Helms Acts to Oust Official at State Dept. : Inquiry: Some suspect partisan motives in effort to force out man who criticized Bush appointees who searched Clinton’s passport file.

A little-noticed provision inserted into this year’s State Department authorization bill by conservative Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.) would force out of office the inspector general who conducted the initial investigation into the improper search of President Clinton’s passport files last year.

The move has infuriated some Democrats, who suspect a partisan political motive in the effort to remove State Department Inspector General Sherman Funk from the post he has held since 1987.

Six months ago, they noted, Helms hired as a committee aide the former State Department political appointee who was demoted after being severely criticized by Funk for his role in the passport search.

Helms aides said at the time that Steven Berry, former acting assistant secretary of state for congressional affairs in the George Bush Administration, was being hired to work on the State Department authorization bill--which now contains the language that would effect Funk’s dismissal by limiting the inspector general’s term of office to six years.

Deborah DeMoss, a senior Helms aide, denied that Berry had anything to do with the provision, which she noted was accepted without objection by all 19 members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee--including its 11 Democrats. While conceding that Helms was unhappy with Funk’s handling of the passport scandal, DeMoss said that was just one of many reasons why both Republicans and Democrats on the panel were dissatisfied with Funk’s job performance.

“This is something that has been in the works for a long time . . . and Steve had nothing to do with it,” she said. “Funk has had a long history of being nothing but a lackey for the State Department . . . and has not served like an independent inspector general for some time.”

Committee Chairman Claiborne Pell (D-R.I.) would not comment on the controversy--but Democratic aides, speaking on condition of anonymity, confirmed that some of the panel’s Democratic members also were dissatisfied with Funk’s handling of a number of internal State Department investigations.

“The feeling is that he aims too hard to please whichever Administration he is working for and long ago lost his independence,” one aide said.

Funk was out of the country and could not be reached for comment.

The move to oust Funk--who under the Helms provision would be allowed to keep his position only until the end of the year unless renominated for a new six-year term--infuriated another senior Democrat, Sen. John Glenn of Ohio.

Glenn, who is chairman of the Governmental Affairs Committee that oversees the inspector general system, said Thursday that he will seek to strike the Helms provision from the State Department bill when it comes to the Senate floor in September.

“It is an unwise and dangerous precedent to legislate the removal of any IG in the wake of a critical report,” Glenn said, referring to the passport investigation that resulted in Berry’s demotion and the dismissal of another senior Bush Administration official, Assistant Secretary of State for Consular Affairs Elizabeth Tamposi.

“We ask IGs to be apolitical and fair and we must allow them to do their jobs without this kind of political interference,” Glenn said.

No matter what reservations Democrats on the committee may have about Funk, “this is a matter of appearances,” said a senior Democratic aide. “It has a political context and Steven Berry is smack in the middle of it.”

Berry was demoted and later left the State Department for Helms’ staff after Funk’s investigation found that he and Tamposi acted improperly by searching Clinton’s passport files for embarrassing information that could be used to influence the outcome of last November’s presidential election.