Clinton Political Aides to Get FBI Checks : White House: Official tells Congress that screening Carville, three others is part of a broad effort to tighten security. Laxity had been charged.

Trying to dispel any perception of slack security, White House officials have asked outside presidential advisers James Carville, Paul Begala, Mandy Grunwald and Stanley B. Greenberg to submit voluntarily to full FBI background checks in return for their White House passes.

Patsy Thomasson, director of the White House office of administration, told a House Appropriations subcommittee Tuesday that the checks would be run as part of a broader effort to tighten security.

“We don’t think we have any Aldrich Ameses in the White House,” she said, referring to the former CIA official now accused of spying for the Russians. “But we certainly could.”

The White House has moved to tighten security this month after earlier press reports revealed that about 300 of the White House’s 1,031 employees, including 15 at senior levels, have been working without full security clearances.

White House officials insisted that most of the employees were kept away from classified information, although they acknowledged that at least one, Press Secretary Dee Dee Myers, has had regular access to secrets.

All White House staff members must pass quick background checks that would turn up records of felonies and outstanding warrants. But the full background checks, involving FBI interviews, take several months.

Begala, a partner with Carville in a Washington political consulting firm, works regularly for the Democratic National Committee. Greenberg, a pollster, and Grunwald, a media consultant, also work for the organization.

The four are among fewer than 20 people who have so-called “non-government service” passes, which are used for non-employees such as contractors who need regular access to White House grounds. Other regular advisers, including Susan Thomases, confidante of Hillary Rodham Clinton, and Betsey Wright, Clinton’s chief of staff while Arkansas governor, enter on temporary passes.

Rep. Jim Ross Lightfoot of Iowa, ranking Republican on the House Appropriations subcommittee that handles the White House budget, insisted that the four simply “ought not to have White House passes.” But Thomasson asserted that “at no time will they have access to look at classified documents, because they do not have a need to know.”

Rep. Steny H. Hoyer, (D-Md.), chairman of the subcommittee, said the four “perform the functions of the Democratic National Committee” and “need to talk to the President.”

The hearing brought protests from Rep. Frank R. Wolf (R-Va.), who has written a series of letters to the White House seeking information on the pass issue and has been told consistently that nothing is out of order.

Wolf cited a Feb. 24 letter, issued in the name of White House Chief of Staff Thomas (Mack) McLarty, in which he was told: “As I have previously stated, to our knowledge security clearances are being handled both in a timely manner and in accordance with the procedures of previous administrations and the requirements of the law.”

“Clearly this was false,” Wolf said.