GOP Attacks White House ‘Stone Wall’

WASHINGTON — House Republicans, confronting a White House lawyer who decided more than a year ago to shield a batch of documents from congressional investigators, charged Thursday that the Clinton administration has consistently withheld information in an effort to impede investigations into campaign fund-raising practices.

“The stone wall erected around the White House must be taken down, brick by brick,” fumed Rep. Dan Burton (R-Ind.), chairman of the House Government Reform and Oversight Committee, which is conducting hearings on campaign fund-raising improprieties.

At issue are documents concerning a White House database, known as WhoDB, that the administration turned over to congressional investigators last week. Among the documents is a 1994 note by former aide Brian Bailey indicating that President Clinton wanted the White House computer system, which was prepared with taxpayer funds, to be “integrated” with the Democratic National Committee’s database.

Deputy White House Counsel Cheryl D. Mills testified that she had not regarded the documents as covered by an information request submitted in August 1996 by Rep. David M. McIntosh (R-Ind.). A subcommittee chaired by McIntosh is investigating whether the computer database, assembled at a cost of $700,000, was improperly used for partisan purposes.

In his request, McIntosh asked for “all communications related to WhoDB,” broad wording that Republican investigators said should have included the recently released notes.

Mills said she could not recall the reasoning that led her and Jack Quinn, then the White House counsel, to withhold the documents. “I cannot today re-create our decision-making,” she said in a statement to reporters.

Quinn, in his own statement, said: “We gave them what they asked for.”

But White House spokesman Lanny J. Davis indicated that Mills has had second thoughts about her decision. “I am sure in retrospect Ms. Mills would have rather avoided any debate by having produced this document back in September of ‘96,” Davis said.

Quinn’s replacement, White House Counsel Charles F.C. Ruff, recently reversed the earlier ruling and sent the documents to McIntosh. However, Ruff characterized any perceived White House delays as missteps caused by the crush of document requests.

“There is not in my office, there never has been and there never will be, any defiance, stonewalling, obstruction or any other inappropriate conduct,” Ruff said.

News accounts earlier this year established that Marsha Scott, an administration aide with close ties to the first family, headed an effort in 1994 to establish a new computer database at the White House.

According to people who were involved with the White House database project, numerous meetings took place in 1994 and 1995 involving Scott, Bailey and two deputy White House chiefs of staff, Erskine Bowles and Harold M. Ickes.

The note by Bailey shows the involvement of top Clinton aides in meshing the databases of the White House and the party.

“Harold and Deborah DeLee want to make sure WhoDB is integrated w/DNC database--so we can share. Evidently POTUS [the president] wants this to! (Makes Sense),” wrote Bailey, an aide on Bowles’ staff who was helping to build the presidential database.

White House officials said Bailey could not recall the exact conversation or meeting to which his notes refer. DeLee is a former executive director of the Democratic National Committee.

White House spokesman Barry Toiv said Thursday that there had been no systematic flow of information from the White House database to the party or other outside groups. In some “very specific circumstances,” Toiv said, the White House has provided information from the database to the Democrats for purposes of inviting certain supporters to official events.

Mills was also grilled Thursday about her involvement in the delayed production of videotapes prepared by the White House Communications Agency showing Clinton meeting with supporters. Mills wrote a memo in 1996 that mentioned the videotaping, and she showed up once with her family on a videotape recorded in the Oval Office. But House lawmakers said she never sought out videotapes when congressional investigators specifically requested them.

Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Los Angeles) said he found the delayed White House production of the videotapes to be inexcusable. But he added: “Careless mistakes and not malicious intent is the likely explanation.”