Use of crack, hallucinogens hung up White House staff By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Copyright 1996 Associated Press. 07/18/96 WASHINGTON (Jul 17, 1996 6:11 p.m. EDT) -- Some of the Clinton White House employees who were placed in a special drug testing program had used cocaine and hallucinogens and were originally denied White House security passes, Secret Service agents testified Wednesday. The testing program was created as a compromise so the new administration's workers could keep their jobs, according to Arnold Cole, who supervised the Secret Service's White House operations. "Initially, our response was that we denied them passes," Cole said in a deposition released by the House Government Reform and Oversight Committee. Cole and other Secret Service agents appeared before the committee Wednesday to answer questions about a different matter -- the White House's improper gathering of FBI background files on Republicans. But he was briefly questioned about the drug issue, which came to light earlier this week, saying that despite his agency's original concerns about the workers, "at one point they did receive a pass." Asked who ultimately determined whether workers who had recently used drugs would be suitable, he answered: The issue "would be resolved at the highest levels" of the White House. Another agent's deposition revealed the background checks turned up use of hard drugs. "I have seen cocaine usage. I have seen hallucinogenic usages, crack usages," said Jeffrey Undercoffer, when asked to describe the types of drugs used by employees who were placed in the special programs. The Associated Press reported Monday that 21 Clinton White House workers had been placed in the special testing after their background checks indicated recent drug abuse. Promising to hold hearings, Republicans have questioned whether such employees should have gotten jobs at all. The White House tried Wednesday to minimize the revelation, with press secretary Mike McCurry telling reporters he once experimented with marijuana. "I was a kid in the 1970s. Did I smoke a joint from time to time? Of course I did. The FBI knows that. That was in my background file. That doesn't disqualify me," McCurry said. After hearing of McCurry's remarks, GOP presidential candidate Bob Dole sent former drug policy director Bill Bennett to speak with reporters outside a Minneapolis campaign stop. "The 'of course' -- it's the typical mindset of the Clinton crowd that everybody did it," said Bennett. McCurry said there was "zero tolerance for those the president appoints to sensitive political positions." He said two longstanding career employees, holdovers from previous administrations, failed drug tests and were fired. There have been no other drug test failures, he added. In his deposition, Cole described the testing program, created in May 1994, as "a compromise between both the White House and the Secret Service." The Secret Service went to White House lawyers "to find a way to mitigate our concerns so that these people could maintain their employment," Cole said. Rep. William Clinger, R-Pa., the House committee chairman, said the use of drugs by White House employees is "a very, very serious situation." "This administration should have a zero tolerance for drugs of any sort." On the FBI files issue, Cole, Undercoffer and a third agent assigned to the White House reiterated that the Secret Service did not provide the lists used by temporary White House employee Anthony Marceca to gather FBI files on hundreds of Reagan and Bush White House staffers. The White House has said that the files were collected by mistake because it used an outdated employee list provided by the Secret Service. John Libonati, supervisor of the White House access control branch, told the committee that of the 476 people the White House gathered files on, 379 had been listed as inactive prior to Marceca's project of updating security passes. "No list of active employees created by the Secret Service in 1993 would have included those names," said Libonati. Democrats argued that Secret Service lists are not always accurate, and to prove their point produced a document that showed Sen. John Tower, R-Texas, who died in 1991, was on a list until 1993. "Why is the Secret Service so cavalier in keeping its lists?" Rep. Cardiss Collins, D-Ill., asked. Clinger said the Secret Service is not to blame for the mishap. "The White House would like us to continue to go into this minutiae and talk about lists and point the finger at the Secret Service while ignoring the two characters who orchestrated this disaster," Clinger said. Marceca was brought to the White House by former personnel security chief Craig Livingstone, who resigned as a result of the FBI files controversy. The Senate Judiciary Committee voted Tuesday to subpoena Marceca, who has twice refused to answer investigators' questions by invoking his Fifth Amendment privilege not to incriminate himself. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Clinton administration overruled the Secret Service By MARCY GORDON Associated Press Writer 07/17/96 WASHINGTON (AP) The Clinton administration overruled the Secret Service in granting White House passes to some employees with a history of drug use, a Secret Service agent says. In an interview with House investigators released Wednesday, Arnold Cole, who had supervised the Secret Service's White House control operations, testified that a special, voluntary drug-testing program was established to allay the service's fears. Cole said Secret Service agents denied requests for security passes for an unspecified number of employees but the employees got the passes after the drug-testing program was instituted in May 1994. Investigators asked whether the Secret Service decision to deny them passes was changed. ``Yes,'' Cole said. ``Initially our response was that we denied them passes,'' he said. Having discovered past illicit drug use as a result of FBI background checks on several White House employees, Cole said, the Secret Service was concerned that it could ``compromise the security of the White House without some other mechanism in place.'' Cole said he and his colleagues raised those concerns with then-associate White House counsel William H. Kennedy III. Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala., said recently his Senate appropriations subcommittee will hold hearings into the background checks of 21 White House staffers who entered the testing program because of recent, illegal drug use. The White House on Tuesday called the hearings part of a Republican election-year attack on President Clinton. Cole's sworn testimony to investigators with the House Government Reform and Oversight Committee, given last Wednesday, was part of the panel's investigation of the White House's gathering of hundreds of FBI background files on Bush and Reagan administration employees. The Senate Judiciary Committee voted unanimously Tuesday to subpoena Anthony Marceca, the civilian Army investigator who collected the files and has twice invoked his Fifth Amendment privilege not to incriminate himself. Several Republican lawmakers have suggested that Marceca is being made the scapegoat in the affair to cover for high-level White House officials. Marceca has said he unwittingly used an outdated Secret Service list of White House passholders to generate his requests for the FBI files. But a Secret Service colleague of Cole reiterated in testimony Wednesday the service's position: it did not provide an inaccurate list of White House passholders that led Marceca to obtain FBI files on many people who had left. John Libonati, supervisor of the White House access control branch, told the committee that of the 476 people the White House gathered files on, 379 had been listed as inactive prior to Marceca's project of updating security passes. ``No list of active employees created by the Secret Service in 1993 would have included those names,'' said Libonati. ``No list of ... passholders could possibly have been created by the Secret Service that could explain how Anthony Marceca ... got 476 FBI background files of former Reagan and Bush officials,'' Rep. William Clinger, R-Pa., the House oversight committee's chairman, said Wednesday. ``At any rate, no combination of errors attributed by the White House to the Secret Service can explain how and why Mr. Marceca obtained the FBI files.'' The collected files included those of scores of high-ranking officials of the Bush and Reagan administrations. The Clinton administration has said gathering them was a bureaucratic blunder. Suggesting a darker motive, congressional Republicans are looking into whether Clinton and first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton were compiling information for a list of political enemies. House investigators last week questioned top presidential aides Mack McLarty and George Stephanopoulos about the FBI files. The House oversight committee is seeking documents that would reveal whether Marceca holds any FBI background records and whether high-level White House officials helped get him his temporary assignment. Marceca was hired by the White House in late 1993 to help update security passes for people qualified for White House access. He was brought to the White House by former personnel security chief Craig Livingstone who resigned amid the furor over the files and with whom Marceca shared a background as a low-level political operative. Marceca refused to appear before the Senate Judiciary panel at a June 28 hearing and in a letter asserted his Fifth Amendment privilege against incriminating himself. He also has refused to turn over documents subpoenaed by Clinger's committee, also claiming his Fifth Amendment right. Democrats have attempted to spread the blame for the file-gathering from the Clinton administration to the Secret Service. Before Tuesday's vote, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, said Marceca would be able to appear in a closed session Thursday to assert his privilege against testifying against himself. However, Hatch said he would reserve the right to rule on the validity of each such claim by Marceca and that the Senate could go to court to compel his testimony. He said Marceca would be able to invoke his Fifth Amendment right only for his oral testimony, not for physical evidence such as the computer discs. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Livingstone was a security threat By George Archibald THE WASHINGTON TIMES 07/18/96 The Secret Service warned that D. Craig Livingstone was a possible threat to the president and others before he was hired as White House personnel security director, a senior Secret Service agent testified yesterday. Mr. Livingstone was hired anyway despite "derogatory" findings of a security nature that indicated he might pose an immediate or projected threat. Arnold A. Cole, assistant special agent in charge of the White House access control branch, told the House Government Reform and Oversight Committee. Mr. Cole said he went to William H. Kennedy III, associate White House counsel, after reviewing Mr. Livingstone's FBI file in early 1993. Mr. Cole said he asked Mr. Kennedy, former Rose Law Firm partner of first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton, "if he concurred" with the security concerns. "He said he would look into it," Mr. Cole said. "Ultimately he decided to issue the pass." In other testimony yesterday, Secret Service agents revealed: * Thirty to 40 White House officials and staff of the incoming Clinton administration had recently used cocaine, hallucinogenic drugs and crack before they first sought clearance for White House passes. They were given temporary access passes, despite Secret Service objections. * The administration responded to Secret Service concerns by setting up a special drug-testing program as a condition for White House passes for applicants with recent histories of illicit drug use. After the first wave of Clinton appointees, 21 White House aides enrolled in the drug-testing program, according to the White House. Today, nine are said to be enrolled --none if them senior Clinton aides. "I have reviewed literally hundreds of background investigations. ... I would say more than 30, more than 40, perhaps, had drug usage," Secret Service agent Jeffrey L. Undercoffer told the committee in a sworn deposition taken last Wednesday and made public at yesterday's hearing. "There was some where the drug use was recent. ... I have seen cocaine usage, I have seen hallucinogenic usages, crack usages. I am not that familiar with narcotics. I would say those are the big three," Mr. Undercoffer testified. At the White House, press secretary Michael McCurry said President Clinton does not feel that past drug use disqualifies appointees from a White House job. But employees found using drugs are fired, he added. He said no Clinton aide has tested positive for drug use since coming to the White House. Mr. McCurry acknowledged that he smoked marijuana in the 1970s, but said he has not used drugs since. "I'll tell you, I have myself. I was a kid in the 1970s. Did I smoke a joint from time to time? Of course I did. The FBI knows that," Mr. McCurry said. "That doesn't disqualify me from serving here." Drug usage, nonpayment of taxes for many years, and other problems prevented several hundred top Clinton officials and staff from receiving Secret Service and FBI clearance for permanent White House passes throughout 1993 and beyond, according to documents released with the Secret Service depositions yesterday. White House senior advisers George Stephanopoulos, Ira Magaziner and Robert O. Boorstin were among those denied permanent passes, the documents show. Mr. Livingstone's office, in a memorandum dated Dec. 13, 1993, asked the Secret Service to issue a fifth temporary 90-day pass to the three officials and 73 other Clinton appointees denied permanent security clearances. No explanation was given for their failure to qualify for permanent clearance. Mr. Livingstone, who resigned last month over his office's improper searches of FBI files of former Reagan-Bush presidential aides, has acknowledged his own history of illicit drug use and other problems that caused him to be fired from several jobs before joining the White House staff in February 1993. Mr. Cole said the Secret Service does not have the authority to deny a security clearance or White House access that is approved by the White House counsel's office. But he said the Secret Service makes its views known on prospective employees whose FBI background checks bring out problems relating to the service's mission to protect the president and White House complex. "We would want to know whether or not this person would pose a possible immediate or projected threat later on, so those were our concerns," he said in a deposition." Rep. Dan Burton, Indiana Republican, asked whether an incident involving Mr. Livingstone in November 1993 was a factor in his recommendation. "No, sir, I only learned of that later," Mr. Cole responded. According to a police report released with his deposition, Mr. Livingstone admitted threatening Barbara Ann Sable with bodily harm on several occasions because he didn't like her dog. One day, as Mrs. Sable walked her dog with two friends, "She was confronted by Livingstone, [who told her], 'If you don't keep that [expletive] dog quiet, I'm going to beat your face in," said the police incident report. Mr. Livingstone, who lived below her, "has told Sable he would 'do something drastic' if she didn't keep her dog quiet," the report stated. "Livingstone advised [the investigating officer] that he did say that. He would 'beat in' Sable's face, but he knew he was wrong." No charges were filed. Mr. Livingstone and Anthony Marceca, an Army detailee to the White House, claimed under oath that "outdated" Secret Service lists were responsible for their improper FBI file searches of more than 900 former GOP aides. The Secret Service agents testified yesterday that no list generated from the Secret Service database at the White House would have shown the former Reagan-Bush aides to be active White House passholders. *Paul Bedard contributed to this report. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ From the Washington Times: Published in Washington, D.C. July 17, 1996 EDITORIAL So far as anyone knows, Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich has not yet received his apology from White House Chief of Staff Leon Panetta. Readers will recall that in December 1994, just before taking office as speaker, Mr. Gingrich revealed -- as evidence of the Clinton administration's counter-cultural roots and as an explanation for the huge numbers of White House staffers who had not managed to obtain Secret Service clearance -- that there were former drug users among the White House staff. Mr. Panetta's response at the time was swift and savage: "We cannot do business here with a speaker of the House who is going to engage in these kinds of unfounded allegations. . . . I think the time has come when he has to understand that he has to stop behaving like an out-of-control radio talk-show host and begin behaving like the speaker of the House of Representatives." Mr. Panetta fumed and sputtered for weeks. But he never actually denied the charge. Oh, with typically Clintonian disingenuousness he denied a charge Mr. Gingrich had never made, saying, "There is no one in the White House who uses drugs." But Mr. Panetta never looked us (and certainly not the speaker) in the eye and denied that there were former drug users in the White House. Mr. Panetta didn't deny either that the former drug use in some cases was very serious and very recent; nor did he deny that some of the former users also had drug convictions. (He didn't say anything about the numerous staffers who couldn't get clearance because of tax and credit problems either, come to think of it.) How could he, when it was all true? As became clear when White House administrator Patsy Thomasson revealed casually in Senate testimony a few months later that there were very serious, very recent former drug users on staff. What's more, the White House was bound and determined to keep them on staff. So, at the insistence of the Secret Service, which is understandably loath to countenance such security risks, a special random drug-testing program was created -- presumably to ensure that the former drug abuse remained former, or at the very least that no one was snorting cocaine or smoking crack in the Lincoln bedroom. This is not news, of course, but it has arisen once again in light of recent revelations about the sloppiness of security in the Clinton White House. It also seems to jibe nicely with the sloppiness of the Clinton administration's approach to drug abuse in general. Gov. Bill Clinton's cozy relationship with convicted drug dealer Dan Lasater -- who got some pretty good bond business from the governor even after his drug dealing had become common knowledge -- has been raising eyebrows in Little Rock and in Washington for years. And candidate Bill Clinton's quintessentially Clintonian revelation that he didn't inhale has become a cliche of stand-up comedy. Less amusing is the fact that one of Mr. Clinton's first acts after taking office in 1993 was to gut the Office of National Drug Policy -- cutting it from 146 to 25 employees. Then he went on to appoint a Surgeon General who never hesitated to share publicly her own view that recreational drugs ought to be legalized. As editorials here have noted, there seems to be an obvious correlation between Mr. Clinton's soft stance on drugs and the disturbing increase in levels of drug use among young people -- levels that had been steadily declining for years but have skyrocketed since Bill Clinton moved into the White House. It will take a lot just to undo the damage and get our kids back to the encouraging position won for them by the diligent anti-drug battles of the Reagan and Bush administrations. And it seems it's a lot more than the Clintons are able or willing to offer. Indeed, the continuing effort to dismiss the seriousness of White House staff drug use hardly encourages anyone concerned about the administration's cavalier attitude to drug use in general. The Clinton PR machine shrugs; after all, there were only nine people in the special program; well, actually it was 11; no, it was a grand total of 21. And as to how many of those were high-ranking appointees, the White House is shocked that it might be asked to invade anyone's privacy by revealing such information. We are simply to be satisfied by spokesman Michael McCurry's assurance that none of the former druggies in the White House pose any sort of risk, since "the legal counsel has had the most scrupulous standards for determining suitability." Is that the same legal counsel, by any chance, whose scrupulous standards gave us Craig Livingstone and his improperly obtained confidential FBI files? (After all, shrugged the PR machine before the truth about Filegate became obvious, it was just a few files; no, it was 300; well, actually it was more like 400; really it seems it was 700; turns out it was really 900.) Can Mr. McCurry really expect us to take his word -- or that of anyone else in the White House -- for scrupulousness in the White House counsel's office? One can't help wondering, along with Sen. Richard Shelby, who first heard about the program from Patsy Thomasson, why the Clintons are so eager to keep these people in their employ. Who are they? If they're no longer in the White House, where are they? Are there former drug users in positions with control over delicate matters or access to confidential information? These are questions that will clearly bear further consideration. And, Mr. Panetta, a simple "Sorry, Newt" would be appropriate. Published July 17, 1996, in The Washington Times Copyright © 1996 News World Communications, Inc.