plausible. What seems clear, in the case of both Clinton and his mother, is that the search of their files violated the Privacy Act. That post-Watergate law bars the transfer of personal information from federal agencies without the prior consent of the individual involved.

The direct involvement of several Bush Administration political appointees in the passport files search throws a harsh shadow of partisanship over the whole affair. Eagleburger has to his credit moved quickly to condemn the breach of regulations and expose the facts. His concern is protecting the integrity and nonpartisanship of the department. Those who tried to use the department and its records for political reasons showed only contempt for that integrity, and for the nation’s laws.