This is what George HW Bush did to Bill Clinton in Passportgate

seafan

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Thu Mar-20-08 07:28 PM
Original message

This is what George HW Bush did to Bill Clinton in Passportgate

Edited on Thu Mar-20-08 07:51 PM by seafan

RE: Improper access of passport files of Barack Obama by contract employees at the STATE DEPARTMENT, Bureau of Consular Affairs, taking place in January, 2008 (per Olberman)

2 fired over Obama passport file breach, March 20, 2008

Is this a repeat of Bush II, just like his daddy, in rummaging through Obama's passport?? David Schuster said that the Bush Administration has known about this since JANUARY. And Obama's people just found out about it today, 2.5 months later!

This is a political hit expedition. There should be NO DOUBT that this is opposition research to find anything to bring the Barack Obama campaign to a halt.

Robert Parry

.....

In 1992 when Clinton � as Arkansas governor � sought the White House, then-President Bush encouraged his subordinates to find a �silver bullet� that would kill off Clinton�s presidential hopes.

The senior Bush later acknowledged to FBI investigators that he was �nagging� his aides to push for more information about Bill Clinton�s student travels to the Soviet Union and Czechoslovakia and about right-wing rumors that Clinton had sought to renounce his U.S. citizenship.

�Hypothetically speaking, President Bush advised that he would not have directed anyone to investigate the possibility that Clinton had renounced his citizenship because he would have relied on others to make this decision,� according to an FBI report on its interview with the elder Bush. �He would have said something like, �Let�s get it out� or �Hope the truth gets out.��

With such high-level urging, White House chief of staff James Baker instructed his aide, Janet Mullins, to ask Steven Berry, assistant secretary of state for legislative affairs, about progress on right-wing press requests for information about Clinton�s student travel.

Eventually, the White House interest was communicated to State Department official Elizabeth Tamposi, a Bush political appointee who saw it as a green light to move ahead with the legally questionable search.

On the night of Sept. 30, 1992, Tamposi dispatched three aides to the federal records center in Suitland, Maryland, where they searched Clinton�s passport file as well as his mother�s, presumably because they thought it might contain some references to Clinton.

In a later press interview, Tamposi asserted that she ordered the search after Berry had pressured her to �dig up dirt on Clinton� for the Bush White House.

Press Leak

Though finding no letter renouncing citizenship, the State Department officials still made use of Clinton�s passport application, which had staple holes and a slight tear in the corner.

The tear was easily explained by the routine practice of stapling a photo or money order to the application, but Tamposi seized on the ripped page to justify a new suspicion, that a Clinton ally at the State Department had removed the renunciation letter.

Tamposi shaped that speculation into a criminal referral which was forwarded to the Justice Department. Thin as the case was, George H.W. Bush�s reelection campaign had its official action so the renunciation rumor could be turned into a public issue.

Within hours of the criminal referral, someone from the Bush camp leaked word about the confidential FBI investigation to reporters at Newsweek magazine.

The Newsweek story about the tampering investigation hit the newsstands on Oct. 4, 1992. The article suggested that a Clinton backer might have removed incriminating material from Clinton�s passport file, precisely the spin that the Bush people wanted.

Immediately, President George H.W. Bush took the offensive, using the press frenzy over the tampering story to attack Clinton�s patriotism on a variety of fronts, including his student trip to Moscow in 1970. With his patriotism challenged, Clinton saw his once-formidable lead shrink.

Clinton�s campaign ultimately was saved by quick-thinking Democrats on Capitol Hill who exposed the passport leak as a political dirty trick. That forced the elder Bush into a quasi-apology for the scandal, which became known as �Passport-gate.�

After Clinton won the election, however, the criminality of the dirty trick was swept under the rug by Republican special prosecutor Joseph DiGenova, who was appointed to investigate by a federal judicial panel run by right-wing appellate judge David Sentelle.

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