Integrity of The Institutions

Perhaps the real legacy of the Clinton Presidency will be that it forced all of us to think hard about what is appropriate and what is not appropriate in the running of a modern political system.

The story of late has been mainly about the role of money in politics. Our sense, though, is that something larger came to the surface this week with the failure of Anthony Lake’s nomination to be CIA director and the related tales of a National Security Council staff and CIA struggling to weigh their duties against the demands of Democratic political operatives.

Now before we all get too high-minded about this subject, let’s recognize some realities. Anyone who has read Presidential memoirs knows–because the Presidents themselves frankly admit–that even the most sensitive policy decisions are often measured against political effect. And as well, the career staff in sensitive agencies such as the CIA or FBI assuredly do not operate in some fog oblivious to these realities; they know when elections are held.

That said, anyone who has served in a position of responsibility in Washington stretching back through the postwar years has understood that some line exists between proper and improper political pressure on the national security and law enforcement bureaucracies. We now learn that the chairman of the Democratic National Committee called NSC staffer Sheila Heslin to insist that she drop objections to Roger Tamraz, the pipeline entrepreneur and contributor with connections to some of the BCCI crowd, getting in to “see” the President. And, even more breathtaking, that this Clinton campaign pol ordered up an intelligence file for her from the CIA. Surely this is way beyond any recognizable norm.

But the Clinton White House had made it routine.

This has to be one of the most troubling aspects of the Clinton tenure, its across-the-board willingness to subvert national agencies charged with law enforcement and security concerns. Specifically, the FBI, the Secret Service, the National Security Council, the Central Intelligence Agency and most likely the Internal Revenue Service. Again, the reality is that all these agencies have experienced serious runs at their integrity by past Presidents. The Clinton innovation is to have made it banal.

Early in the first term, assistant White House Counsel William Kennedy called the FBI, demanding to know “within 15 minutes” what the agency would do about accusations that had been made against the Travel Office by Clinton friends and travel-agency entrepreneurs Catherine Cornelius and Harry Thomason. And if the answer was nothing, Mr. Kennedy was prepared to bring in the IRS. The IRS shortly began a two-year audit of the Travel Office airline, UltrAir.

In the Filegate scandal an irresponsible White House aide, Craig Livingstone, asked the FBI for, and got, files on several hundred former Bush aides. When the Filegate issue emerged, White House aide Tony Marceca, a Democratic activist, falsely said the Secret Service provided outdated lists. Earlier, in 1993, when the Secret Service withheld passes from about 12 White House employees because of drug-use concerns, it dropped the holds after the Administration set up a twice-a-year testing program for the aides.

Now, within a week, we have the FBI, the NSC and the CIA all embroiled with this White House over their proper functions. In an incredible display of recrimination, the FBI and White House accused each other of misrepresenting the agency’s warnings to the NSC about Chinese contributors. Then in the middle of this spitting match came leaks last week that the government’s most sensitive monitoring operation, the National Security Agency, had passed along communications intercepts early last year to the FBI regarding possible Chinese interest in making campaign contributions. In this wake, a senior FBI agent serving as liaison to the NSC “retired.”

Then on Monday came this paper’s front page story about the Democratic Party chairman seeking to enlist both the CIA and NSC staffer Sheila Heslin in the effort to place $177,000-giver Roger Tamraz in front of . . . of what? The President, or the candidate?

As widely reported, the Bill Clinton story is one of a “permanent campaign,” a career in which no discernible line exists between public service, as commonly understood, and political gamesmanship. And all who come within this orbit are understood to be on call for political jobwork–a heads up, a free pass, an I-don’t-remember. That is why Tony Lake’s nomination arrived with a taint that couldn’t be rubbed out. It is why Janet Reno’s thoughts on independent counsel produce suspicion.

We have a flexible and resilient system. But when it becomes evident that the prevailing mores now allow the routine compromise of the system’s institutions and those who work within them, then perhaps the time has arrived for a lot of people to start reframing, publicly, the right boundaries of political behavior in Washington.