White House travel office controversy

The White House travel office controversy of the Clinton Administration, often referred to as Travelgate, began on May 19, 1993, when seven longtime employees of the White House Travel Office were fired. A whistleblower's letter, written during the previous administration, triggered an FBI investigation which revealed evidence of financial malfeasance. Billy Dale was found not guilty of embezzlement charges at trial in 1995. Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr also investigated the firings and could find no evidence of wrongdoing on the Clintons' part.

Initial investigations

The White House Travel Office dates back to the Andrew Jackson administration and serves to handle travel arrangements for the White House press corps, with costs billed to the participating news organizations. By the time of the Clinton administration, it was quartered in the Old Executive Office Building, had seven employees, and a yearly budget of $7 million. Staffers serve strictly at the pleasure of the president. Historically, a change of administrations usually resulted in a brand new Travel Office staff. Travel Office Director Billy Dale had been in the position since 1982, serving through most of the Republican Reagan and George H. W. Bush administrations.

According to the White House, in early 1993 the incoming Clinton administration looked at an audit by KPMG Peat Marwick that discovered that Dale kept an off-book ledger, had $18,000 of unaccounted-for checks, and generally shambolic office records. White House Chief of Staff Mack McLarty and the White House counsels thus decided to fire the Travel Office staff and reorganize it. There was also a feeling that the Travel Office had never been investigated by the media due to its close relationship with press corps members.

Republicans and others saw things differently. They alleged that friends of President Bill Clinton, including his third cousin Catherine Cornelius, had engineered the firings in order to get the business for themselves. Dale and his staff had been replaced with Little Rock, Arkansas-based World Wide Travel, a company with a substantial reputation in the industry but with several ties to the Clintons.

The House Government Reform and Oversight Committee eventually launched an investigation into the White House Travel Office firings. After a three-year investigation, the Chair of the committee, Pennsylvania Republican William Clinger, accused the Clinton administration of having obstructed the committee's efforts to investigate the Travelgate scandal. Clinger also challenged the White House access to Billy Dale's FBI records in the Filegate affair. Democratic members of the Committee walked out in protest over the report, with ranking member Henry Waxman calling it "a crassly partisan smear campaign against President Clinton, Mrs. Clinton and this administration."

The role of the White House staff in pressuring the FBI to launch an 'investigation' was also heavily criticized.

Independent Counselor investigation

In March 1996, Attorney General Janet Reno requested that Whitewater Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr expand his inquiry to include the Travel Office affair, in particular allegations that White House employees had lied about Hillary Clinton's role in the firings, or otherwise tried to cover up alleged mismanagement of the firings.

On November 19, 1998, Independent Counsel Starr testified before the House Judiciary Committee in connection with the Impeachment of Bill Clinton over charges related to the Lewinsky scandal. Here, for the first time, Starr exonerated President Clinton of complicity in the Travel Office matter, saying that while investigations were not complete, "the president was not involved in our ... investigation." (Starr also chose this occasion to clear President Clinton of impeachable wrongdoing in the Whitewater and Filegate matters, and Democrats on the committee immediately criticized Starr for withholding these findings until after the 1998 Congressional elections.)

In a report, released October 18, 2000, Starr's successor Robert Ray determined Hillary Clinton had given false testimony when questioned about the travel office firings, a crime that Ray declined to prosecute. Under oath, Hillary Clinton flatly denied any role and denied that she had any input, but later a memo surfaced from administration chief David Watkins suggesting she wanted the travel staff fired. Watkins said there would be "hell to pay" if swift action was not taken in conformity with the First Lady’s wishes. A friend of Watkins also alleged that Watkins was told to quote, ‘fire the sons of bitches.’

While that claim could not be substantiated, Ray cited eight separate conversations between the First Lady and senior staff and concluded: "Mrs. Clinton’s input into the process was significant, if not the significant factor influencing the pace of events in the Travel Office firings and the ultimate decision to fire the employees.”

In a FoxNews broadcast, George Washington University professor Jonathan Turley said, “It essentially says that she satisfies all of the components of an indictment and is ultimately safe from trial simply by the discretion of the prosecutor. That’s pretty damning.”

Bill Clinton later described the allegations and investigation as "a fraud", while Hillary Clinton later wrote that "'Travelgate' ... was perhaps worthy of a two- or three-week life span; instead, in a partisan political climate, it became the first manifestation of an obsession for investigation that persisted into the next millennium."

External links

• Ray, Robert (2000-06-22). "Final Report of the Independent Counsel of Matters Related to the White House Travel office". Department of Justice, Independent Counsel. Retrieved 2007-03-28.