State Dept. Aides Secretly Listened to Phone Calls

The State Department said Friday that some telephone calls placed through its 24-hour-a-day operations center have been secretly monitored by note-taking officials, possibly in violation of eavesdropping laws.

Acting Secretary of State Lawrence S. Eagleburger banned secret monitoring last month after department investigators discovered that former Assistant Secretary of State Elizabeth M. Tamposi had been overheard during the presidential campaign discussing a controversial search of now-President-elect Bill Clinton’s passport files as well as those of his mother and independent candidate Ross Perot.

Under Eagleburger’s new directive, operations center employees can listen in on phone calls only if one party to a conversation requests it. Government officials frequently direct subordinates to listen to their conversations, take notes and prepare summaries--a practice that is permitted under the new order.

Although State Department officials said most employees realized that calls could be monitored, some apparently did not. It is illegal under federal law to eavesdrop on telephone conversations without the permission of at least one party. There is no requirement in the law or in Eagleburger’s directive to inform the second party that a conversation is being overheard as long as one party approves.

Department spokesman Richard Boucher said the FBI is investigating possible criminal violations.

“The operations center has no capability for taping phone calls, and they have no access . . . to telephone calls that are not placed through the (operations) center,” Boucher said.

Among other duties, the center places telephone calls for department officials. After department offices close for the night, the center can route important calls to officials’ home numbers. Most calls to or from department offices, however, are dialed directly and do not go through the center.

Boucher said the State Department’s inspector general, Sherman Funk, discovered the secret monitoring as he was investigating possible wrongdoing in connection with the passport records searches during the presidential campaign. Boucher said Funk immediately informed Eagleburger and later briefed the FBI on the practice.

Funk is expected to issue his report on the matter next week, detailing any violations of law and departmental regulations.

According to a report by the staff of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, the State Department officials who combed through the files in a government records center in suburban Maryland apparently were searching for damaging information about President Bush’s election foes. The report said the officials seemed disappointed that they found nothing of importance.

Tamposi, chief of the department’s consular bureau, which includes the passport office, was fired earlier this week. A former Republican fund-raiser and a political appointee at the department, she had not been expected to remain in the post after Clinton’s inauguration. She has issued a written statement denying wrongdoing.

Department officials refused to disclose the contents of Tamposi’s overheard telephone conversations. It was not known if the intercepted conversations played any role in her dismissal.

Boucher said it is unclear when the telephone monitoring began at the operations center, which was established in the early 1960s.

In 1982, then-Secretary of State Alexander M. Haig issued an order, similar to Eagleburger’s new directive, banning center employees from listening to calls without the permission of at least one party, Boucher said. Although Haig’s directive apparently was never rescinded, Boucher said “things got kind of loose” in the center’s application of the rules.

Boucher said most calls placed through the operations center are not overheard. He was unable to cite the criteria that center employees used in deciding which calls to monitor but said officials placing calls often asked center employees to stay on the line, a practice the new rules still permit.

Because the monitoring practice was known to most employees, a State Department official said, it was very different from the wiretaps ordered by former Secretary of State and White House National Security Adviser Henry A. Kissinger on members of his own staff during the Richard M. Nixon Administration.

By coincidence, the operations center practice became public one day after Morton Halpren, a former member of Kissinger’s White House staff, settled a nearly 20-year-old lawsuit against Kissinger after Kissinger apologized for ordering a tap on Halpren’s home telephone.