Have GAO Will Travel
York, Byron
Have GAO Will Travel When the White House is in trouble, the General Accounting Office can be counted on to lend a hand, even if that means ignoring its own findings in the Travelgate affair. by...
...that "the new staff are overworked kids and we are less confident now about travel operations...
...Congress wanted the GAO to clarify his role in the affair...
...As for Kennedy, the GAO papers say, "Mr...
...The agents not only waited until after the audit was finished...
...He is not aware of the Procurement Integrity Act or if he is subject to it...
...Cornelius told investigators that she "found out about [the Byron York is a writer and television producer in Washington...
...It reveals a number of problems with the GAO report: The Handling of Evidence Early accounts of Travelgate described how Catherine Cornelius collected and copied travel office records to build the case for the firings...
...B eyond the major points, the GAO work papers contain several previously unknown minor¡ªand sometimes amusing¡ªfacts about Travelgate...
...What happened to them after that...
...Foster's office contained confidential and privileged information...
...I'll have to refer to them for any other questions...
...In the February memo, she included an organization chart for a new travel office...
...agency...
...As part of its investigation, GAO asked for and received copies of all the president's public remarks on the firings...
...Eller told the GAO that nobody talked to him: "Mr...
...So Republican members of the House Government Operations Committee asked to examine the notes and work papers used by GAO investigators to prepare the report...
...In comparison, investigators interviewed forty-five airlines, airline brokers, and travel agencies...
...However, he does obligate funds for government goods and services...
...they waited nearly a month more, finally getting the records on June 10...
...Watkins also recalls discussing the memo briefly with either Ms...
...Myers said that she never had any contacts with Mr...
...It's hard to reconcile the last statement with the first...
...The fourth staffer, Watkins, didn't say how he learned about the "reprimand...
...On May 14, according to the GAO report, Watkins told her about sloppy management in the office and the first lady "urged that action be taken to get 'our people' into the Travel Office...
...He said he was scouting the site as a possible course for Mr...
...What were they...
...But there's a problem with the story: it didn't happen...
...It was about a 30-second phone conversation...
...David Watkins's Role in the Cover-Up On February 15, three months before the firings, Watkins received a memo from Catherine Cornelius suggesting changes in the travel office...
...On the role of the press, Corlett says determining whether the press was happy with the travel office was not central to GAO's mission of assessing "the financial management operations of the travel office and the actions of White House and other officials in the dismissals of the seven employees...
...None of these findings are included in the GAO report...
...There were some records in the [travel office] that . . . Catherine Cornelius .. . had access to before June 10...
...A footnote in the GAO report contains her response to Watkins: she "does not recall this conversation with the same level of detail as Mr...
...On the thirteenth, according to the White House Management Review, Cornelius met with FBI agents, who apparently reviewed her material and concluded that there was enough evidence to warrant an investigation of the travel office...
...The General Accounting Office is Congress's investigatory...
...Yet when GAO investigators interviewed Myers, the notes say "Ms...
...Later in the same briefing, she said Martens had come to the White House a few days before: "Let me just point out, the reason Darnell Martens was here on Friday was because he was in Washington and I asked him to come...
...what follows is based on the House investigators' analysis...
...Three days later, according to the notes, Watkins's lawyer called up to clarify his client's answers: [Watkins's attorney] said that while Mr...
...Cornelius said Watkins asked for the memo, a statement which, to its credit, the GAO included in the published report...
...Corlett says the first lady "clearly stated that she did not have any further specific recollections of conversations with Mr...
...Clinton refused to be interviewed by the GAO, but she did answer a small number of written questions (her response was not actually in her own words, but instead came by way of a letter from the White House Counsel's office...
...Kennedy's reprimand regarding the travel office consisted of Mack McLarty's oral reprimand during his July 2 press conference and no further action...
...Cerda or Ms...
...Nothing...
...Clinton has a general recollection of having conversations with Mr...
...I transferred him to the Travel Office...
...Clinton about the travel office...
...they got a lot of information and passed it on to their superiors...
...And the GAO's comments on the press were drawn from very few interviews...
...There is no mention of the inconsistency in the GAO report...
...Yet the GAO, an arm of Congress, did not mention Mrs...
...When the storm erupted after the firings, Watkins said he 22 The American Spectator December 1994 did not read the February memo, that he simply received it and filed it away...
...The documents say Cornelius went to Watkins, apparently to complain, and he told her to prepare her own proposal on taking over the travel office¡ªwhich turned out to be the February 15 memo that Watkins first said he didn't remember...
...It was widely reported that Darnell Martens, the Thomason business partner who wanted some of the White House travel business, called Myers to ask about getting in on the action...
...Instead, they agreed to Foster's request that they wait until accountants brought in by the White House to audit the travel office finished their work (the audit took just three days, ending on May 17, 1993...
...I have issued reprimands to David Watkins, William Kennedy, Jeff Eller, and Catherine Cornelius...
...But the agents didn't do that...
...On May 19, 1993, the day of the firings, Clinton was asked whether the action was fair...
...Eller's reprimand," according to a GAO investigator's notes, "consisted of Mr...
...The GAO report cites David Watkins' statement that on May 12 Hollywood producer and White House pass holder Harry Thomason told him that he, Thomason, spoke to Mrs...
...On David Watkins's changing story, the GAO sees no need to try to figure out whether Watkins or Catherine Cornelius was telling the truth: "Resolution of these differences," Corlett says, "was not relevant to the overall outcome of our work...
...Yet the General Accounting Office's final report on Travelgate doesn't even mention the contradictions between the McLarty/Panetta line and what the White House staffers told the GAO's own investigators...
...The report was written by Nancy Kingsbury, an assistant director of the GAO...
...The report cites interviews with representatives of just one television network, one major newspaper, and one national magazine, out of the dozens that regularly assign reporters to the White House beat...
...They singled out four staffers for particular criticism: David Watkins, the White House administration chief who fired the travel office staffers...
...The answers could be critical to the case of fired travel office head Billy Dale, who is facing possible indictment on charges he embezzled $55,000 from the fund used to pay for press trips...
...Republicans agreed, but only with the stipulation that they would renew their call for hearings should the GAO report prove as weak as earlier efforts...
...The White House Management Review lists several instances in which she either inquired about or received information on the travel office...
...15 memo...
...Thomason on this issue at that time...
...The answer is in the work papers: Mrs...
...All I knew was there was a plan to cut the size of the office, save tax dollars, save the press money...
...According to the notes, one of Cornelius's co-workers "said that Ms...
...The work papers say that Watkins originally requested another assistant, Matt Moore, to prepare a memo on staff travel...
...McLarty and me," referring to the job as "dirty work...
...His response: "All I know about it is that I was told that the people who were in charge of administering in the White House found serious problems there and thought there was no alternative...
...It is just one of many omissions in a report that was supposed to uncover definitive answers about Travelgate...
...17I Republicans on Capitol Hill suspected the agency probably found out quite a bit about Travelgate but¡ªout of either partisanship, institutional timidity, or both¡ªpulled its punches...
...Jeff Eller, the director of media affairs who was in on the planning...
...On the handling of evidence, Corlett says the GAO has "no direct knowledge" of what Brian Foucart did with the checkbook, cash, journal, and black notebooks, but assumes he needed access to them, since he was responsible for helping run the travel office after the firings...
...The staffers also told Brock that the GAO seemed to have reached its conclusions before learning all the facts...
...However, I removed the checkbook, cash, journal and black notebooks on May 19 and gave them to the FBI on June 10...
...But the things he did say appear to contradict each other...
...The report says that "according to press representatives, services provided in making and implementing [travel] arrangements were satisfactory...
...What about interviews...
...He does not know why it was written...
...if Republicans win control of either house, there undoubtedly will be hearings...
...The White House Management Review reported that Cornelius removed a "small" number of papers from the office in April¡ªand then took them home...
...Nussbaum did not describe...
...That was a wild understatement...
...and Eller's girlfriend Catherine Cornelius, the low-level aide whose designs on the office helped start the whole affair...
...According to the notes, when investigators first questioned Watkins, his response was: "Mr...
...On the Travelgate papers in Vince Foster's office, Corlett says GAO investigators who interviewed Bernard Nussbaum agreed among themselves that when Nussbaum mentioned "materials regarding the travel office" in Foster's office, he was referring to a single, well-known document concerning a complaint about the travel office from a few years back...
...Three staffers who were "reprimanded" told General Accounting Office investigators that they never got the much-ballyhooed dressing-down from McLarty and Panetta...
...It will take hearings, they insist, to sort it all out...
...Now that Congress's own investigators have failed to get the story of Travelgate, that seems the only way to find out...
...Post took notes of the meetings...
...The American Spectator December 1994 21 could exonerate Dale, are now missing...
...The next day: "The press complained to me repeatedly about being gouged by the White House Travel Office...
...The American Spectator December 1994 25...
...They point out that the study was conducted by order of Congress...
...Panetta later told a House subcommittee that "the reprimands were given orally by Mr...
...Nothing else...
...According to House staffers who reviewed the GAO work papers, the press representatives said far more than that: Examples of the types of comments found in the GAO's work papers include statements that the "previous staff ran an efficient operation...
...Clinton's answer, nor did it follow up on what it might actually mean...
...Clinton to play...
...That is literally all I know about it...
...And in one case, Panetta's, it appears the official lied to Congress directly...
...He told them: "The bulk of the [travel office] records were kept in the file room and were kept locked until June 10...
...Like the following description of one of Harry Thomason's White House visits: Thomason was asked to provide advice on "how to use the White House better as a physical plant...
...The GAO apparently did not question him on the inconsistency, nor does the report make any mention of the change...
...Watkins does not know the definition of the term procurement official...
...Cornelius' Feb...
...But the report does not include her answer to the question: Did she talk with Thomason...
...The explanation was greeted with great skepticism and died altogether when the vice president's office said it wasn't true...
...The study was commissioned by Public Law 103-50, passed in September 1993...
...The GAO report does not mention any of these contradictions...
...Concerned that her behavior might have compromised evidence in the case, members of Congress specifically asked the GAO to investigate how documents were handled...
...Republicans on Capitol Hill suspected the agency probably found out quite a bit about Travelgate but¡ªout of either partisanship, institutional timidity, or both¡ªpulled its punches...
...Investigators spoke to former White House counsel Bernard Nussbaum, who was among those who removed materials from Foster's office after Foster apparently shot himself...
...And, of course, the GAO didn't interview the fired travel office workers themselves...
...portions of the GAO report, they said, were written before key White House witnesses were interviewed...
...Cornelius.' There is no mention of Watkins's memory change in the GAO report...
...Mrs...
...It did ask whether any travel office documents were in Vince Foster's office at the time of his death...
...Normal procedure in such a case would be for the FBI to seize everything that might be evidence...
...Democrats blocked that move and instead proposed ordering the GAO to investigate...
...Not Cornelius taking the documents home, not the delay in giving them to the FBI, not the evidence in Foster's office, not Foucart's removal of critical items, not the fact that the records stayed in the White House...
...20 The American Spectator December 1994 reprimand] from watching the press conference...
...Actress Markie Post and Mr...
...that the press had "tremendous respect for Billy Dale...
...It also contained materials regarding the travel office which Mr...
...by Byron York 0 n July 2, 1993, Mack McLarty and Leon Panetta held a long-awaited press conference to announce the results of their investigation into the White House Travel Office scandal...
...The President's Statements Bill Clinton said very little in public about Travelgate...
...The GAO's report simply says Watkins "told us he had little recollection of the details of the memoranda and apparently he did not respond substantively to any of them...
...Cornelius' feelings were hurt because Mr...
...Watkins...
...And where are the records today...
...The lawyer] said Mr...
...By the time he spoke to GAO investigators, Watkins had a different story: The travel office review, he said, was actually part of the effort to fulfill the president's pledge to cut White House staff by 25 percent...
...The Review didn't say...
...Thomason...
...Watkins originally justified the shake-up by saying it was part of Vice President Gore's National Performance Review, a story spokeswoman Dee Dee Myers passed on to the press...
...I kept hearing it everywhere...
...The work papers do contain a note to that effect¡ªbut it wasn't written by GAO investigators...
...The Role of the Press Despite Clinton's "gouging" remark, almost all members of the White House press corps felt the travel office did a good¡ªand often excellent¡ªjob of ferrying them around the country and the world, often under difficult conditions...
...her own name was at the top...
...Clinton's statement that she has "no specific recollection of any particular conversation with Mr...
...Six days later, in response to a similar question: "I've told you all I know about it...
...But that is where the whole thing broke down...
...Thomason and Ms...
...The Role of the First Lady The actions of Hillary Rodham Clinton are one of the persistent mysteries of Travelgate...
...In the words of one congressional investigator, "If the President told the truth in that statement, then all his other statements are lies...
...The investigator apparently did not ask any follow-up questions...
...The Washington Times, citing associates of Dale, has reported that he kept records of his spending in black notebooks, and that those notebooks, which Three staffers who were "reprimanded" told General Accounting Office investigators that they never got the much-ballyhooed dressing-down from McLarty and Panetta...
...Meanwhile, Watkins left the administration earlier this year after taking a presidential helicopter to a round of golf at a Maryland course...
...And on the failure to question the fired workers, the GAO says all seven refused to answer written inquiries...
...It was added to the papers by Nancy Kingsbury, and signed "NKingsbury, 5/12/94," which was long after the investigators had done their work...
...On the role of the president, Corlett says the GAO did not attempt to question Clinton because top White House officials had already taken responsibility for the firings and the GAO had no reason to question the White House Management Review...
...No specific recollection, no particular conversation, at that time...
...But the GAO didn't even ask...
...In "The Travelgate Cover-Up," published in these pages last June, David Brock, citing Republican staffers in the House, reported that Kingsbury "betrayed a bias" on the issue, saying that the fired travel office employees are better off now than they were at the White House...
...McLarty's announcement of it at the July 2 press conference...
...When questioned about the issues raised in this article, the GAO's answers revealed an agency willing to restrict its own investigation¡ªand accept the White House word on Travelgate: ? On the reprimands, GAO spokesman Cleve Corlett says "we weren't doing an investigation of reprimands...
...According to the GAO's interview of Joseph Gangloff, the acting chief of the FBI's Public Integrity Section, The WHTO documents are being held in the White House Counsel's Office under lock and key and . . . although the White House had physical custody, the FBI must approve access to them...
...Foster and Mr...
...Perhaps some explanation might have been obtained by interviewing the president...
...Cornelius told GAO investigators that she took home "a stack of canceled checks" and files for a trip taken during the Bush administration...
...She told the press in May that "I talked to Darnell in probably early February...
...After the administration's conflicting public statements in the first days of Travelgate, followed by the unconvincing White House Management Review of the affair, Republicans in Congress called for hearings on the travel office firings...
...Moore was asked to do the memo...
...But the GAO report does not address the subject¡ªeven though its investigators discovered new and damaging information...
...Those who have read all the work papers say the investigators did a pretty good job...
...The Justice Department," Corlett says, "objected to interviews because of an ongoing criminal investigation...
...The GAO papers have not been released to the public...
...epublicans in Congress are quick to point out that R their objections to the GAO report are not aimed at the GAO investigators...
...The GAO work papers reveal more of the story...
...Martens about the travel office...
...In an October memo, Newt Gingrich offered a one-word explanation of what he felt would be the key power of a Republican-controlled Congress: "subpoena...
...But, according to the work papers, she went further than that: Cornelius told GAO investigators of a conversation with Watkins in which "it was clear that he read the Feb...
...And there is a curious episode involving Dee Dee 24 The American Spectator December 1994 Myers...
...Thomason on this issue at that time...
...When GAO investigators asked questions about the issue, they were faced with conflicting stories...
...GAO investigators asked a man named Brian Foucart, who at the time was the acting director of the White House Administrative Office...
...It turns out that even when the White House gave them to the FBI, it didn't actually give them to the FBI...
...1 The GAO also learned details of how Watkins came to request the memo...
...The investigator's notes say Nussbaum replied: Mr...
...By comparing the report's conclusions with what the investigators actually learned in face-to-face interviews of White House officials, they have pieced together a picture of omissions, misrepresentations, and mistakes that make the GAO report the latest cover-up of Travelgate...
...It was the sort of legalistic evasion that enraged senators of both parties when used by White House officials during the Whitewater hearings...
...And what did he do with the checkbook, cash, journal, and black notebooks...
...In a week, Clinton had gone from knowing the barest of information told him by White House staffers to citing repeated complaints from reporters...
...Where was the evidence kept before June 10...
...lying to the GAO, they contend, is the same as lying to Congress...
...I know nothing else about it...
...We've had some very frank and direct discussions and I have made it clear that I will not tolerate any repetition of the conduct which has been criticized," McLarty, then White House chief of staff, said...
...that "with Billy Dale we had a secure feeling that the baggage would be handled [and] there would be good hotels . . . we do not feel secure anymore...
...A 11 the contradictions and gaps in the GAO's report and work papers have prompted Republicans in Congress to resurrect the call for hearings...
...That all depends on the elections...
...15 memo...
...It seems reasonable to conclude that McLarty and Panetta lied¡ªin Panetta's case, to Congress...
...The investigator goes on to note, "This is contrary to the Management Review...
...Thomason's assistant were with him . . . At the meetings, he talked to White House staff about "communication links between offices," communications with the media, scheduling the President's time, developing a theme or message and how to get headlines from events...
...Kingsbury's handwritten note was added about the time members of Congress asked the GAO to open its records...
...It was, in fact, after the GAO report was published...
...On the first lady's role, the GAO sees no problem with Mrs...
...The resulting report, published in May of this year, was mildly critical of the administration, but was mostly made up of chapters with titles like these: "White House Inquiry Violated No Procedures" "FBI Response Violated No Procedures" "No Evidence of Inappropriate Actions Pertaining to IRS" "Operating Procedures Have Been Further Improved But Additional Work Remains" Critics of the administration labeled the report a "whitewash" and questioned the reliability of the GAO...
...He didn't respond to it...
...None of that praise is found in the GAO report...
...She had coveted a job in the office since the campaign and had given Watkins two previous memos on the subject...
...Watkins did not actually read the memo until he saw it in the Management Review, he does recall receiving it and briefly scanning its contents, especially the organizational chart which named who would serve in which position...
...But that wasn't the whole story...
...Panetta, at that time OMB director, said he and McLarty told them that "we would make public the fact that these reprimands have been made...
...McLarty about the Travel Office situation prior to the termination of the Travel Office employees...
...Then there are the GAO investigator's notes on the questioning of David Watkins about Management 101 at the White House: Mr...
...What did Foucart¡ªor other White House staffers¡ªdo with the evidence between May 19 and June 10...
...She has no specific recollection of any particular conversation with Mr...
...But the GAO apparently didn't ask...
...William Kennedy, the associate White House Counsel who brought the FBI in to investigate...
...Yet the GAO report seems to minimize press happiness with the old White House Travel Office...
...She said she kept them at home until May 12, when deputy White House counsel Vincent Foster told her to bring them back...
...Nor does it raise questions about another change in his story¡ªthe explanation of why he ordered the firings in the first place...
...Watkins does not remember reading Ms...
...What happened next...
Vol. 27 • December 1994 • No. 12
