By Monday, Eagleburger had changed his mind. Friends convinced him that his resignation would have the opposite effect from the one he intended: cynics would conclude that if a man of his rank was being sacrificed, it could only be to protect someone at the White House who had ordered the passport search. Eagleburger had already started an investigation. NEWSWEEK has learned that on the afternoon of Oct. 15, a staffer told him of a “rumor” about monitored telephone calls in which two of his subordinates discussed the political opportunities presented by the search of the Clinton files. He decided to let the probe take its course.
But when Sherman Funk, the department’s inspector general, released his report last week, it raised as many questions as it answered. Funk concluded that an attempt had been made to “use the records and employees” of the State Department “to influence the outcome of a presidential election.” Yet he said he had not found “a scintilla of evidence” that anyone at the White House was behind the attempt. Funk’s conclusions seemed to fall short of his evidence. The report left a strong impression that the White House had encouraged-or at least acquiesced in-an improperly handled search of the passport files. The unanswered questions scaled the chain of command all the way to James Baker, Bush’s chief of staff, campaign boss and former secretary of state.
Funk found that searching for the Clinton files, and safeguarding those of Ross Perot, was not wrong in itself. The department’s mistake was to drastically speed up the process, which was prompted by Freedom of Information requests from news organizations after Republicans spread rumors that Clinton considered renouncing his U.S. citizenship during the Vietnam War. Funk said several mistakes were made by Elizabeth Tamposi, the assistant secretary for consular affairs, who resigned and broke the ewe open two weeks ago. She told NEWSWEEK (and then Funk’s investigators) that two days before the Freedom of Information search began, Steven Berry, the acting assistant secretary for legislative affairs, told her about White House interest in Clinton’s file and said he was being pressured by Republican Congressman Gerald Solomon to dig up dirt on Clinton. Tamposi said she refused to help Berry. But two days later, after news organizations requested information, she made a phone call reporting the results of the search to Berry, who retained strong ties to his former boss, Janet Mullins, now a top Baker aide at the White House.
The first investigation was quickly compromised by the fact that State’s Operations Center routinely monitored telephone calls, including those between Tamposi and Berry. NEWSWEEK has learned that FBI probers think the monitoring violates federal law, which requires that at least one of the people talking must consent. FBI officials have determined that at times, neither party was aware of the monitoring. Many employees at State knew about the practice, but Tamposi did not. To avoid tainting the case, Funk appointed a separate team on Oct. 27 to do a new investigation based solely on interviews. But sources say Funk is confident that the monitored calls don’t contradict anything in the final report.
Berry denies that the White House inspired him to put pressure on Tamposi but says he sees how she could get that impression. That contradiction is only one of the loose ends in Funk’s report. Among the others:
A former top State Department official told NEWSWEEK that Berry and Mullins frequently prodded the bureaucracy to speed up Freedom of Information requests for members of Congress. Did they use their official contacts to accelerate the process in the Clinton case?
On the night of Sept. 30, while the search was underway, Tamposi twice called Margaret Tutwiler, another top Baker aide now at the White House. Tutwiler refused to take either call, but whoever answered the second one kept Tamposi on the line for 7 minutes. Tamposi could not remember the name of the person she talked to, and investigators could find no one who would admit to having done so.
Tutwiler first told investigators she refused Tamposi’s call in line with her decision to cut off all contact with the State Department after she moved to the White House. But sources told NEWSWEEK that she sometimes talked to former colleagues at the department; one ranking State official said he had spoken to her “a half-dozen times” during the campaign. Janet Mullins, who was sitting in Tutwiler’s office when the second call from Tamposi came in, told investigators that Tutwiler “raised her eyebrows” and refused to take it. “Ms. Tutwiler told Ms. Mullins that she did not think it would be appropriate for her to become involved in the Clinton files matter,” the report said. How did Tutwiler know Tamposi’s call concerned the Clinton files? A source in the investigation told NEWSWEEK that either Tutwiler or Mullins changed her story during the interviews, amending it to say that Tamposi’s second call made it clear that she was calling about a Freedom of Information matter. Asked for comment, Tutwiler and Mullins did not return NEWSWEEK’S calls.
During the search of the Clinton files, Tamposi was living with an acquaintance named Alixe Glen; Funk’s report did not mention that she was a spokeswoman for the Bush-Quayle campaign. Glen told NEWSWEEK that she and Tamposi were temporarily sharing the town house of a mutual friend and that they never had more than a brief conversation on any topic. She said she worked late on Sept. 30, when Clintons files were delivered to Tamposi; she got home after Tamposi had gone to sleep and left in the morning before she awoke.
Funk reported that Mullins told Baker about the effort on Sept. 30 or Oct. 1. Baker might not have known that the search was improperly handled. But having learned of it from one of his most partisan political aides, why didn’t he warn Eagleburger or do something else to prevent damage? Funk’s report does not say whether Baker told President Bush about the search before it became public knowledge. There was no explanation why Baker aides said for a month that he didn’t learn about the hunt for Clinton’s files until NEWSWEEK broke the story on Oct. 4.
Democrats in Congress quickly denounced the Funk report. “On a scale of 1 to 10, this investigation is about a 3-it is very lightweight,” said a Democratic staffer. The General Accounting Office, the investigating arm of Congress, is conducting its own probe, and once it finishes, the majority leadership will decide whether to hold hearings. Funk concedes there are “conflicts” in the testimony he has collected. He says he deliberately left the conflicting stories in his report, implying that he hoped other investigators would follow up on the leads. Funk knows his report is not the last word. The chase is just beginning.
Should an independent prosecutor be named to investigate whether the Bush administration improperly searched the passport files of Bill Clinton, Clinton’s mother and Ross Perot … 46% Favor 46% Oppose … to investigate allegations that administration officials aided arms sales to Iraq before the invasion of Kuwait? 61% Favor 32% Oppose NEWSWEEK Poll, Nov. 19-20, 1992
