White House Used IRS File, Documents Say

Several weeks before a White House usher was fired at First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton’s instruction, the administration sought the usher’s confidential IRS file--even though he said he wasn’t due for a background check for three more years, according to documents.

The request for an Internal Revenue Service records check for usher Christopher B. Emery was made Dec. 17, 1993, by Anthony Marceca, the Army civilian employee at the White House at the center of the FBI files controversy, according to Marceca’s own documents.

The request was included with those covering 27 other employees, most working in the White House residence.

Marceca’s documents suggest the White House mistakenly believed Emery hadn’t had a background check in seven years, even though all employees are investigated every five years.

Emery, however, said in an interview Wednesday that he made it clear to the FBI and to his boss that he had just had a background investigation in 1991 and was being taken out of order.

Nonetheless, he signed a waiver allowing a new background check. He was fired 10 weeks later.

Both ex-White House security chief D. Craig Livingstone, Marceca’s boss, and former presidential lawyer William H. Kennedy III have testified to a House committee that they did not believe any White House employees were forced to undergo background checks out of order. Livingstone resigned last week after revelations that his office, including Marceca, wrongly gathered hundreds of confidential FBI background files on former Reagan and Bush administration employees, including several high-level Republicans.

Emery was fired March 3, 1994, after nine years as a White House usher, over Mrs. Clinton’s concerns that he had telephoned former First Lady Barbara Bush to help her with a computer problem.