Fast Times at White House High
York, Byron
"Fast Times at White House High" It's taken more than three years for the White House to acknowledge that many of its staffers came to Washington with serious drug problems. Now, with drugs an election issue,...
...Chief of Staff Leon Panetta called it "absolutely false" and accused Gingrich of making "reckless accusations that impugn people's integrity...
...A history of illegal drug use is not, per se, a disqualifying factor...
...It keeps the product looking new for years and is easy to clean...
...if, for example, the staffer has lived in Los Angeles, Dallas, and Boston in the last ten years, FBI agents in those cities are assigned to investigate the staffer's life at those times-with particular emphasis on determining whether the staffer told the truth on the SF-86...
...No facts...
...24 November r 9 9 6 • The American Spectator In Arkansas, Thomasson was the top assistant to Dan Lasater, the Little Rock bond dealer and friend of Bill Clinton who in 1986 pleaded guilty to charges of giving cocaine to friends and business associates on hundreds of occasions...
...It was a recent incident-within the last five years...
...Officials say knowing about a staffer's drug past is important for several reasons...
...The flap dominated headlines for a few days...
...Second day delivery: add $11.95 per pressure cooker...
...I think the first time I heard the word "designer drugs" was off an appointee...
...A: It was reported at one percent, sir...
...They are then required to undergo an FBI investigation and must receive Secret Service approval before being issued a permanent pass...
...One Hill staffer "got on the phone and started calling random 456 numbers [the White House telephone exchange] and asking whoever answered what kind of pass they had," says a former Republican staffer...
...The GAO found that Kennedy and Livingstone sat on the forms for an average of 38 days before sending them off to the FBI for investigation...
...Ironically, the issue came to light not as a result of the drug histories-which at the time remained a tightly held secret-but because of another Clinton administration scandal: the firings in the Travel Office...
...Official Blames 'Procrastination' in Failure to Complete Process...
...She's sitting there with the big `T' [indicating a temporary clearance] on her pass," says a staffer who was in the room...
...He reportedly liked to hold parties in which large quantities of cocaine were served on silver platters.' He also supplied then-Governor Clinton's brother Roger with drugs-and helped Roger pay his drug debts, too...
...What if word got out...
...Automatic pressure regulation, fingertip pressure release, stay-cool handles...
...3) hire without any conditions...
...One, it's criminal activity," says a former White House aide who dealt extensively with personnel matters...
...For the new Clinton staffers, problems developed at the very beginning...
...Dated June 10, 1993, it is a request from Kennedy and Livingstone for answers to several drug-use questions (emphasis in the original): If one admits (i) present, or (2) prior-3 months ago...
...listed and virtually goof-proof...
...And if the use is substantial but in the past, there could be a stability issue...
...Nearly a month later, McLarty replied that "no material changes" had been made...
...COPYRIGHT RESERVED 1995 FUTURA HAWKINS ARE TRADEMARKS OF HAWKINS COOKERS LIMITED...
...Delicious vegetables keep their garden freshness, need less salt for flavorful results...
...A short time later, the White House inadvertently gave congressional Republicans the most information they had yet received about the extent of the pass problems...
...On the old form, the Service simply indicated that the person under consideration had been approved or denied...
...9.5 quart, $119.95...
...Futura's unique safety lid is pressure-locked from the inside like a modern jetliner door and will open only when the pressure falls...
...Agent Jeff Undercoffer testified that "a few dozen" cases showed recent drug use...
...Even low cost, tough cuts of meat are made succulent...
...The administration would set up a program under which the staffers would submit to special drug testing...
...They corroborated Aldrich's story, and the investigation was under way...
...The staffers got their permanent passes...
...Four capacities: 3.6 quart, $69.95...
...For one thing, many staffers simply failed to fill out the SF-86...
...5.2 quart, $79.95...
...Time-tested, Certified Futura has been on the American market for nine years...
...it seems people who had no business with a pass had one, and people who legitimately needed a pass didn't...
...7.3 quart, $99.95...
...More troubling is drug use that law enforcement officers call "recent or extensive," meaning it occurred within the previous five years or was particularly heavy in nature...
...Questioned about the story and the FBI and Secret Service depositions, White House spokesman Michael McCurry attempted to define the drug issue as one of youthful experimentation, saying, "I was a kid in the 1970's...
...Q: Were these people-once you received that notice that something like that had occurred, were they immediately removed from the White House staff, to your knowledge...
...6 months ago...
...That point came when the Secret Service refused to grant clearances to at least eleven staffers with the most extensive drug histories...
...A: Yes...
...From there, an investigation can spread across the country...
...The "compromise" gave the Secret Service no role in implementing or monitoring the special testing...
...Q: OK, exactly, in other words...
...It seems odd in retrospect, but at the time that the special drug testing program was being secretly established inside the White House, most of the concerns on Capitol Hill still centered on the security clearance delays themselves-and not the reason that lay behind them...
...BY BYRON YORK f all the weapons the Dole campaign has tried against Bill Clinton, the drug issue is one of the few that seems to work...
...McCurry said that nine staffers remain in the program.2 He refused to reveal their names, but said, "There are none at...
...This is an old issue," Frank Wolf told the Washington Post...
...In all, the GAO reported that it took an average of 346 days for new Clinton administration staffers to receive final approval for a permanent pass...
...Probably 25 percent of the people I interviewed had recent or extensive drug use-where I personally would have said, `This is more than experimentation, this is a person who had a drug problem...
...For the first time, congressional investigators heard not from Patsy Thomasson but from the FBI and Secret Service agents actually involved in the background investigations...
...Later there were press reports that another Clinton confidante, New York lawyer Susan Thomases, also had a pass...
...On the other end of the process, the Secret Service noticed the same problem...
...Q: Could it be more than eleven...
...Many staffers in prior administrations listed college-age marijuana smoking and did not have any problems in the background check...
...We felt that the derogatory information was such that it may compromise the security of the White House...
...After all, it is a bit sordid-and opens Republicans to administration charges that they are ignoring the real issues while preferring to wallow in sleaze...
...The following is an exchange with Alabama Senator Richard Shelby: Foreword by Jack Kemp THE Compassionate Conservative "A brilliant illustration rof the failure of so-called conipassirniate liberal politics...
...And in Washington, it was inevitable that the word would get to Capitol Hill...
...FAX: (91-22) 2181190...
...the rank of assistant to the President, deputy assistant to the President, or special assistant to the President, which are the three highest ranks here at the White House...
...The Secret Service action was extraordinary, because the Service bases its judgments on a very narrow range of concerns...
...Two or three of them actually answered...
...White House officials had to find a way to deal with the problem...
...Special Program to Test Some White House Staff Met Agency Concerns...
...This person is a director of one of the offices...
...Republicans were puzzled...
...THE DRUG WAR In December 1994, Newt Gingrich-at that time about to assume the office of Speaker of the House-said on NBC's Meet the Press, "I had a senior law-enforcement official tell me that in his judgment, up to a quarter of the White House staff, when they first came in, had used drugs in the last four or five years...
...If you're still smoking pot and you're getting ready to work at the White House, that's a problem because it's illegal...
...Visa, MasterCard or money order: 10-day delivery...
...MELTDOWN McLarty's confident tone concealed a growing concern within the White House...
...Q: In this current administration...
...BYRON YORK is an investigative writer for The American Spectator...
...It was not until the fall that questions began to focus on the background checks...
...It did not take an old Washington hand to see that extensive drug use discovered by FBI investigators could mean trouble for dozens of staffers, some of them high-ranking...
...Thousands have written to say how much they love the Futura...
...Just look at what happened to Gingrich when he spoke out...
...WORD GETS OUT While the lawyers fretted about what the president knew about his staff's drug use, gossip about the pass problems began to spread...
...Beans, lentils and rice are cooked to perfection...
...Q: Any crack cocaine that you ever recall being used...
...Product, Price Futura is made from virgin aluminum, hard-anodized to 50 microns thickness inside and out...
...It was much more than the one or two times when they were 18 or 19 years old, when they were freshmen in college trying a marijuana cigarette...
...Quarter-inch thick, fuel-efficient base...
...The Service relented only after twenty-one employees were placed in an extraordinary and unprecedented program of individualized drug testing-a program administered by a White House official with intimate ties to a convicted drug felon...
...In early October, Wolf wrote to McLarty again, suggesting that "many of the individuals who hold temporary passes do so because the Counsel's office is holding them up and Secret Service has not had an opportunity to independently review the FBI investigative reports...
...A: You've got to pass a drug test to work here...
...Q: But the question is, what does he A: You have got to pass a drug test to work here...
...In her answers, submitted in early summer, Thomasson officially revealed its existence...
...They started pursuing any lead they could think of...
...being honest about drug use tells officials the staffer is probably being honest about other things-and vice versa...
...In the first six months it was terrible," says a law enforcement source who was inside the White House at that time...
...And even though he was referring to the White House of 1993, his point-that the drug histories are really an index of poor character in this administration-might soon become important again...
...As far as I'm concerned, the White House has addressed it, and it's over...
...EereWatd by Jack Kemp Joseph Jacobs urges us to move beyond the compulsory compassion of the state that has tragically failed us...
...We denied them passes," assistant special agent in charge Arnold Cole later told congressional investigators...
...News that teen mar ijuana use rose 105 percent on Clin ton's watch was like a gift from heav en to Dole advisers...
...When questioned by House investigators, Kennedy's boss, former White House Counsel Bernard Nussbaum, said, "I didn't specifically task Bill Kennedy to assign this," but added that the drug issue "arose from time to time...
...Q: But it was beyond - A: Mushrooms, mushrooms, you know, hallucinogenic mushrooms...
...If they had their druthers, the people wouldn't be there...
...It was older people who had used illegal drugs much more recently, as recently as the inaugural...
...Whether or not the staffer is a political risk or a possible embarrassment to the administration is for the political appointees within the White House to decide...
...Good for hearty soups and stews, it is ideal for low fat, low calorie cooking...
...But the Secret Service officials really didn't have much choice...
...most of the new information has come to light as a result of the Travelgate, Filegate, and White House security pass inquiries undertaken by Republicans in Congress during the last three years...
...This time, people noticed...
...If there was no information for the FBI to begin the investigation, the investigation couldn't begin...
...A General Accounting Office study found that staffers took an average of ioo days to get around to filling out their background forms during the first year of the administration...
...Versatile Futura can be used on gas, electricity, halogen, ceramic cooktops, even kerosene and wood stoves...
...Save valuable minutes, even hours, in everyday cooking...
...Personal checks: three-week delivery...
...Facing persistent questioning from reporters about the recent and extensive drug use revealed in the background investigations, McCurry would only say that present drug use would not be tolerated in the White House...
...In late September, the White House refused requests from congressional investigators seeking more information about the jobs held by those in the special drug testing program...
...He asked who other than White House employees had passes, and what changes had been made in the method of granting security clearances...
...Clinton's decision to cripple drug interdiction efforts and gut the drug czar's office made it easy-and entirely legitimate-to blame the increase on his policies...
...We-absolutely, he does...
...Then-White House Counsel Abner Mikva demanded an apology, and even first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton got into the act, calling Gingrich's remarks "so unfair...
...But Kennedy, Livingstone, and other top officials chose not to do that...
...Q: What do you define as recent...
...Almost everyone involved with the security pass process came across a story like that...
...The Service is really just worried about one ques tion: Is the person a physical risk to the president or the White House...
...They were in addition to marijuana...
...The usage had stopped," Woods said, "the day before they filled out the SF-86...
...Q: And were these drugs anything other than marijuana use...
...A: Designer drugs...
...Futura is Underwriters' Laboratories, Inc...
...A: And you have to submit yourself to random tests in order to stay here...
...And Wolf says, `How come you don't have your pass?' and she says, `None of us do...
...The paperwork goes to the White House Counsel's Office and the Office of Personnel Security, which forwards it to FBI headquarters in Washington...
...By his passionate insistence in the book on results rather than good intentions, he combines the best of American business sense with the best of that very American commitment to those less fortunate...
...Months later-when outsiders first learned of the program and who ran it-that fact prompted hoots of derision from Republicans and even some Democrats, because Thomasson's name has become closely identified with the topic of illegal drugs...
...We now know, for example, that their drugtaking spanned the spectrum from marijuana to cocaine to crack to hallucinogens and so-called designer drugs...
...A: In previous administrations, yes...
...After that, investigators sensed something was going on...
...Quick cooking better retains nutrients, particularly certain vitamins and proteins...
...21 The American Spectator • November 1996 THE CLINTON SECURITY CIRCUS It's no secret that the White House was a chaotic place in the early days of the Clinton administration...
...Box 11706, Green Bay, WI 54307...
...One obvious response would have been to get rid of the eleven staffers involved...
...If a person says `I didn't' and you find out he did or does," says the former official, "then you think, `Is this the kind of person who could be an embarrassment to the president or the U.S...
...Jobs went undone, policy veered all over the map, even the phone system nearly melted down...
...On top of that, other Republicans-who were just days away from assuming power in Congress-did not rush to the speaker's support...
...Of course I did...
...N O z C) N CN It's taken more than three years for the White House to acknowledge that many of its staffers came to Washington with serious drug problems...
...If the second Clinton administration is anything like the first, the FBI and Secret Service will have their work cut out for them...
...2Recently Franklin Reeder, the current head of White House administration, told Congress that eight staffers remain...
...It went away in part because Gingrich refused to supply details to back up his claim...
...Wolf responded with another letter mentioning that some of the outsiders with passes included "highly paid lawyers, consultants and lobbyists who are not subject to any 23 The American Spectator . November r 9 9 6 kind of oversight or disclosure requirements...
...Arianna Huff ngton Toll-free Orders: 1-800-927-8733 ($24.95 he $14.99 pp $3.50 s&h) Published by the Jacobs Family Foundation * Distributed by ICS Press 13~Ipi dry 25 The American Spectator • November r 9 9 6 Q: Was the number of such individuals pegged at eleven, as I indicated...
...The elevated temperature in a Futura, 40* F higher than the boiling point of water, sterilizes food thoroughly...
...When Lasater went to jail, he chose Thomasson-his closest associate-to take over his company...
...When asked how many of those filling the top jobs in the White House were in the program, she referred Wolf to the answer quoted above, indicating again that senior staff were indeed involved...
...Not only was it potentially embarrassing and politically damaging, it also caused White House lawyers to worry that hiring so many people with histories of breaking the law might ultimately cause legal problems for the president himself...
...Brown told Tyrrell that he saw Clinton "stoned" but never actually witnessed the governor ingesting drugs...
...Another staffer "repeatedly lied to me about an incident involving law enforcement...
...He even gave her power of attorney...
...The GAO found that Kennedy and Livingstone held the reports an average of 174 more days before recommending to the Secret Service that a pass be issued...
...Each Futura comes with two cookbooks with full instructions and 84 tested recipes including stocks, soups, fish, poultry, various meats, roasts, stews, rice, vegetables, beans, lentils and desserts...
...The issue disappeared until nearly a year later, when Thomasson faced more questions, this time from the Senate appropriations subcommittee...
...You save time and energy, money and effort...
...With Republicans making trouble in Congress-even from the relative weakness of their minority status-the drug situation reached a critical point sometime around the end of 1993 and the beginning of 1994...
...Between ten and eleven...
...But now, after months of investigation and depositions, it turns out Gingrich was right...
...Quick-n-Easy Tests show Futura cooks on average 46% faster than a microwave oven...
...What reason could the administration cite to explain hiring so many people who would have been booted out of previous administrations...
...For more on Lasater's business dealings, see James Ring Adams on page 42...
...That's what this is about...
...When asked whether any of the other twelve who had formerly been in the program were from the highest ranks, McCurry balked...
...Has the number changed...
...And agent Dennis Sculimbrene said he saw more drug use than he had ever seen before: Q: The illegal drug use, was it beyond younger generation kids who might have smoked marijuana back in college...
...If, however, the individual agrees to a bi-annual drug testing program, above and beyond the mandatory applicant and random testing already required under the executive office of the President Drug Free Workplace Plan, the individual would no longer be considered a threat and would be appropriate for the issuance of a pass...
...For the most part, reporters seemed satisfied with the administration's explanation that staffers had been so busy that they just hadn't gotten around to filling out their background forms...
...They were talking about how odd it was...
...Another FBI agent, Gregory Schwarz, remembered recent or extensive drug use in "more than 50" cases...
...Fax: (414) 339-0585 or call Hawkins 1-800-6574416 (24 hours a day, seven days a week...
...It remained in the background until July of this year, when the Filegate investigation raised new questions about security clearances, not only of Craig Livingstone but of the entire White House staff...
...Q: What do you define as recent...
...Q: Well, I know, but was that eleven people...
...No stirring is required while it cooks under pressure...
...That's why he makes them pee in a jar before they can work here...
...Now, with drugs an election issue, Clinton & Co...
...The memo directed Kennedy's staff to have the answers ready in a week...
...For long-time White House watchers, it was an amazing series of events...
...The Secret Service was pressed to accommodate people in a way they had never seen before," says one Capitol Hill investigator...
...The information is sent back to headquarters, where a summary is prepared and sent to the White House...
...We cannot agree to do that...
...When Thomasson appeared before the House appropriating subcommittee in the spring of 1994, the Washington Post headlined a story, "loo on White...
...We were picking up rumors from a lot of career White House staffers and other people familiar with White House operations," says a former congressional investigator...
...Nussbaum declined to comment for this article...
...That's when the logjam really began...
...The SF-86 is a detailed questionnaire covering almost all aspects of the staffer's life, including any history of illegal drug use...
...The drug question also tests the new employee's truthfulness...
...Should the president win re-election, there will undoubtedly be a large turnover in his staff, meaning another influx of newcomers to the White House...
...They were caught with drugs and denied it...
...While lawmakers have the authority to investigate White House staff drug use as part of Congress's oversight of White House operations, most have little desire to make a big issue of it...
...We know that White House attempts to explain the drug histories as the result of "youthful experimentation" were untrue...
...Once completed, the forms disappeared in the office of then-White House Associate Counsel William Kennedy (who waited more than a year to get his own permanent pass) and then-Director of Personnel Security Craig Livingstone (whose background problems have since become well-known...
...I don't have that information," he declared, adding that he would not "delve into their personnel files...
...a so-called "drug letter" would be placed in their personnel files, stipulating that they had agreed to be tested twice a year, without warning...
...26 November x996 . The American Spectator Cook succulent healthful food 46% faster than a microwave oven J n a Futura Pressure Cooker, safely contained steam evokes irresistible flavors from fresh, natural, wholesome foods...
...Futura makes great-tasting, healthful meals conveniently...
...When asked whether any of them had access to "sensitive areas of the White House (the West Wing)," she replied that many of them had...
...Being honest about drug use tells officials the staffer is probably being honest about other things as well...
...No foundation, just basically smear and innuendo...
...government...
...The revelation received little national press coverage...
...Instead, it is run by the White House Office of Administration, which, at the time the program was begun, was headed by Patsy Thomasson...
...Because it is portable and needs less water and fuel, it is ideal for cooking while camping, on boats and in RVs...
...22 November 19 9 6 . The American Spectator FBI agent Thomas Renaghan-who supervised Woods, Schwarz, and Sculimbrene at the White House-confirmed that marijuana, cocaine, hallucinogens, mushrooms, and "maybe" methamphetamines were among the drugs mentioned in the background reports...
...A: Not to my knowledge, sir...
...By the summer of 1993 investigators for congressional Republicans-at that time still in the minority-started hearing about problems with security clearances...
...The shift came after the appearance of a figure who would later play a very public role in the security clearance issue: FBI agent Gary Aldrich...
...Approximately 1% of the io44 employees in the Executive Office of the President," she wrote, "including senior staff, have been requested to be part of an individual drug testing program" (emphasis added...
...Instead, they came up with what Cole later called a "compromise" plan...
...People were talking about how bad it was," says the law enforcement officer who asked to remain anonymous...
...A: Possibly crack cocaine, but I couldn't be specific about that...
...They weren't charged, but there was a police record of the incident...
...The drug angle did not emerge until a few months later...
...The administration's internal investigation, the so-called White House Management Review, released in July 1993, revealed that Clinton crony Harry Thomason had a White House pass in the early days of the administration...
...A: It is one percent of 1,o44-ten or eleven...
...It's not a question of what A: Yes, obviously...
...Hawkins Saute Pan may also be ordered for $35.00 and Hawkins Stir-fry Pan for $45.00...
...Q: What kinds of drugs, if you recall...
...They work for the president, who ultimately can hire anyone he wants...
...Thus, when the Secret Service denied passes, it did so on the rather unprecedented grounds that a significant number of staffers might be a danger to the president...
...The new form had a box with the following paragraph -language that effectively turned a denial into an approval: The above listed individual is considered a potential threat to the President of the United States, the Vice President of the United States, and/or the White House complex, and therefore is not suitable for issuance of a permanent pass...
...Congressional investigators believe that some of those cases involved staffers who stayed as long as their background problems remained undiscovered and then took off...
...Special offer upto January 31, 1997: shipping and handling is free plus on order of two pressure cookers (any capacity) you receive a 10-inch $35.00 Hawkins Sautd Pan absolutely free and for order of all four pressure cookers a Hawkins Saute Pan and 10-inch $45.00 Hawkins Stir-fry Pan free...
...Later, in her answers to written follow-up questions, Thomasson conceded that the actual number was fifteen...
...Q: And you said the drug use would even go up to the point of someone having used drugs at the time of the inauguration...
...Republicans had gotten word of the special testing and asked Thomasson about it in written follow-up questions...
...Your request amounts to asking us to be complicitous in a methodical, broadscale invasion of privacy," White House Counsel Jack Quinn wrote in a letter to House Civil Service Subcommittee Chairman John Mica...
...It is especially useful at high altitudes as it counters the drop in pressure and the longer cooking time...
...Save on buying expensive, prepared food...
...In late July, Virginia Republican Frank Wolf, a member of the House subcommittee that funds the White House, wrote a letter to then-Chief of Staff Mack McLarty asking about security clearance procedures...
...Still, he could not evade questions about recent use: Q: People are asking if the president and the White House doesn't [sic] have some concern about drug use by people he is trying to hire...
...the backup in Kennedy's office indicated problems far more serious than the disorder of a new and inexperienced White House staff...
...PRESSURE COOKER...
...Aldrich declined to comment on the content of his talks with congressional staffers...
...The remark enraged White House officials...
...No evidence...
...5 years ago...
...The source remembers one staffer "who works in the West Wing, who admitted to me that she used drugs up to the day that she started working, but she wasn't going to use them when she worked at the White House...
...drug use to the [Secret Service] or the FBI during the screening [background investigation] process, what are the legal and/or regulatory rights, duties and responsibilities of the President with respect to that individual and the knowledge the President now possesses about the individual's violations of the law...
...We know that at least one, and perhaps more, senior White House staffers were among those with drug histories so substantial that the Secret Service initially refused to grant them a White House pass...
...That information, along with other aspects of the unique arrangement, remains a White House secret...
...But Clinton is vulnerable on another drug issue, one the Republican challenger is perhaps too good-mannered to press: the drug issue inside the White House...
...Was it eleven...
...The book also includes a Drug Enforcement Agency document describing Lasater and Thomasson's land-shopping trip to Belize in 1984...
...A: Yes...
...Cocaine...
...With erer-v word of his ground-breaking book, Dr: Joseph Jacobs rejects the nation that conservarire thought abandons the poor, the planer, the working man or woman, children or the elderly...
...House Staff Lack Clearance...
...PURPLE HAZE The newly revealed facts about the extent of drug use help explain the otherwise mysterious paralysis that plagued the security clearance process in President Clinton's first year...
...In many cases, the field investigation found significant problems, which were summarized and sent back to Kennedy and Livingstone...
...And nobody had a permanent pass...
...And I am not talking about junior staffers, either...
...The GAO might have thought the same thing, which perhaps accounts for a White House letter warning the GAO against concluding that "something in the background investigation precipitated the departure...
...are still keeping some key facts secret-even from the Secret Service...
...What they found is not known...
...the pass list, he declared, was confidential...
...So it was not surprising when word began to get out that the administration was stumbling over the seemingly simple issue of security clearances...
...investigators try to evaluate the staffer's history and character by interviewing as many as thirty people who knew him at various times in the past...
...Hawkins Cookers Limited, manufacturers of the Futura, have sold over 18 million pressure cookers worldwide...
...In R. Emmett Tyrrell's biography Boy Clinton, Arkansas State Trooper L.D...
...In the past few months new evidence has emerged about the record of widespread illegal drug use by some members of the White House staff...
...I think some people used LSD...
...This surface, which is an integral part of the metal and harder than steel, prevents food from coming into contact with aluminum, is nonreactive, non-tarnishing and hard to scratch...
...Again, the testing program attracted almost no attention in the press...
...And we know the issue rattled nerves at the White House from nearly the beginning of the administration...
...Did I smoke a joint from time to time...
...Unlike other Clinton scandals, drug use by White House staffers has never received a full-scale official investigation...
...it appeared that in the Clinton White House, people who had no business with a pass had one, and people who legitimately needed a pass didn't...
...Each new White House staffer-and there are hundreds when an administration changes -is given a temporary White House pass after a cursory investigation of his (or her) background...
...The Washington Post ran a front page story headlined, "Drug Use Worried Secret Service...
...Other reports revealed that Thomasson herself, along with Dee Dee Myers, Ricki Seidman, Kennedy, and even Mack McLarty, did not have permanent passes...
...In late October, McLarty assured the congressman that everything was fine...
...A: Yes, it was...
...after talking with Aldrich, the investigator checked with several sources who were familiar with events inside the White House...
...But something was going on...
...Q: OK...
...The GAO also found that 11o staffers left the White House at some stage before receiving a permanent pass...
...A Order Bay City International, 3914 A Maker Street, P.O...
...The episode revealed a curious facet of the drug war that has gone on between the White House and Capitol Hill...
...A newly released memo shows how much the question troubled White House officials...
...Security clearances," he wrote, "are being handled in a timely manner...
...Shipping and handling for orders after January 31: $7.95 per unit...
...Another part of the compromise was a change in the form used by the Secret Service to indicate whether an applicant has been found suitable for a permanent pass...
...Many exclaim: "Your product works exactly as you say it will...
...The FBI check is thorough...
...Also, ease the pressure of entertaining graciously at home...
...To get the clearance process started, the new employeefrom the chief of staff down to the gofer who operates the copy machine-has to fill out a form called the SF-86 (SF simply stands for "standard form...
...As she had been with the House, Thomasson was reluctant to give any details about the program, even evading questions about how many staffers were involved...
...Make interesting one-pot meals...
...Brown says: "I'd never seen the governor around coke unless he was around Lasater...
...Does the President have the authority to (1) refuse employment, (2) hire on conditions: send the individual to a health care professional to assess the individual's suitability/risk as a pre-con dition of employment...
...A: In this current administration, no...
...What follows is assembled from confidential interviews with some of those involved, depositions and testimony given before House and Senate investigators, and a handful of White House documents that have been released to the public...
...There is evidence that Bill Clinton himself attended some of Lasater's parties...
...A: Between ten and eleven...
...Patsy Thomasson, who at that time was White House director of administration, appeared before Wolf and the rest of the appropriations subcommittee...
...FBI agent Cecelia Woods, in a deposition given to congressional investigators, cited one staffer who claimed to be drug free but had not been that way for long...
...Several sources say Aldrich brought his concerns about White House pass problems to a Capitol Hill investigator...
...The summary is then given to the Secret Service, along with a request to issue a permanent White House pass...
...the White House has not released any other documents or information on the matter...
...A: It was approximately eleven people...
...This time, McLarty did not reply...
Vol. 29 • November 1996 • No. 11
