White House’s Database Linked to Political Plans

Documents released to Congress on Monday appear to show that a White House computer database, which Clinton administration officials have claimed was used solely for official government purposes, was created to track past supporters of the president and engage them in his 1996 reelection campaign.

In one of the documents provided, a White House official refers to the database as having been “begun to serve as a way to keep track of early supporters” of Clinton--those who volunteered for him during the 1992 Democratic primary season and gave the maximum donations allowable during that campaign.

Rep. David M. McIntosh, (R-Ind.) chairman of a House subcommittee investigating the database, called the new documents “a significant step forward in terms of indicating conclusively that [White House officials] had intended to use the database for political purposes.”

McIntosh gave the administration the benefit of some doubt, however, by noting that--although the documents appear to indicate what the White House planned to do with the database--they do not clearly report what ultimately was done.

But he also said that he believes the documents reveal a “cover-up attempt,” because much of the information released Monday was “whited out” when the White House earlier supplied documents to him. At the time, White House officials said that the whited-out sections were not relevant to the congressional investigation.

“Now we’ve seen that the rest of the [information] was very much related” to the inquiry, McIntosh said.

The White House rejected McIntosh’s conclusion and repeated the vehement denials issued when it was first alleged in January that the database was used for political purposes.

“We have no information that the database was used for anything other than official purposes,” said Barry Toiv, a White House spokesman. Toiv said the White House had offered McIntosh’s subcommittee a chance to review the documents at issue last fall but that the committee had not done so.

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“Calling this a cover-up makes for good headlines, but it obviously is not consistent with the facts,” Toiv said.

The accusations concern a massive computer data system that the administration created using federal funds in 1994 to keep tabs on as many as 350,000 people, including large political donors, Democratic campaign workers and visitors to the White House.

In January, a former top Democratic fund-raiser, Truman Arnold, said that he used the database routinely to identify potentially large donors for Clinton’s reelection campaign. At the time, the White House denied that Democratic fund-raisers had access to the computers.

The new documents, provided to McIntosh by the White House late Monday afternoon and given to The Times by McIntosh’s office, appeared to offer new evidence that a political purpose was at least envisioned for the database by some senior White House staff members involved in its development.

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A White House memo dated Nov. 1, 1994, outlines how the database would be used to track down the president’s early supporters so the White House could identify “all the folks we will be working with in ’96.”

“This is the president’s idea and it is a good one,” stated the memo, written by White House aide Marsha Scott and entitled “Early Supporter Outreach Proposal.”

“As these supporters are identified and located, the president has asked that they be included in White House social functions as well as policy briefings,” Scott wrote.

Among the goals of the outreach effort Scott described was to “re-create the primary campaign structure.”

The memo was written to then-White House deputy chiefs of staff Harold M. Ickes and Erskine Bowles. Bowles now is chief of staff.

Members of McIntosh’s staff said that they were particularly concerned about a plan stated in that memo to use White House volunteers and interns to update the lists of early Clinton supporters and, according to the memo, “organize the data into a workable format which will then be entered into the White House database.”

Such an plan would be illegal, McIntosh’s office said, because it would entail government employees and resources being used for work that would be used for a political goal--helping the president win reelection.

“It becomes illegal when you use government-funded assets to help in a campaign,” McIntosh said. “From the outset, they were intending to use the government-funded computer to assist them in the campaign.”

* CONTRIBUTION CLASH

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