Bush Could Get Access to Private Hillary Files -- Will He Use Them in the Election?

An unspoken political vulnerability of Sen. Hillary Clinton is that she is the first presidential candidate to have both her and her spouse subject to regular, long-term surveillance by an Executive Branch under the control of an opposing political party.

Since they left the White House in 2001, Bill and Hillary Clinton -- as the former President and First Lady -- have been under the protection of the Secret Service, a branch of the Treasury Department. Records are maintained showing where they go and, to an extent, whom they meet.

Ordinarily, those records are kept as closely held secrets, but theoretically at least, President George W. Bush -- with his expansive view of his powers as "unitary executive" -- could gain access to them, either formally or informally.

His father did much the same when his subordinates scoured the passport files of then-Arkansas Gov. Clinton in 1992, looking for a "silver bullet" that would kill off the Democratic nominee's presidential hopes.

President George H.W. 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 [Bush] would have said something like, 'Let's get it out' or 'Hope the truth gets out.'" [For details, see Robert Parry's Secrecy & Privilege.]

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."