No. 1 Choice for CIA Reappears : Deutch says yes to Clinton after a new flap kills Carns’ nomination

The personnel-screening machinery that has so frequently and publicly failed the Clinton White House continues to show distressing signs of breakdown.

The latest embarrassment involves Michael P. C. Carns, the retired Air Force general nominated by the President to head the troubled Central Intelligence Agency. Like its predecessors, this gaffe probably could have been avoided. That it wasn’t suggests an unarrested laxity in staff work and a curious obtuseness in political judgment.

Carns asked Clinton to withdraw his nomination after a required FBI background check indicated he may have violated immigration and labor laws. The tangled circumstances involve a young Filipino the Carns family legally brought to the United States, apparently for domestic employment. The problem may have arisen when the young man went to work outside the Carns household. Carns said he told White House aides about this before his nomination. The inference is that the White House didn’t consider the matter as all that serious, let alone as disqualifying.

Here in any event is an instance where failure may precede opportunity. The withdrawal of the well-regarded Carns opens the way for John M. Deutch, the highly respected deputy secretary of defense, to be named as director of Central Intelligence. Deutch, Clinton’s first choice after R. James Woolsey resigned last December, said no then. His change of mind may have been encouraged by Clinton’s reported promise of direct and regular access to the Oval Office, something Woolsey never had. Moreover, there are probably no discomfiting surprises in the background of the already vetted Deutch. Given what has gone before, that is no small consideration.