House Committee Alleges White House Obstruction

A Republican-dominated House committee investigating the White House travel office controversy and other Whitewater-related cases has concluded that presidential aides sought to obstruct the inquiry and hide the role of First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton, according to a draft report distributed to members of the panel Thursday.

A second report, to be made public by the committee later this month, will criticize Clinton administration officials for failing to maintain an arms-length relationship between the White House and FBI on the sensitive matter of FBI background files, congressional sources said.

In response Thursday, White House officials characterized the draft as a political document released in the heat of the presidential campaign and noted that it will be issued only by the panel’s Republican majority. Committee Democrats expect to submit their own findings.

The committee, headed by Rep. William F. Clinger Jr. (R-Pa.), is investigating the FBI files controversy as an outgrowth of its 2-year-old inquiry into the 1993 firing of seven White House travel office employees. The committee discovered that the FBI file of former travel director Billy R. Dale had been requested by the White House several months after he was fired.

The draft of the travel office report criticizes the White House for “sustained obstruction” of the committee’s inquiry, declaring that such efforts could only have persisted “if directed from the very top.” That report is scheduled to be made public next week.

The report charges that White House aides covered up Mrs. Clinton’s role in the firing of Dale and his colleagues and later made frivolous claims of executive privilege to keep subpoenaed records out of the hands of investigators.

The second report will disclose that FBI Director Louis J. Freeh had five personal contacts with D. Craig Livingstone, the disgraced former White House security chief, during the period when Livingstone’s office was improperly obtaining hundreds of confidential files from the bureau, most of them on former employees of Republican administrations.

Among the contacts was a “Dear Craig” letter from Freeh to Livingstone dated Jan. 3, 1994, in which Freeh thanked him for arranging a White House tour for his family and said that “the president and the American people are indeed fortunate to have your dedication and talent at their service.”

FBI officials have told committee investigators of the five contacts between Freeh and Livingstone, which occurred between late 1993 and August 1994. But they insisted in a memo that Freeh “neither had nor has any social or personal relationship” with him.