FBI Files Probe Seeks More Papers

The chairman of a House committee investigating the FBI files controversy made a new and broader request for White House documents Monday and escalated his warning that White House Counsel Jack Quinn might be cited for contempt unless these and other records are produced promptly.

“The conflicting unsupported explanations put forth have not answered many of the serious questions about why almost 500 confidential FBI files were improperly requested by White House officials,” Rep. William F. Clinger Jr. (R-Pa.) said in a letter to Quinn.

Renewing his demand for 2,000 documents being withheld on President Clinton’s claim of executive privilege, Clinger said that his House Government Reform and Oversight Committee also wants all memos, records and telephone logs relating to the two central figures in the case.

The two are D. Craig Livingstone, who was director of the White House Office of Personnel Security, and Anthony Marceca, an Army detailee working for Livingstone who improperly obtained 407 FBI background reports, most of them on employees and officials of Republican administrations.

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White House officials have said that the files were obtained in a bungled effort in late 1993 and early 1994 to update clearances and background checks on holdover employees still working for the Clinton administration.

But included in the file requests were such well-known Republicans as former Secretary of State James A. Baker III and former White House Press Secretary Marlin Fitzwater. Both no longer work in the government.

White House Special Counsel Mark D. Fabiani said that Clinger’s request for documents is “under review.” An aide to Clinger said that Livingstone and Marceca had volunteered to testify to the committee Wednesday.

The White House placed Livingstone on indefinite administrative leave last week. Marceca, an Army civilian investigator who had returned to the Pentagon, answered questions behind closed doors for a federal grand jury June 11.

Clinger’s office said that the committee also is subpoenaing former White House Counsel Bernard Nussbaum and William Kennedy, a lawyer who worked under Nussbaum, to appear Wednesday.

The requests for FBI files were in Nussbaum’s name, but Livingstone reported directly to Kennedy, a former law partner of First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton and the official who asked that Marceca be detailed to the White House.

It was Clinger’s demand last month for more than 3,000 White House documents on the 1993 firing of seven White House travel office employees that led to the FBI files controversy. One document showed that the file of Billy R. Dale, former head of the travel office, had been requested a full seven months after he had been fired and while he was under criminal investigation. Dale was cleared of wrongdoing by a federal jury last November.

The disclosure of Dale’s file led to a White House admission that hundreds of other FBI background files had been sought and obtained--by mistake, the White House claimed--on other former employees who no longer needed access to the executive mansion.

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Quinn initially said that the president was invoking executive privilege in withholding all 3,000 documents on grounds that many of them dealt with confidential advice from aides on how to handle the congressional travel office inquiry and that others were records furnished to Whitewater independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr for his ongoing Whitewater-related investigations.

Many previous presidents have invoked this privilege to guarantee the confidentiality of official advice, as long as the documents have not reflected criminal acts.

Clinton, however, furnished documents on closed-door White House strategy meetings dealing with Whitewater to Senate investigators, and he sought to reach an accommodation with Clinger to stave off an earlier contempt-of-Congress threat last month. He did so by releasing 1,000 records on the travel office episode, including the request for Dale’s file, and furnishing an index to 2,000 other records.

House Republicans tentatively scheduled a contempt vote against Quinn for Thursday if the White House does not produce the remaining documents before then.

“We have always said to Chairman Clinger we are willing to negotiate some arrangement that protects the president’s constitutional prerogative,” said White House Press Secretary Mike McCurry.