A Fame That Makes Them Angry

Gary Foster, Assembly Speaker Curt Pringle’s unassuming and normally unflappable press secretary, lately has been getting a lot of back slaps and mock kudos. Seems his confidential FBI file is one of the many hundreds procured by the Clinton White House--for what purpose we can only guess.

That makes Foster a minor celebrity among the political junkies. Many regard it as making the 1990s equivalent of the old Nixon “Enemies’ List.” There could be 15 minutes of fame.

Foster isn’t taking any bows, however. And he certainly isn’t laughing. In fact, he says, “I’m extremely upset.”

So is another alumnus of the Reagan-Bush White House, Pamela Koehler Elmets. She’s now living the quiet, nonpolitical life of a mother and homemaker in Sacramento suburbia. And she’s also on the list.

“I’m just appalled,” she says. “It’s kind of like being robbed, like somebody’s gone through your drawers. Not that there’s anything in there for me to be nervous about. I’ve been a goody-two-shoes type. If they get a thrill out of reading it, great.”

But, she adds, “I really don’t know what’s in my FBI file. I’ve never seen it. And having worked in the White House, I just can’t imagine sitting in there and going through boxes of people’s FBI files. Who’s in charge? What’s going on when they have time to be going through these files?”

There have been official denials, of course, that anybody has peeked at the files. But as Gary Aldrich, a retired FBI agent assigned for five years to the Bush and Clinton White Houses, wrote in an article for the Wall Street Journal:

“[These denials] are as plausible as saying that if 340 Playboy magazines were sent to a boys high school, they would remain in the boxes, unmolested.”

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Elmets and Foster, both 37, thought they had escaped the heady and seductive, but stifling and impersonal, atmosphere of the White House, where everyone is closely watched by the Secret Service and physically restricted according to the color of a credential that hangs around their neck.

They were here 3,000 miles away in the backwater of River City, free from shirt cuff mikes and White House mind games.

Then 2 1/2 weeks ago, a U.S. House committee released “the list” and, says Foster, “I feel violated. What upsets me the most is that I’ve never seen what is in my file, but some political opponent now has it. Interns even had access.

“A lot of teachers, friends and roommates made candid comments about me because they were sworn to tell the truth. I’ve actually led a fairly boring life, never smoked marijuana. But now the information has the potential of being used politically and that’s no laughing matter.”

Foster, a bachelor, began his political career as a volunteer campaign worker at the University of Texas. After graduation, he headed for Washington to look for a job. He had good connections: His great uncle was the late Holmes Tuttle, a Los Angeles auto dealer and charter member of Ronald Reagan’s Kitchen Cabinet.

Foster worked in Reagan’s 1984 reelection campaign and then went into the White House as the “advance man” for reporters’ trips. Eventually he became deputy press secretary for President George Bush. Last year, he joined Gov. Pete Wilson’s presidential campaign, and when it collapsed hooked up with Pringle.

Even before “filegate,” Foster had decided to leave politics. He’ll soon become public relations director for Enron, a Texas-based energy company. And he’s not sure he would ever again take a job that required an FBI check.

“People already have a low opinion of politics and serving in government,” Foster says. “Realizing this can happen will be an extra deterrent.”

Elmets, whose husband is a state Capitol lobbyist, was in charge of finding people to serve on Reagan’s part-time boards. “Many good people declined because they didn’t want to be put through the scrutiny,” she says. “That’s sad. Now this makes government even more tainted.”

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Foster believes the Clinton White House aides asked for the GOP files so they could troll for trash. He notes that they were veteran Democratic dirt-diggers.

“I know those kinds of characters. We have them on our side too,” he says. “I believe they wanted the potential to retaliate in case somebody attacked the President, or to leak to the media in a future campaign.”

Elmets wonders whether the aides really just wanted to muck around in the file of Billy Dale, the respected travel office director whose firing became a White House embarrassment. Maybe the rest was a cover. She doesn’t know.

But neither she nor Foster believe this was merely “an innocent bureaucratic snafu,” as President Clinton has claimed.