State Department Fires 2 in Probe of Personnel File Tampering

The State Department on Wednesday fired two Clinton Administration appointees who are under investigation by the Justice Department in connection with the disclosure of information from the personnel files of former George Bush Administration officials.

Spokesman Mike McCurry said Secretary of State Warren Christopher ordered the firings late Tuesday after he was briefed on findings by the department’s independent inspector general suggesting that the pair may have violated the federal privacy act.

McCurry identified the two appointees as Joseph Tarver, former director of the department’s White House liaison office, and Mark Schulhof, a staff assistant to Thomas Donilon, assistant secretary of state for public affairs.

Late Monday night, the State Department referred the inspector general’s report to the Justice Department for possible prosecution. The Justice Department, which had been conducting its own investigation of the incident, is expected to decide soon whether to file charges.

Christopher’s prompt action in dismissing the two men even before the Justice Department has made its decision appeared to be part of an effort to minimize any political damage from the incident, which has become a focal point for congressional Republicans.

The personnel files that allegedly were tampered with include those of Elizabeth M. Tamposi and Jennifer Fitzgerald, two senior Bush Administration appointees who since have left the department.

Ironically, Tamposi was fired by the Bush White House after a widely publicized incident during the 1992 presidential campaign in which she allegedly led a similar search of the passport file of then-candidate Bill Clinton in an effort to dig up derogatory material.

At the time, Tamposi was the chief consular official in charge of the State Department’s passport files. Fitzgerald had been a longtime aide to Bush and served as his deputy chief of protocol.

Neither Schulhof nor Tarver was available for comment Wednesday.

The investigation that led to Wednesday’s action was launched in early September after the Washington Post reported that the Clinton appointees had retrieved the stored files of about 160 Bush-era State Department officials and were gossiping about Tamposi and Fitzgerald.

Since then, the inquiry has become the object of partisan infighting.

Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), whose former administrative assistant, Janet Mullins, has been a focus of an earlier investigation into the GOP search for Clinton’s records, has held up Senate confirmation of five nominees to State Department posts over the issue.

McConnell said Wednesday that, despite the firings, “we still don’t have answers to the question of who asked for these files to be searched . . . . I would be stunned if this is the end of the story.”

Times staff writer Michael Ross contributed to this story.