"Travelgate": In 1993 Mr. Clinton fired the White House travel staff. In their place a travel agency connected with the Clintons' Arkansas political allies and hollywood friends was selected to coordinate Presidential travel. In other words it was political favors payback time. The wrongful removal of civil servants - the travel office was created by the Johnson administration and was not a department of political appointees - led to many more hours of investigations which, like Whitewater, found no conclusion.
"Filegate": The Clinton administration obtained several hundred FBI files of raw data on these former travel office staff members and on key Republican leaders whose names began with letters A through G. Some way or other these files were obtained, were mysteriously misplaced, and were not returned. Nothing that flagrant was ever conjured or attempted by the Nixon administration.
In response to inquiries about the "misplaced" FBI files, the Clinton advisers suffered a sudden case of severe collective amnesia. White House Security Director Craig Livingstone requested the files? Who hired Mr. Livingstone? No one remembered. Another Democratic Party political operative Anthony Marceca actually obtained the files from the FBI. Who hired him as Mr. Livingstone's deputy? No one remembered. Neither man was qualified for his job, but they were each hired - by someone.
The administration claimed that obtaining the files was a bureaucratic error, but standard FBI policy prohibits releasing files without a detailed written explanation. Even with a detailed written explanation, the files are examined at the FBI office and in the presence of an FBI investigator. There is no photocopying, no tampering, and no taking the files elsewhere for later perusal. But some way or other the White House at best flexed the rules for the sake of attempting to save themselves by attempting to destroy their opponents.
