GOP Claims Travel Scandal ‘Smoking Gun’

Republicans charged Thursday that a newly released confidential White House memo is the “smoking gun” that proves presidential aides sought to cover up First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton’s central role in the 1993 White House travel office scandal.

In the memo, written in the fall of 1993, former White House aide David Watkins said he abruptly fired employees of the travel office that May under pressure from the first lady and he admitted that he later misled investigators about the role she played in the incident.

The statements appear to differ sharply from the account of events that Hillary Clinton and White House aides provided to the FBI, the General Accounting Office and the Justice Department’s Office of Professional Responsibility.

“It’s as close to a smoking gun--if not a smoking gun--as you are going to get,” said a spokesman for Rep. William F. Clinger Jr. (R-Pa.), chairman of the House Government Operations Committee, which has been investigating the travel office firings.

Release of the memo is certain to intensify Republican efforts to portray the first lady as the mastermind of any number of allegedly nefarious schemes that have been attributed to the White House, including a cover-up of both travel office events and Whitewater, the failed Arkansas real estate development involving the Clinton family.

In May 1993, President Clinton ordered the dismissal of seven employees of the White House travel office after reports of financial mismanagement. All had been hired by previous administrations.

The action backfired when an FBI investigation found fault with presidential aides for acting without sufficient evidence. It was later learned that the firings were recommended by Clinton friend Harry Thomason, who wanted the White House travel contract for his airplane charter business.

The Watkins memo was made public by the White House late Wednesday night in response to inquiries from the Associated Press. Clinger’s committee, the Senate Whitewater investigating panel and Whitewater independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr promptly expressed intense interest in it.

The memo is also expected to heighten curiosity among Republicans about the July 1993 suicide of then-Deputy White House Counsel Vincent Foster, a confidant and former law partner of Hillary Clinton. Foster’s death has been investigated in connection with Whitewater. But Clinger said Thursday that he thinks the suicide was related more to the travel scandal than to Whitewater.

Both Clinger and Sen. Alfonse M. D’Amato (R-N.Y.), chairman of a special Whitewater investigating committee, indicated that they probably will call Watkins to testify about the memo. D’Amato has accused the White House of impeding his efforts to determine if Hillary Clinton tried to cover up Whitewater.

Like D’Amato, Clinger said he does not rule out calling the first lady to testify eventually.

In addition, Starr issued a statement saying that he had written to White House Counsel Jack Quinn on Thursday to complain that the memo was released to the press instead of to him “as soon as it was discovered.”

Watkins left the White House in May 1994 after it was learned that he had used a White House helicopter to go to a golf outing in rural Maryland.

The former aide issued a statement through his attorney Thursday, saying that the memo, which he apparently intended for then-White House Chief of Staff Thomas “Mack” McLarty, was “never used.” He did not elaborate.

In his memo, Watkins, one of several White House aides who had been officially reprimanded for their role in the firings, said he felt compelled to make a record of events as a “soul-cleansing.” He added: “It is my first attempt to be sure the record is straight, something I have not done in previous conversations with investigators--where I have been as protective and vague as possible.”

Although Watkins has acknowledged publicly that he talked to Hillary Clinton by telephone before firing the travel office employees, neither he nor any other White House aide has portrayed the dismissals as an explicit order from the first lady.