GINGRICH IS ON TO SOMETHING: TIME FOR CONGRESS TO GET TO THE BOTTOM OF THE WHITE HOUSE SECURITY MESS

(Washington, D.C.): Yesterday’s pained rejoinders by
Chief of Staff Leon Panetta, First Lady Hillary Rodham
Clinton and other Administration officials to remarks by
incoming House Speaker Newt Gingrich concerning recent
drug use by White House personnel invite fresh
congressional attention to a potentially very serious
problem: the security screening process employed by the
Clinton Administration in staffing the Executive Mansion
and sensitive positions at other agencies. Although Mr.
Panetta has pilloried Rep. Gingrich for having made
“reckless charges” with “no evidence, no
facts, no foundation, just basically smear and
innuendo,” there is ample reason to look closely at
Clinton personnel practices — and the measures that the
Administration has employed to provide top government
positions to people who may well otherwise have been
unable to obtain required security clearances.

In this connection, the Center for Security Policy
issued a Decision Brief
on 25 March 1994 entitled The Clinton
Security Clearance Melt-down: ‘No-gate’ Demonstrates
‘It’s The People, Stupid.’ This paper ( href=”index.jsp?section=papers&code=94-D_119at”>excerpts of which are attached)
detailed several indicators of a serious problem then
much in evidence, notably an astoundingly large
number of White House officials who had been working for
protracted periods of time without a permanent security
clearance. While some of the problems have been
rectified in the intervening period (e.g., the dismissal
of some of those publicly identified as having
contributed to serious mismanagement of the clearance
process, William Kennedy III, a former partner of Mrs.
Clinton at the Rose Law Firm who was, at the time, a
deputy to White House Counsel Bernard Nussbaum), others
persist — and continue to require close
congressional scrutiny.

The Bottom Line

Specifically, Congress must look into the issue
addressed by the Center last March:

“This Administration’s unique
problem with security is that it is aggressively
recruiting and appointing to government positions
— at the White House and elsewhere —
people who could not and would not pass muster
under any rigorous security screening process.
In fact, this reality is responsible for [then
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.'”