TRAVELGATE

Hillary Clinton’s book, Living History, could be titled Lying History. It is loaded with lies, a fact that most reviewers have overlooked. This Report will focus on the lies she tells about two major scandals, Travelgate and Fostergate.

Travelgate, the first major scandal of the Clinton administration, erupted on May 19, 1993 when the White House Travel Office staff of seven were told they would be terminated on June 5. The director, Billy Dale, and his deputy had been with the Travel Office for nearly 30 years. The other five had worked there from 8 to 26 years. Except for two who were out of town, they were all escorted out of their offices and expelled from the White House grounds.
 

Their treatment shocked the White House reporters, who knew them well because they made the travel arrangements for the reporters to cover the President when he went on trips. The media coverage was so negative that the White House was forced to revoke the dismissals and to acknowledge that they were “insensitive and unnecessary.”

Dale and his deputy were allowed to put in for retirement and the other five were put on administrative leave while efforts were made to find other jobs for them in government agencies. Dale was subjected to an FBI investigation instigated by the White House to find an excuse for the firings.

In her book, Hillary denies any responsibility for the firings. She says, “I was stuck with the consequences of an offhand comment I made after hearing about concerns of financial mismanagement and waste in the White House Travel Office. I said to Chief of Staff Mack McLarty that if there were such problems, I hoped he would look into it.”

She alleges that Peat Marwick had found that the office’s records were in shambles, that $18,000 worth of checks had not been accounted for, and that was why McLarty and the Counsel’s office decided to fire the staff. The Clintons had put a young relative of Bill’s in the office, which she aspired to head. She had taken many records home creating disarray.

The House committee on Government Reform reached the following conclusions after a long investigation: “1. The Travel Office firings were a result of pressure by Harry Thomason (a close friend of the Clintons) and Mrs. Clinton which accelerated the week before the firings. 2. The Travel Office firings were part of a campaign payback scheme that was in place long before May 1993. 3. Harry Thomason maligned the Travel Office employees...in order to move them out of that office. 4. Thomason’s travel business interests posed an inherent conflict with his involvement in Travel Office decisions. 5. The initial press offensive against the Travel Office employees mischaracterized the Peat Marwick review and the FBI’s role in order to cover up the real reasons for the firings. 6. The White House initiated a full-scale campaign of misinformation in the aftermath of the Travel Office firings and put in place a cover-up from which it could not extricate itself.”

David Watkins, the Assistant to the President for Management and Administration, had been slow to execute Hillary’s orders to fire the Travel Office staff. In a memo dated May 17, 1993, Watkins said: “The First Lady took interest in having the Travel Office situation resolved quickly, following Harry Thomason’s bringing it to her attention. Thomason told the First Lady of his suspicion that the Travel Office was improperly funneling business to a single charter company, and told her that the functions of that office could be easily replaced and reallocated.”

Watkins wrote, “Once this made it onto the First Lady’s agenda, Vince Foster became involved, and he and Harry Thomason regularly informed me of her attention to the Travel Office situation, as well as her insistence that the situation be resolved immediately by replacing the Travel Office staff. Foster regularly informed me that the First Lady was concerned and desired action-the action desired was the firing of the Travel Office staff. On Friday, while I was in Memphis, Foster told me that it was important that I speak directly with the First Lady that day. I called her that evening and she conveyed to me in clear terms her desire for swift and clear action to resolve the situation.

“She mentioned that Thomason had explained how the Travel Office could be run after removing the current staff-that plan included bringing in World Wide Travel (in which Thomason had an interest) and Penny Sample to handle the basic travel functions...and in light of that she thought immediate action was in order.”

Watkins said McLarty had sent him the clear message that “immediate action must be taken” and that he was relieved to learn that “we were finally going to take action (to resolve the situation in accord with the First Lady’s wishes.) We both knew there would be hell to pay if after our failure in the Secret Service situation earlier, we failed to take swift and decisive action in conformity with the First Lady’s wishes.”

The Watkins memo had been sent to McLarty and copied to Mrs. Clinton. It contradicts the written responses to five written questions posed to Mrs. Clinton by the General Accounting Office on March 21, 1994, which she later swore under oath were accurate.

She said she “did not know the origin of the decision to fire the Travel Office employees;” she “did not direct that any action be taken by anyone with regard to the Travel Office, other than expressing an interest in receiving information about the review;” and she “has no specific recollection of any particular conversation with Mr. Thomason on this issue at that time.”

She was not indicted for perjury because the independent counsel doubted that a jury would convict her. But the Justice Department charged Billy Dale with embezzlement of Travel Office funds. The FBI tried without success to find evidence that the Dales were living beyond their means. Faced with crushing legal bills if the case went to trial, Billy asked his lawyer to proffer a guilty plea in return for a very short incarceration. He said that if the judge accepted it, he would go out on the courthouse steps and tell the world he was not guilty of any wrongdoing, but he was willing to spend some time in jail to avoid losing his home. His lawyer said that if he did that he would be hauled back into court and charged with perjury. That would result in more jail time.

The proffer was not made, and the case went to trial. In her book, Hillary says, “The Justice Department found enough evidence to indict and try the former head of the Travel Office for embezzlement. According to press reports, he offered to plead guilty to a criminal charge and serve a brief prison sentence, but the prosecutor insisted on going to trial on a felony charge. After several famous journalists testified as character witnesses at his trial, he was ultimately acquitted.”

The best witness to testify for Dale was Dennis Sculimbrene, an FBI agent assigned to the White House for several years. He was effective in exposing the weakness of the government’s case, infuriating the FBI. He paid dearly for having had the courage to defend an innocent man that the First Lady wanted to jail. It took the jury only 20 minutes to find Dale not guilty. It took 6 years for the FBI to compensate Sculimbrene for the disability benefits denied him after he testified.