ALL THE PRESIDENT'S SCANDALS
Revenge of Gary Aldrich
Clinton-Gore security meltdown sad vindication for ex-FBI agent
By Paul Sperry
© 2000 WorldNetDaily.com
WASHINGTON -- He could crow, "I told you so," and who could blame
him? Even early skeptics Sam Donaldson and Tim Russert have
confessed to him, in private, that he was right all along.
But that wouldn't be his style. The soft-spoken, almost
diffident, FBI agent who first warned of the White House's
reckless disregard for security procedures, is also too busy
exhorting other federal whistle-blowers to come forward to inform
the public of a dangerous pattern over the past nearly eight
years: the systematic dismantling of safeguards across the entire
U.S. security complex.
Gary Aldrich could also dish out dirt (and there's "a ton," he
says) on the Clinton appointees who smeared him in the press as a
"pathological liar." After all, he would know, having read their
sensitive FBI "302" reports while vetting them for jobs.
But to this day -- even though he's retired from the bureau and
can't be fired or sued for violating The Privacy Act -- Aldrich
holds his tongue.
It's not easy for him, judging from his pained eyes and clenched
jaw. During a two-hour interview in his Fairfax, Va., office, he
came close to returning the favor when a few White House names
popped up.
So what stops him? "My own ethics," he said.
In 1995, Aldrich left the White House, where he worked as one of
the FBI agents tasked with clearing new White House hires for
security passes.
The next year, his book, "Unlimited Access: An FBI Agent Inside
the Clinton White House," was published. The shocking bestseller
charged, among other things, that White House officials were
hiring hard-drug users and other security risks over agents'
vetoes. Many of them gained access to classified information
without proper clearance.
After being pilloried by the White House and its friends in the
prestige press as a "liar," Aldrich became withdrawn. And when
other law-enforcement agents failed to back his story -- and his
own agency turned over his manuscript to the White House, without
his consent -- he became disillusioned with his whole profession.
He was out on a long, lonely limb, and the sound of sawing was
deafening.
But slowly, with each new report of security lapses, his story of
loose security and reckless conduct has been confirmed.
At the White House, drug and gun smugglers were waved into
fund-raising coffees with the president and vice president. One
Clinton donor with Beijing ties even managed to sneak a foreigner
past the Secret Service using a bogus driver's license.
But it's not just the White House.
A recent undercover sting by Congress turned up alarming security
failures at 19 government agencies, including the Pentagon and
even Aldrich's former employer, the FBI. And now, with yet
another major security breach at Los Alamos National Laboratory,
more and more fingers are pointing back to the White House.
In every agency that deals with protecting national-security
secrets, normal security rules and procedures have been ignored,
changed or tossed during the Clinton-Gore years.
Clinton appointees have kicked open lab gates to foreign
visitors, even ripping out the doors to the Energy Department's
executive suites. They've shelved security badges. They've cut
funding and staff for Pentagon background checks, resulting in a
backlog of hundreds of thousands. The CIA's own director
downloaded classified files onto an unsecured home computer used,
among other things, to access Internet porn. Officials at the
State Department, where escorts were no longer required for
foreign visitors, have "lost" top-secret laptops.
Meanwhile, Russian and Chinese spies run amok.
But there is one place where security is tighter, Aldrich says:
The Democratic National Committee headquarters.
In 1998, Aldrich founded The Patrick Henry Center for Individual
Liberty to aid and support whistle-blowers opposed to serious
wrongdoing, especially involving national security, in the
federal government.
One of his clients is a former senior Energy Department official
who exposed to Congress the dismantling of military lab security
by Clinton appointees -- and suffered reprisals for it. After he
was effectively fired from his job, he says the administration
had him tailed.
Another Aldrich client is a Pentagon official who also was
harassed for blowing the whistle on the department's loosening of
background investigations.
"We're running a civilian witness-protection program here,"
Aldrich, 55, said.
The center plans to broadcast ads on a Washington-area FM radio
station, entreating federal employees to come forward with what
they know about Clinton corruption and attempts by his political
appointees to undermine national security.
The spots will appeal to their "sense of patriotism, shame, you
name it," Aldrich said. They'll also let them know their rights.
Aldrich served 26 years as a special FBI agent, specializing in
white-collar crime such as fraud and political corruption. He
married an FBI agent. They have three teen-agers.
Save a portrait of American patriot Patrick Henry ("Give me
liberty or give me death") hanging behind his desk, his office
walls are bare. But his desk is stacked high with paperwork.
WorldNetDaily sat down with Aldrich to talk about the recent
security lapses and what can only be described as sad vindication
for his troubles. This is the first of a two-part interview.
WND: You really were the first to sound the alarms about the
security problems in this administration. It turns out it wasn't
just the White House. The security breakdown appears to be
systemic, cultural, cutting across the entire Cabinet, even our
military labs. Do you feel vindicated?
Aldrich: The only way I could ever feel vindicated is if they
actually went in there and pulled the untrustworthy bastards out.
Which they're not going to do.
Q: Why the laxity in security? You had access to classified
information about Clinton and national security issues. What do
you think's going on?
A: I would go further than that (laxity) and say it's a national
security meltdown, which is a direct consequence of policies and
procedures from the top, from the White House.
And also because of the appointments of certain individuals to
key posts in these agencies that deal with national security,
like the Department of Energy and over at the CIA. They bring
political appointees into those positions who have the authority
to alter the security set-up, and they do.
Q: Like who?
A: In the case of Energy, it was Hazel O'Leary who knocked out
all the barriers. In the case of CIA, it was (executive
director) Nora Slatkin. She was so hostile to the process of
badges and background investigations she refused to carry her own
badge. And so they had to have an employee walk around the CIA
with her carrying her badge to put it up against the various
checkpoints. She refused to wear a badge. In the case of the
Department of Energy, for example, Hazel O'Leary didn't like the
discriminatory nature of the different colored badges, which
would allow you in different places in the Energy Department and
labs. Therefore, she ordered all badges should look alike so
people didn't feel bad about the kind of badge they had.
This is the kind of liberal, la-la thinking that has permeated
(the federal government). And what was the response of the
so-called intelligence community, the people who are charged with
making sure the country is safe? Capitulation, silence, transfer,
retirement. The people who were charged with protecting the
national security of this nation took a pass.
And I'm angry about that, because they all enjoyed those
(high-paid) GS-13, 14 positions. They all had great medical
benefits and they got great retirement programs. They also took
an oath. And yet, when it came down to it, very few stood up
against this. And instead, they turned their backs on it and
walked away. And that says something about the kinds of people
the government is hiring into these key positions. I'll say it
again: Career, federal security professionals took an oath to the
Constitution to defend this nation against threats foreign and
domestic. For them to know what they know, and to stand by and
watch it happen, is as close to treasonous as I can imagine
anything is.
Q: Why should we worry about this "meltdown"?
A: First of all, billions of dollars are spent every year to
maintain a perception that we're protecting national security.
If in fact we are not, we need to save that money and use it for
some better purpose, or give it back to taxpayers.
But of course, there is a need to protect national security. The
need is to protect -- not just the classified material and the
people like the president, for example, from harm, but -- the
policies and tactics that are being discussed, for example, at
the White House that deal with the way we conduct commerce with
other nations.
It's not just about lobbing a bomb into New York City. It's
about our plans the next time we have an economic summit. How
are we going to address certain issues, you know, where are our
bottom lines? What will we agree to? What won't we?
Suppose you're buying a car. You go into a dealer, and all
discussions between the salesman and the manager about you buying
the car are held in your presence. And let's suppose you get to
also see all their internal paperwork. How could the car dealer
conduct transactions to their benefit? They couldn't. So it's
not just about protecting secrets that save the lives of sources
and spies in foreign lands. It's not just about stopping some
nutcase from some hostile nation from walking a satchel charge
into the Oval Office. It's about that, too, but it's also about
the business of this nation.
But having said that, the only security the Clintons seem to be
concerned about is the political kind. When some reporter walked
into the Democratic National Committee headquarters and was able
to wander around because they had loose security over there, all
hell broke loose. They called an immediate meeting of all
personnel and they stressed that everyone, everyone had to be
escorted and wear a badge. The security is tight as a drum at
the DNC and loose as a goose at the White House. What does that
tell you? They know the difference between loose security and
tight security, you bet your butt they do.
And the third element is this: (State Secretary) Madeleine
Albright, (State policy director) Morton Halperin and the rest of
Clinton's friends have said repeatedly that one of the most
dangerous things that we have in the world today is that America
is too strong. Now if you have that mentality from the top,
doesn't that suggest that it's OK for China to get our missile
secrets; it's OK for Russia to plant bugs in the State
Department; it's OK for spies to wander around? Because it's a
lopsided playing field anyway, and we need to even it out? And
if these secrets get out, it's not such a bad thing?
This is their worldview. America is too strong, and we're a
threat. It's a "small-world-after-all" theme. That's fine. You
know, I like to talk about that in church. But when you're
protecting a nation, I really think you need to have more of an
adult approach.
Q: So why isn't there more public outrage about the
administration's cavalier attitude towards national security?
A: The normal American can't imagine people in the White House
who don't have U.S. interests in mind. They can imagine that
people are working in the White House who want to alter things a
little bit this way, or tweak them that way. But they can't
comprehend that we would actually have traitorous people inside
our White House, some of them at the highest levels. Look, the
Clinton administration doesn't care if China or Cuba or North
Korea get our secrets. They don't care. It isn't because these
people are stupid. They don't care.
Q: How much do you think the public knows, through the media,
about this national security "meltdown," as you call it? Could
you put a figure on it?
A: I'd say 25 percent. One of the reasons is the disinterest on
the part of the media overall. But, despite recent
(inside-the-Beltway) interest in national security, for a long
time there were just a couple of us carrying around a candle in
this town. (Former Reagan Defense official and Center for
Security Policy director) Frank Gaffney is another. For the
longest time I couldn't find interest even on Capitol Hill about
the issue of national security, except for on the part of a few.
Remember that most of these problems at the White House related
to national security were run by the House and Senate
intelligence committees. I never saw any interest on their part,
not until recently. I had high hopes when Republicans took over
Congress that we'd see some attention paid to these matters.
Lord knows, we gave them a road map. Yet, they by and large
haven't shown an interest. Now there's something wrong with
that.
Q: But isn't a lot of that disinterest because of the post-Cold
War zeitgeist? I mean, I've talked to some senior Bush
administration officials, people who were involved in defense
programs, so-called cold warriors, who have turned quite dovish.
A: I can assure you there were also a lot of people in the Bush
administration who did see it a different way. Look, Republicans
have also made great commerce of it (the end of the Cold War),
especially in relation to China. Just look at the PNTR
(permanent normalized trade relations) vote. They were talking
about trade, while we were talking about their ICBMs targeting us
and their slave-labor camps. We were talking about the U.N.
listing China as the biggest offender of human rights. We're
talking about a godless ideology where everybody's a slave.
When all you have is commerce on your mind, it's hard to think of
anything else.
Q: You dealt with former senior Clinton aide Patsy Thomasson when
you were in the White House. Are you comfortable with her, in
her new State Department job, being in charge of our foreign
buildings, including embassy security?
A: No. She wasn't any good at security at the White House, and
she's no damn good at security at the State Department. The
woman's background speaks for itself. She worked for a convicted
drug dealer, and she was in charge of drug testing at the White
House. And now she's evidently in charge of diplomatic pouches?
It's a joke, frankly. It makes you wonder if there isn't some
other grand plan here on the part of the Clinton administration
to downgrade and downscale national security until we don't have
any at all.
Q: What do you think of Secretary Albright and President Clinton
cracking jokes to the press about these security leaks?
A: Going back to my law-enforcement background, there was a kind
of con man who really was head and shoulders above the best con
men. And that con man would crack wise about what he was doing.
We caught many of them like that. They would actually put into
their documents little signs and signals that they were crooks,
that they were con men, as a joke. Because they thought the
people they were fleecing were so stupid, they would never notice
what they were doing to them, and they'd get a good yuck at their
expense. That is a mentality that law-enforcement officers are
very familiar with. And it's shared by this president and a lot
of his people.
Q: How would you recommend George W. Bush handle this national
security mess, should he inherit it?
A: As a candidate, Bush must talk about it incessantly on the
campaign trail. If he doesn't prepare the public for it, it will
never get fixed. Unless he lays a foundation down now, he won't
have the mandate for it if he's elected. You can bet Democrats
will fight it by screaming, "This ridiculous defense buildup will
blow a whole in the deficit!"
Tomorrow: The interview heats up as Aldrich shares his insider
knowledge on a range of White House scandals, while naming names
and condemning "media corruption at the highest level."
Paul Sperry is Washington bureau chief for WorldNetDaily.
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