FBI Files Mystery May Be Added to Starr’s Inquiry

In an abrupt shift, Atty. Gen. Janet Reno said Thursday that she has halted an FBI investigation into the White House security files controversy and will ask that the inquiry be conducted by Whitewater independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr.

Reno said the step is necessary to avoid any conflict that might arise if a branch of the administration--the Justice Department’s FBI--is investigating the White House. Reno had announced Tuesday that FBI General Counsel Howard Shapiro would conduct the investigation, but that decision drew sharp criticism from Republicans, who argued that the inquiry would not be objective.

On Thursday, Reno said she had “concluded that it would constitute a conflict of interest for the Department of Justice itself to investigate a matter involving an interaction between the White House and the FBI.”

Starr’s mission, if expanded to include the files episode, would add to his already wide-ranging investigation, which covers most of the years President Clinton has served as a public official in Arkansas and Washington.

While Starr’s involvement would soothe critics of Reno’s original decision, his involvement in still more of the work of the Clinton White House also has political implications for the coming presidential elections and is certain to heighten anxieties among administration employees already shaken by disclosures about the files.

Reno said Tuesday that Starr had told her he could not investigate how and why the more than 400 FBI background reports were obtained by the White House because it would be beyond the scope of his jurisdiction, as set forth by the three-judge panel that appointed him two years ago.

Reno said Thursday that she will ask the court to expand Starr’s mission and that the independent counsel had agreed “to accept such jurisdiction if the court grants my petition.” Legal sources said that under such circumstances the judges who appointed Starr almost certainly would expand his authority.

The shift came on a day when Secret Service officials told Congress that they maintain up-to-date computer lists of people with White House clearances, casting doubt on the administration’s contention that it sought the FBI reports because it was working with an outdated Secret Service roster.

As senators joined House members in reviewing the controversy, Richard Miller, the Secret Service’s head of protective operations, said his agency clearly separates people who no longer have White House access from those who do in its registry of 24,000 names.

Miller said he had “no idea” where Anthony Marceca--an Army detailee and former Democratic political worker who was assigned to the White House--got lists of employees from past Republican administrations that he used, beginning in late 1993, to obtain sensitive FBI files.

The White House has said the episode was an innocent bureaucratic bungle and that Marceca was using an apparently outdated Secret Service list to update White House access lists. Given that explanation, Miller’s testimony seemed to generate still more questions in the 2-week-old controversy, including: If the Secret Service did not provide the list, where did it come from?

White House Press Secretary Mike McCurry said of the testimony: “Frankly, that has left us even more confused.” Senate and House committees scheduled more hearings next week.

As the Senate Judiciary Committee began hearings, Democrats joined Republicans in condemning the White House for invading the privacy of the hundreds of individuals by wrongly obtaining their FBI files.

Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.), the committee’s ranking Democrat, said the episode seemed to result from “mistakes rather than malevolence.” But Biden said that regardless of motivation, “a serious breach of privacy occurred.”

Sen. Paul Simon (D-Ill.) added that the recently concluded inquiry by the Senate Whitewater Committee on which he served showed no abuse of power, despite Republican charges to the contrary.

But in obtaining FBI files, “here we have an abuse of power in the White House,” Simon declared.

“This is an example of the arrogance of power that has plagued the Clinton White House,” said Sen. Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah), the Judiciary Committee chairman. He commended Reno for seeking an expansion of Starr’s authority to investigate the case.

Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) noted that Marceca and his embattled superior, director of personnel security D. Craig Livingstone, were Democratic Party operatives with no experience in security work. “When you put political hacks in charge of FBI files at the White House, it’s a sorry episode,” Grassley said.

Grassley made public a set of written answers he had received from the Secret Service that elaborated on Miller’s testimony.

“Upon the arrival of the present administration,” the agency said, “a printout of the full pass-holder list--active and inactive--was generated and provided to the incoming staff. Active pass-holder printouts were provided to the administration upon request, on at least a monthly and sometimes weekly basis.”

The Secret Service went on to say that, based on an investigation, “to date we have discovered no flaws which would result in database-generated printouts containing outdated information.”

Also Thursday, Lisa Wetzl, the former White House personnel security office employee who took over the security clearance project several months after Marceca left the White House, met with several reporters to describe her role in handling the files.

Wetzl, 25, and now a confidential assistant to Secretary of the Army Togo West Jr., said she turned to the project late in the fall of 1994, more than six months after Marceca had finished his detail in the office.

The purpose of what she called the “low priority” project was to make sure that holdover employees had their FBI background investigations updated as required every five years, she said. Looking at the orange folders that Marceca had left behind in the office vault, “the first thing that struck me was how many files there were,” she recalled.

Wetzl said she did not think there could be that many holdovers. The only name she recalled seeing on the folders was that of Marlin Fitzwater, White House press secretary under President Bush.

She said she worked on the project only sporadically. Her duties included checking Secret Service lists and information provided by the offices where the holdover employees had worked. If they no longer worked at the White House, she said, she sent the entire security files, including the FBI background information, to the White House’s records management office.

Five former White House employees, including fired travel office director Billy R. Dale, expressed anger and disbelief that the White House had any need in 1993 and 1994 for their FBI background files.

“I find it difficult to believe that this was a low-level bureaucratic mistake as they have claimed since Mr. Craig Livingstone--in whose possession the file was kept--knew me very well,” Dale told the Senate panel.