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From: americast-post@AmeriCast.Com
Organization: American Cybercasting
Approved: americast-post@AmeriCast.com
Subject: The Case of Mrs. Tamposi=
Date: Wed, 11 Nov 92 04:42:03 EST
Message-ID: <29.1992Nov11.044204@AmeriCast.com>

The Case of Mrs. Tamposi=

 SINCE ELECTION night returns rolled in, Bush-Quayle campaign
operatives have been eager to close the books on this bitter pol-
itical season. But there are certain things that cannot be
dropped or left unresolved just because the election is over. The
questions surrounding yesterday's forced resignation of State
Department passport chief Elizabeth Tamposi, following disclo-
sures in The Post of yet another questionable passport file
search by her assistants (this into the file of Ross Perot) are
such that investigators need to go further. We still don't know,
and need to find out, what happened over there in the State
Department.  The suggestion is surely raised by the strange story
so far that political appointees in the department did more than
indulge in the kind of excesses against which civil service and
campaign reformers often rail. It is one thing, for instance, to
work illegally in support of a candidate while under constraints
of the Hatch Act. Not that that is a good thing to do, but it is
another and worse thing to improperly use the powers of public
office in an effort to discredit the political opposition. Dig-
ging for dirt in the passport records of Mr. Clinton and Mr.
Perot, the president's two political opponents, would represent
that kind of abuse. That is why the search for the real story
must continue even with Mrs. Tamposi off the public payroll by
the close of business today.

 A report by the State Department's inspector general is expected
soon to be followed by a separate General Accounting Office in-
vestigation. We hope both reports will answer key questions: Why
and on whose authority did Mrs. Tamposi authorize the search of
the passport files of Mr. Clinton, his mother and Mr. Perot? In
addition to Mrs. Tamposi and her four colleagues who conducted
the search, did anyone else have access to the files of Mr. Clin-
ton, his mother and Mr. Perot, and if so, who and why? When Mrs.
Tamposi decided to send out the searchers, did she consult with
anyone else inside or outside the State Department or the govern-
ment? Again, if yes, who and why? To whom did Mrs. Tamposi later
report? Did she, or anyone else in the Bush administration, re-
quest other government agencies to search their files for deroga-
tory information related to Mr. Clinton or Mr. Perot? When this
story first broke, we were told by the State Department: "There
is no inappropriate behavior at all in this." It was subsequently
to concede that that wasn't the truth. Now there are more ques-
tions to be answered. The end of the campaign is not the end of
the story.<02:22 11-11C9999-----

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.

For more information, send-email to American Cybercasting Cor-
poration (usa@AmeriCast.COM)