By Matt Renner
T r u t h o u t Report
Thursday 28 June 2007
The Bush administration has asserted, in recent days, that it has properly safeguarded confidential information since taking office. However, information collected by Congressional investigators contradicts the White House claim.
On Friday June 22, White House Spokesperson Dana Perino said that "[t]he president and the vice president are complying with all the rules and regulations regarding the handling of classified material and making sure that it is safeguarded and protected."
Representative Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), chairman of the House of Representatives' main investigative body, the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, has been compiling evidence regarding the mismanagement of classified documents by the Bush administration. Waxman has taken sworn testimony from whistle-blowers from within the White House security agencies. The statements of these whistle-blowers "casts doubt on [White House] assertions," Waxman said in a letter to White House Counsel Fred Fielding on Tuesday.
According to White House whistle-blowers, "White House practices have been dangerously inadequate with respect to investigating security violations, taking corrective action following breaches and physically securing classified information," Waxman said in his letter.
Two independent security agencies are tasked with monitoring the White House compliance with rules regarding the control of classified documents and information. They are the White House Security Office (WHSO) which is a part of the Executive Branch, and the Information Security Oversight Office (ISOO), a division of the National Archives and Records Administration. Both security agencies appear to have been stymied by the Bush administration.
In his letter explaining his findings to the White House Counsel's office, Waxman said multiple "former and current employees of the WHSO have informed my staff that they have been blocked from conducting inspections in the West Wing of the White House, where most of the president's most senior advisors work." Whistle-blowers from WHSO testified that White House officials also prevented ISOO from carrying out their on-sight inspection duties.
This disclosure flies in the face of claims made by the White House. Spokesperson Dana Perino asserted that the executive office of the president and the office of the vice president were in compliance with the regulations regarding the handling of classified information. When reporters asked her how she could make this claim without ISOO inspections to back it up, Perino said that "ISOO is not the only agency that can check that," implicitly referring to the WHSO. If the whistle-blowers' statements to Waxman's committee are true, the WHSO has also been unable to "check" to make sure that Bush administration offices are in compliance.
Whistle-blowers pointed to mismanagement of the WHSO in their statements to Congressional investigators. Former Director James Knodell and Deputy Director Ken Greeson "routinely violated basic security guidelines," by bringing "their Blackberry devices and cell phones into the sensitive compartmented information facility," a high security storage room for secret information. According to the former security officers, Knodell and Greeson also allowed visiting White House personnel to break this rule. The security officers who informed Waxman's committee of these violations also blamed Knodell and Greeson for causing "extreme frustration and plummeting morale" in the White House Security Office, which lead to the "departure of more than half of the White House security officers within the last year."
The Directors of WHSO also prevented investigations into breaches of security in the White House, according to the whistle-blowers. They told Waxman's committee that "the practice within the White House Security Office was not to document or investigate violations occurring in the West Wing or to take corrective action." According to Waxman, this policy "appears to be a direct violation" of the executive order regarding the handling of classified information.
One security breach that was never investigated was the leak of CIA Agent Valerie Plame Wilson's covert status. According to Waxman, in an Oversight Committee hearing in March, Knodell "confirmed that although his office was required to investigate whether classified information had been leaked inappropriately, no investigation of the leak of Ms. Wilson's identity occurred."
Lawyers for the office of the vice president has made the claim that Vice President Dick Cheney is not a part of the executive branch and thus not subject to inspections and oversight by ISOO. But Cheney's office filed annual security reports with ISOO regarding the classification and declassification of information in 2001 and 2002. Subsequent reports have not been filed. The leak of CIA Agent Valerie Plame Wilson's identity appears to have originated in the vice president's office in 2003, the same year he unilaterally declared his office exempt from outside oversight.
Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald's investigation into the leak of Plame Wilson's identity demonstrated that the leak came from multiple sources inside the White House, including Presidential Aide Karl Rove and the Vice President's Chief of Staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby. Libby resigned from the administration as a result and has been sentenced to 30 months in prison for obstruction of justice in connection with the investigation. Rove had his security clearance renewed. According to President Bush's Chief of Staff Joshua Bolton, Rove's security clearance was reviewed and "continued by the [White House] Office of Security."Waxman questioned the decision to continue Rove's access to classified information because, according to Waxman, Rove's "disclosure of Ms. Wilson's status as a CIA officer would appear to be a disqualifying 'negligent' disclosure." Waxman added, "[Rove] told White House Spokesman Scott McClellan in September 2003 that there was 'no truth' to the allegations that he was involved" in the leak. According to Waxman, "[t]his misrepresentation would appear to be an independent ground under the president's guidelines for denying his clearance renewal."
The Oversight Committee has sought testimony from current and former White House officials in connection with the ongoing investigation into security breaches by the Bush administration. In his letter to the White House counsel's office, Waxman asked that "the interviews that the committee has been seeking be scheduled without further delay," warning that "if this cannot be accomplished, I will recommend to the committee the issuance of subpoenas ..."
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