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Subject: State Dept. Aides Searched Perot's Passport File; State Dept. Aides Searched
Date: Tue, 10 Nov 92 04:53:22 EST
Message-ID: <27.1992Nov10.045323@AmeriCast.com>

State Dept. Aides Searched Perot's Passport File; State Dept.
Aides Searched Perot Passport File<By Michael Isikoff and Walter
Pincus<Washington Post Staff Writers=

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 and retrieve the passport records of indepen-
dent presidential candidate Ross Perot, according to a National
Archives memo.

The internal memo states that Richard P. McClevey, chief of the
State Department's Office of Program Support, and two unnamed
department officials visited the National Records Center in Suit-
land on Oct. 13 "and researched the passport application files
for H. Ross Perot."

The memo states that McClevey, a deputy to assistant secretary
for consular affairs Elizabeth M. Tamposi, and the 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 applica-
tions 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 as were Clinton's during the final
weeks of the 1992 presidential campaign. Although the State
Department has acknowledged receiving five Freedom of Information
Act (FOIA) requests on Perot this year, a senior department offi-
cial familiar with the requests said yesterday that none of them
specifically sought information about Perot's passport records.
The Archives memo also contains no indication that the search of
Perot's files was conducted in response to any FOIA request.

"It's a gross abuse of federal power," Perot said yesterday when
informed of the State Department search by a reporter during a
telephone interview. "Somebody ought to hold them accountable for
it."

Perot said that during the campaign there was "a steady stream of
government agencies going after everything they could get on me,
typically under the guise of freedom of information . . . . It's
kids in <the playground . . . . This is just the way <American
politics is conducted.  It's a sad commentary."

The State Department search of Perot's files adds a new element
to what department officials have acknowledged was an abuse of
the freedom-of-information process to hunt for politically damag-
ing material on Clinton - conduct that has triggered separate in-
vestigations by the State Department's inspector general and the
General Accounting Office.

Asked about the matter on Oct. 27, acting Secretary of State
Lawrence S. Eagleburger said: "There is no question the State
Department has been politicized in this campaign, and I don't
like it at all . . . . Some things may or may not have been done
- I do not know yet and won't until the investigation is over -
that were beyond the pale."

The Archives memo also raises new questions about Eagleburger's
Oct. 2 decision, based on recommendations from subordinates, to
request an FBI investigation into whether there had been illegal
tampering with Clinton's passport files. The investigation was
leaked within hours to Newsweek magazine, whose story fueled
suspicions about Clinton's anti-Vietnam War activities two de-
cades ago, but the FBI concluded within a few days there was no
evidence to support the tampering allegation.

State Department spokesman Richard Boucher has said the concerns
about tampering were raised by deputies of Tamposi who searched
through Clinton's files for 10 hours on Sept.  30 and Oct. 1.
However, Archives officials had already told the department they
saw nothing unusual in the Clinton files.

The Oct. 26 memo states that two of Tamposi's deputies - Carmen
DePlacido, then acting deputy assistant secretary of state for
passport services, and Steven Moheban, a special assistant to
Tamposi - told Archives officials during a visit on Oct. 8 that
"they were sorry for all of the problems resulting from the
search for the records."

"They stated that it had not been their decision to involve the
FBI and that they did not believe that the records had been tam-
pered with," the memo states. The memo is signed by Ferris E.
Stovel, director of the National Record Center. He declined com-
ment yesterday.

Gary Sheaffer, spokesman for the State Department Office of Con-
sular Affairs, said yesterday that Tamposi and her deputies would
not discuss the matter. Tamposi, a political appointee, formerly
worked as Republican state finance chairman in New Hampshire.

The Oct. 26 memo was among several documents obtained from the
National Archives by the American Civil Liberties Union under the
FOIA. A copy of the memo, along with other Archive records on
State Deaprtment searches for material, was made available yes-
terday to The Washington Post.  Perot's candidacy was enmeshed
during the final 10 days of the campaign in his unsub-<stantiated
allegations that Republican "dirty <tricks" operatives had plot-
ted to smear one of <his daughters with a doctored photograph,
<disrupt her wedding and wiretap his business office.

When first told of the passport search yesterday, Perot said: "If
I said anything about it, everybody would say I'm a paranoid in-
vestigator, wouldn't they? For all I know, that's what this is
for - to get me to make a comment."

He called the search of his passport files "weird," adding: "I
can't think of anything duller than my passport records."

In the interview, Perot also charged that Bush administration of-
ficials had violated his privacy by culling information from his
Navy records as well as records with the Resolution Trust Corp.
and Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.

When the State Department's search for <records on Clinton was
disclosed last month, <department officials said it was conducted
in response to to three FOIA requests from news organizations
seeking information on the Democratic presidential nominee re-
ceived in Sep-<tember. But department officials later ack-
nowledged those requests had been improperly expedited.

This prompted the Nation magazine to file a suit over the
department's failure to process an FOIA request filed by one of
the magazine's editors three months earlier - on June 22 - for
material on Perot.  In an affidavit filed in response to the suit
on Oct. 19, Frank M. Machak, the department's information and
privacy coordinator, made no mention of the Oct.  13 search by
McClevey for records on Perot.<02:23 11-10C9999-----

Copyright 1992, The Washington Post.  This story is from the
Washington Post's Capitol Edition On-Line and is not to be ar-
chived or redistributed.

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