EXCERPTS FROM THE CLINTON SECURITY CLEARANCE MELT-DOWN: ‘NO-GATE’ DEMONSTRATES ‘IT’S THE PEOPLE, STUPID’

No Security Clearances: The Clinton
Administration admits that, out of a total of
1,044 White House personnel, as many as 100 do not have
security clearances. These include some of those
who have routine access to extremely sensitive national
security information, like Dee Dee Myers,
the White House press spokeswoman. It also includes
others who are responsible for activities that
necessarily involve classified data. For example, Patsy
Thomasson, the director of the White House
Office of Administration — which, according to the Wall
Street Journal, “oversees personnel, computers
and some security operations” for the Executive
Office of the President — only got her clearance in
February, thirteen months into her job.

No Permanent Passes: The White House
also has been obliged to confirm reports that, as of this
week, fully one-third of the staff do not have
permanent passes to the complex. Instead, they
have been granted access to the White House via
“temporary” passes for months at a time and in
some cases for over a year. Some even are simply using
“visitors” badges.

In this way, the normal security investigation and
approval procedures — the latter requiring formal Secret
Service assent — can be, and have been,
circumvented. Given the nature of most
presidential staff offices and the information available
to them, however, such “no escort required”
White House passes enable access to classified
information and effectively authorize such access.

The Kennedy Cut-out: The blame for
much of this astounding breakdown in security procedures
at one of the most sensitive facilities in the country is
being assigned to William Kennedy III, an Associate White
House Counsel. Kennedy is a former partner of Hillary
Rodham Clinton at the Rose Law Firm and deputy to
departed Counsel Bernard Nussbaum.

According to the 23 March 1994 Washington Times,
Kennedy chose last year to stop sending FBI background
checks on White House personnel to the Secret Service for
review “after the Secret Service expressed
reservations about approving permanent badges for two
aides for security reasons based on their FBI
reports.” As a result of Mr. Kennedy’s
“backlog,” hundreds of individuals did not get
permanent passes for months after joining the White House
staff. For instance, Mr. Kennedy himself did not get one
until December 1993. Even White House Chief of Staff
Thomas “Mack” McLarty — the author of
guidelines for presidential personnel — did not get his
until 5 March 1994.

Security Clearances Without Passes?
According to yesterday’s Wall Street Journal,
Ms. Thomasson has told Congress that “there was no
reason for concern that senior White House aides lacked
permanent passes because they nonetheless had gotten
‘requisite security’ approval.” The Journal reports,
however, that a senior administrative official in the
Carter and Bush White Houses, Phil Larsen, dismisses that
contention as “malarkey.”

“The Secret Service must clear a final
financial check, and is part of an adjudication.
‘None of this makes any sense,’ [Larsen said]. It
would be ‘astonishing’ if security clearances were
issued before passes were. ‘The two always
— and should — go together.'” (Emphasis
added.)

No Aldrich Ames at the White House?

Just in case the ominous implications of such a
melt-down of security procedures at the White House were
not self-evident, Ms. Thomasson helpfully clarified them
in congressional testimony this week. Referring to an
individual who was recently charged with being a
long-time Soviet mole at the CIA: “We don’t
think we have any Aldrich Ameses at the White House. But
we certainly could.”

***

Red Flags From the House Intelligence
Committee

So serious is this problem deemed to be that the
chairman and ranking minority member of the House
Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, Reps. Dan
Glickman (D-KS) and Larry Combest (R-TX), respectively,
wrote to CIA Director James Woolsey on 17 March 1994
asking: “…What specific steps…have [you] taken
to ensure that information classified to protect
intelligence sources and methods has not been made
available to individuals on the White House staff who do
not have appropriate clearances[?]”

The Center has received reports that these concerns
are also shared by the Department of Defense. It
understands that defense contractors have been
advised by Defense Department officials not to share
classified information with the White House on the
grounds that there is no assurance that only those with
appropriate clearances will have access to such
information.

What’s Really Rotten is not the
Process, It’s the People

When questioned about the grave White House security
problem at his prime-time press conference last night,
President Clinton chose to address it as a mere problem
of procedure:

“[With regard to] the White House passes —
let me just talk about what the facts are. About 90
percent of the people who work here have been through
all the clearances. The others are going through the
clearances.

“I learned, when I read about this, that
apparently previous Administrations have had some of
the same problems. That is they’d been lax, because
of the cumbersome nature of the process. We, now,
basically put in rules that say that anybody comes to
work here now has to get all this done in 30 days or
is immediately on leave without pay. They can’t get
paid unless they do it. I asked Mr. McLarty and Mr.
Cutler to fix this and make sure it never happens
again, so I feel confident that we have.”

In fact, according to press reports, no previous
Administration has experienced anything approaching the
gravity of the Clinton security problem. That is not
because they were subjected to a less
“cumbersome” process, however. Neither is it
they did not have someone on staff like William Kennedy
who was prepared wantonly to circumvent the system — a
practice for which he was effectively fired yesterday.

Rather, this Administration’s unique problem
with security is that it is aggressively recruiting and
appointing to government positions — at the White
House and elsewhere — who could not and would not
pass muster under any rigorous security screening
process. In fact, this reality is responsible
for Mr. Kennedy’s conduct. According to an Administration
source quoted by the Washington Times:

“Of about 1,000 FBI background checks
of White House personnel, more than 500
revealed derogatory information that would have
prevented the people [involved] from obtaining
security clearances at the FBI, Defense Department or
CIA.”