‘No Credible Evidence’ Found of Criminal Use of Background Files

Pete Yost

Thursday, March 16, 2000 | 4:34 a.m.

WASHINGTON - Independent Counsel Robert Ray said Thursday there is no credible evidence of criminal activity in the White House's improper gathering of hundreds of FBI background files of former Republican appointees.

There is also no credible evidence that former White House counsel Bernard Nussbaum lied to Congress regarding the controversy in 1996, Ray said, adding that his office was ending both investigations with no prosecutions.

The prosecutor's office determined that "there was no substantial and credible evidence that any senior White House official, or first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton, was involved in seeking confidential Federal Bureau of Investigation background reports of former White House staff from the prior administrations of President Bush and President Reagan."

Ray's announcement angered a conservative group and some of the former Republican appointees, who have filed a lawsuit accusing the Clinton administration of invading their privacy.

Closing out the probe without any prosecutions is "a travesty," former Bush White House speechwriter Joseph Duggan said in a statement. "These 'raw' investigative files invariably contain material that is not necessarily true, but almost certainly is negative and embarrassing. ... The FBI improperly gave our files to unauthorized and politically hostile individuals."

Ray said he could not investigate violations of the Privacy Act of 1974, which are misdemeanors and therefore outside the Independent Counsel's jurisdiction.

Duggan is a plaintiff in a lawsuit filed by Judicial Watch, a conservative group that has sued the Clinton administration on a wide range of issues.

White House officials have said an Army detailee, Anthony Marceca, made a bureaucratic blunder in collecting the FBI files based on an outdated Secret Service list of White House passholders.

Marceca's boss, former White House security office chief Craig Livingstone, resigned after a congressional committee's investigation uncovered the mass gathering of files on Republicans. Livingstone maintained he didn't know that Marceca had gotten those files.

An FBI interview summary from early in the Clinton administration quoted Nussbaum as saying that Mrs. Clinton had highly recommended Livingstone for his post.

However, Nussbaum said he'd been misquoted in the FBI summary, and Mrs. Clinton denied recommending Livingstone, saying she didn't even know who he was until late in his tenure at the White House.

Ray said he found "no substantial and credible evidence that Mr. Nussbaum lied to the House Committee on Government Reform and Oversight about his discussions with Mrs. Clinton" regarding Livingstone's hiring "or about his knowledge regarding the circumstances of Mr. Livingstone's appointment."

The prosecutor is sending a report on the FBI files investigation to three federal appeals judges, who will give the people named in it 90 days to respond before releasing the report along with any responses.

The report is to be followed by two others - one on Mrs. Clinton's role in the purge of the White House travel office and another on the Clintons' Whitewater land dealings in Arkansas. That third report also will deal with Mrs. Clinton's legal work for her Whitewater partners' failing savings and loan.