Memo Details Government Search for Perot Passport Data

WASHINGTON — Two weeks after they conducted an unusual late-night hunt for the passport files of Bill Clinton and his mother, State Department officials returned to a National Archives depository in suburban Maryland to search the passport records of independent presidential candidate Ross Perot, a National Archives memo says.

The memo states that Richard P. McClevey, a deputy to assistant secretary for consular affairs Elizabeth M. Tamposi, and two other State Department officials--whose names were deleted--”removed one application and two letters from his (Perot’s) company that were loose in the files.”

The memo does not explain what the company letters were about or why they were in Perot’s files. It states that “other applications for Mr. Perot had been retrieved by the State Department in the early 1980s and not returned to file.”

The Oct. 26 memo provides the first indication that Perot’s passport records were searched during the final weeks of the 1992 presidential campaign.

“It’s a gross abuse of federal power,” Perot said Monday when informed of the search in a telephone interview. “Somebody ought to hold them accountable for it.”