In 1996, while investigating Travelgate, congressional investigators discovered that, starting in 1993, the White House had improperly obtained access to hundreds of FBI files on former White House employees, including some fairly senior Republicans and Billy Dale, the fired travel office employee.

  Though the staffers who requested the files – Craig Livingstone and Anthony Marceca – said that they had requested the files because they were on an outdated list of employees provided by the secret service, no one believed them.

-Megan Carpentier Go To Site

After congressional Republicans discovered that the Clinton personnel security office improperly collected some 700 background FBI files of Republicans -- including former Secretary of State James A. Baker, former National Security Advisor Brent Scowcroft and former spokesman Marlin Fitzwater -- many in Washington thought the Clinton White House faced its most serious ethical crisis yet.

-CNN: FBI Files Fiasco Go To Site

Who in the White House cooked up the excuse offered when Filegate first surfaced, that the Secret Service was to blame for providing an outdated list of names?

  After Secret Service agents testified to Congress that this was untrue, and that the names of former White House aides were clearly marked ''inactive,'' Clinton's Treasury harassed the agents with a costly investigation.

  The Senate counter-investigated that harassment; the agents were exonerated and their legal bills paid.

-William Safire Go To Site

Security Chief At Center Of Fbi Files Flap Resigns

Democrat, Bigbrother

Who hired Craig Livingstone? That is the question posed repeatedly Wednesday to former White House officials by frustrated Republicans at a House hearing on how the Clinton administration got hundreds of FBI background files on Republicans in previous administrations. Livingstone, a Democratic campaign worker with no law enforcement experience and a checkered past, held the sensitive post of head of personnel security at the White House. He oversaw the collection of FBI reports used to grant security clearances to White House aides.

Even Clinton partisans shuddered at shades of an ''enemies list.'' White House spokesmen dismissed it as a ''bureaucratic snafu,'' caused by a Secret Service that couldn't keep its lists straight...

  The F.B.I. admitted wrongdoing in being so complaisant, apologized and said it would never again ship files over without proper paperwork.

-William Safire Go To Site