Deja Vu at the Passport Cubicle

During Bill Clinton's 1992 campaign against then-President George H. W. Bush, Clinton's passport file was also breached.
Representatives of President Bush "pulled strings" at the Department of State and at our embassies in Europe, claims Parry, hoping to uncover something disparaging which could be used against Clinton.  The purpose was to raise questions about  Clinton's patriotism, insinuating that he showed disloyalty to the United States, especially during his student trips to Czechoslovakia and the then-Soviet Union.  In 1992, says Mr. Parry, the White House pressured Assistant Secretary of State Elizabeth Tamposi into ordering aides to search minutely through Clinton's passport file, hoping to find a letter in which he sought to renounce his citizenship.

When no such letter turned up the story was still pursued by announcing there was a small tear on one corner of Clinton's application, and this was cited as indicating someone had tampered with the passport file in order to remove such a letter.  Tamponi thereupon instituted an FBI investigation, which was leaked to the press, and Newsweek obligingly published the story on October 4th, shortly before the November elections.  President Bush thereupon sprang into action, feeding the press frenzy over Clinton's possible criminal act, harping on Clinton's trip to the Soviet Union back in 1970, twenty-two years before; there was even "speculation" that Clinton had been invited by the KGB.  Clinton's lead in the polls began to shrink.  

The Democratic Party controlled the House of Representatives at that time, and sent Spencer Oliver, chief counsel for the House International Affairs Committee, to check out what smelled like a dirty trick; he discovered that State Department political appointees had made a nighttime raid on the Archives in order to search through not only Clinton's records, but those of his mother... all based on the flimsy excuse there was "tear" in the application.  Oliver's investigation resulted in an article in the Washington Post, which caused some slight embarrassment at the White House.  Nevertheless, President Bush went on Larry King Live, suggesting once again there were sinister goings on, that maybe a Clinton friend had "tampered" with the Clinton file to protect Clinton, innocently asking "What would exonerate him in the files?" Heh, heh.

Bush began to distance himself publicly from the artfully induced media frenzy when the FBI shortly thereafter stated there was "no evidence that anyone had removed anything" from Clinton's file.  Privately, however, Bush continued to hope he could use the issue against Clinton. For example, he was scripted to make one-liner innuendos during the debate on 11 October whenever the opportunity presented itself: "It's hard to visit foreign countries with a torn-up passport," or "Contrary to what the Governor's been saying most young men his age did not try to duck the draft... A few did go to Canada... only one I know went to Russia," and so on. Unfortunately for Bush, the debate also included Ross Perot, and somehow the necessary openings never arose to employ his carefully scripted zingers.  In fact, the one time Bush did try to question Clinton's patriotism, Clinton attacked Bush as being like Joe McCarthy, pointing out that it was Bush's father, Senator Preston Bush who had stood up to McCarthy.   The counter-attack so unnerved Bush that he never regained the initiative in the debate... proving once again that offense is the best defense.

Because a Republican attorney, named DiGenova, was appointed special prosecutor to investigate "passportgate," Bush escaped any consequences, but the story is that he was indignant with the FBI for not discovering anything derogatory about Bill's student trips. Two years later Czech news media suddenly reported that the Czech secret police had cooperated with the Bush re-election campaign in an effort to dig up dirt about Clinton's trips to Czechoslovakia and the Soviet Union, discretely slipping anything seemingly derogatory from their secret files to the Republicans via the American Embassy.  Such stories were "leaked" again to cooperative journalists.  That is, the Republicans were in cahoots with foreign secret police while running an election campaign for the presidency of the United States. Whose patriotism sould we question here?

Senator Obama's passport files were accessed by three State Department "contractors" on January 9th, February 21st, and March 14th. No doubt there will be another whitewashing, like that by DiGenova; that, or some way will be found to blame Democrats for the breach of security; or, it may well be the result of idle curiosity, as had been suggested---- but I personally rather doubt it, in view of the story about Poppy Bush and Clinton. I have some other thoughts: are the Clinton and McCain breaches red herrings, and Obama's file was the real objective?  Or, what if the McCain breach is the red herring intended to conceal the fact the true victims were Clinton and Obama; or, what if this is a set-up to blame Democrats somehow for the McCain, or to imply Clinton was after Obama, and Obama after Clinton?  What company is "contractor" to which State has outsourced the sensitive passport issuing and control?

If this all seems Byzantine, it is only in keeping with the plainly elaborate "oppo research" already evidenced, for example, in all the different attempts to smear Obama over the past month or so; as soon as one lie is smacked down they run out another one to see if it sticks, going at it from every angle, including claiming he is anti-Semitic to the Jews, and a secret Muslim to the Christians, and unpatriotic because he doesn't wear a little flag in his lapel. Given the Republican tendency to accuse their opponents of what they themselves are doing, or plan on doing, none of these scenarios is impossible.  While we're at it, what exactly has Karl Rove been up to since he so nicely resigned from the White House?  I smell a Rove in the air here, somewhere around the Department of State, among other places.  

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