White House Aide Quits Over Files Controversy

D. Craig Livingstone, whose White House office improperly obtained confidential FBI summaries on well-known Republicans, resigned Wednesday while admitting that he had failed to supervise his staff.

But the surprise move by Livingstone, who was already on paid administrative leave, failed to quiet GOP congressmen’s claims at a House hearing that his office of personnel security had covertly sought political dirt on leading Republicans.

The appearance by the heavy-set Livingstone and Anthony Marceca, a former worker in his White House office, before the House Committee on Government Reform and Oversight produced the first public meeting of accusers and accused in the mounting controversy. The result was a stormy scene full of accusations, apologies, bitter denials and highly partisan clashes.

The tempestuous session left both sides holding firmly to contradictory arguments on the procurement of the files. It was described either as a terrible mistake borne out of negligence or a political intelligence mission.

Former White House Counsel Bernard Nussbaum, whose printed name appeared on the White House forms seeking the FBI summaries, denied knowledge of the “very serious mistake” when the files were sought between December 1993 and February 1994.

Nevertheless, it “happened on my watch,” Nussbaum said. He accepted “full responsibility” and apologized to individuals whose files were examined.

Nussbaum coupled his remarks with a request for an apology from Rep. William F. Clinger Jr. (R-Pa.), the panel chairman, whom Nussbaum complained had accused him of being at best, unethical, and at worst, a felon, simply because his name was part of the printed form requesting the FBI files.

Clinger said that Nussbaum was using the “technique of turning the accuser into the accused” and offered no apology. He said there were facts about the White House’s file acquisition still emerging that are “increasingly disturbing to me.”

At one point in the daylong hearing, Rep. Dan Burton (R-Ind.) pointedly noted that Livingstone had admitted in his sworn statement to committee investigators that, in his own FBI background investigation, he had disclosed that he used “different types of drugs up until about 1985.”

Burton asked former Associate White House Counsel William Kennedy III, who testified that he had hired Livingstone for the post, how he could do so after discovering that the 37-year-old former political operative had “used numerous drugs in the past.”

“I am prohibited by the Privacy Act from commenting on anyone’s background,” Kennedy said.

The mention of past drug use and other exchanges with Livingstone and Marceca prompted Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Los Angeles) to accuse Republicans of “sheer McCarthyism” designed to “smear President Clinton and his administration.”

The testimony by Marceca, who had worked with Livingstone on the campaigns of Democratic presidential hopefuls, tracked closely with his earlier statements about the files.

The so-called “Update Project” involved recreating personnel security files for holdover employees and others who continued to have legitimate need for access to the White House, Marceca said.

This was necessary because the Bush administration’s personnel security files had been sent to federal archives in keeping with the practice of earlier administrations.

Skeptical GOP congressmen pressed Marceca about how, as a former Democratic campaign worker, he could have innocently requested the files of such former Republican officials as James A. Baker III and Marlin Fitzwater, Bush’s secretary of state and press secretary.

“If they were on the Secret Service list, I believed I was supposed to create a file,” Marceca replied. “I saw Fitzwater in the White House complex during my detail there so it wouldn’t have raised any doubt in my mind if I had seen his name on the list.”

Lisa Wetzl, who worked on the Update Project in late 1994, several months after Marceca left, disputed claims by Secret Service officials who said that their computer lists were always up to date.

She testified that the agency had distributed lists of White House passholders containing some names that had been crossed out. But she said a second list being used to update the clearances had many of the same names, which were not crossed out.

In response to persistent committee questions, Livingstone and Marceca insisted that no FBI file information ever was transmitted outside their office to the president or Mrs. Clinton, to any White House staff members involved in political work, or to any Democratic campaign officials.

The committee released a sworn statement from Dennis M. Casey, a Pittsburgh, Pa., political consultant, who accused the two men of trying to “dig up dirt” on political opponents of Sen. Gary Hart (D-Colo.), a former Democratic presidential contender.

Casey said that he met Livingstone and Marceca in 1984 while working for the Hart campaign in Pennsylvania. He said that Livingstone “began to report on some of the peccadilloes and vulnerabilities of these [opposing] persons in hopes of either neutralizing them or getting their support switched” to Hart.

Casey testified that Marceca also said that “it was time for the Hart campaign to play hardball with the dirt Mr. Livingstone had gathered.” Casey also accused Marceca of entering his office and taking $200 from a petty cash box without Casey’s permission.

Asked by Clinger to respond to Casey’s statement, Livingstone said: “It’s been 12 years ago but I don’t believe these events happened, to the best of my recollection.”

Marceca added that some parts of Casey’s statement “are wrong. . . . I never stole money.”

On Friday, the Senate Judiciary Committee has scheduled a hearing on the controversy but it is not clear whether it will touch on an FBI agent’s allegation that three White House aides pressed him for confidential information on White House travel office employees before they were fired in May 1993.

The agent, Dennis Sculimbrene, gave the Senate panel a statement in which he said that he complained to his supervisor about the approach, saying that he thought the White House aides were looking “for a reason, or an excuse, to fire people.”

Sculimbrene made no connection between the questions and the acquisition of FBI files on past and present employees.

He said that he was asked for the travel office information by Kennedy, then an associate White House counsel, Jeff Eller, White House communications director, and Patsy Thomasson, deputy director of personnel.

Sculimbrene, who suffered a severe head injury in an accident, is currently charging that the FBI has discriminated against him because of his handicap.

In a related development, Republican House leaders expressed anger at a press report that the White House maintains a separate computer database with personal and political information on members of Congress.

Rep. John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) and Rep. Tom DeLay (R-Texas) called the computer operation an abuse of taxpayer funds and demanded that the administration release information contained in the files.

White House officials responded that the database was simply a roster of people who might be invited to official functions, briefings, social events or political meetings.

All administrations keep such lists, they said. The most private data included is Social Security numbers and birth dates required by the Secret Service to clear persons into the executive complex, officials added.

Times staff writers Sam Fulwood III and John M. Broder contributed to this story.