Former FBI agent Gary Aldrich spent five years as one of two agents responsible for performing interviews and background investigations on White House personnel. The 30-year veteran of the bureau retired in disgust after citing the Clinton administration’s reckless disregard for national security. Aldrich then authored the best-seller “Unlimited Access: An FBI Agent Inside the Clinton White House.” The White House promptly attacked Aldrich, threatened him with legal action and branded him a liar. He spoke last week to WorldNetDaily contributor Edward G. Oliver.
WND: During your time in the White House, did you witness anything that you’d consider to be an impeachable offense by the President?
Aldrich: I would answer this way: In a general sense, the shutdown of the security process at the White House — (the way) to be sure that everyone had a proper clearance, and was suitable to be inside the White House whether they were employees or visitors — and the subsequent lying to Congress about it by the various levels of White House personnel is certainly in my view impeachable.
WND: Would that be your most serious allegation?
Aldrich: I don’t deal in most serious or the most outrageous or anything. I don’t go down that road because in all of the events which occurred at the White House, they’re all relatively important in their own way. For example, the White House Travel Office firings and subsequent frame-up of Billy Dale and his co-workers, the subsequent abuse of power in the use of the FBI and the IRS are very, very serious offenses. But to some that would not constitute the most serious offense.
Another matter, of course, is the famous Filegate matter where upwards of a thousand files were turned over to the White House from the FBI that were very highly sensitive. The White House background investigations of former Reagan and Bush people — clearly many people would consider that most serious, so there are so many serious matters that you can’t rank them.
WND: The Southeastern Legal Foundation filed a Freedom of Information Act request on your behalf to determine what information has been gathered by White House personnel for use in an alleged “Clinton enemies list.” Have you heard anything about that yet?
Aldrich: Yes, the White House has responded that they are not subject to the same laws as other federal agencies are, therefore they don’t have to reveal anything about any files they may be keeping on me there. The lawyers have looked at it, and they concluded that is so. So any relief we may see in that department will either have to come from Kenneth Starr’s investigation or will have to come from a congressional inquiry. As to whether or not they have used private investigators and have scanned government files to try to get information about me, I believe that they have. I don’t have any proof of it but it would match a pattern that I have seen.
WND: Is there a list of names that the White House had FBI files on?
Aldrich: Oh yeah, the list of names has been duly recorded over in Congress. It’s been submitted to Congress and also to Ken Starr by the FBI. So there are lists and in fact they’ve been published.
WND: I’ve heard that the number of files could be in the thousands.
Aldrich: I don’t say that’s impossible but I think the most recently published figures have been somewhere in the neighborhood of one thousand. I got that information from a Washington Times reporter who has been looking into this matter.
WND: Who requested those files?
Aldrich: We know who requested them. It was Craig Livingstone and his people who worked for him there, his subordinates. He had a couple of younger women employees there who were the people who filled out the forms to request the files from the FBI. He also had brought over to his office on temporary assignment from the Department of Defense one Anthony Marceca. They had worked together on previous political campaigns, Livingstone and Marceca, and they began sometime in the fall of 1993 to gather these files which were clearly not related to anything the administration was doing. They had to do with former Reagan and Bush people.
WND: Do you know who hired Craig Livingstone or has anyone admitted to hiring him ?
Aldrich: If people are looking for Hillary Clinton to confess to hiring Craig Livingstone, they’re going to have to wait a long, long time. She’s never going to do it. As far as I’m concerned, there’s clear-cut evidence unless you want to dismiss the documentation contained in FBI files and in testimony under oath by the FBI. If you’re willing to dismiss that, I guess you could still ask, ‘Who knows who hired Livingstone?’ On top of that we have testimony from Secret Service agents that they too were told that Hillary Clinton wanted Livingstone in that post.
WND: Under oath?
Aldrich: Under oath before the Congress.
WND: So you have good information that Hillary hired Craig Livingstone?
Aldrich: That’s right.
WND: People in the White House have told you Hillary Clinton hired Craig Livingstone?
Aldrich: People in the White House.
WND: Where is Livingstone now and what is he doing?
Aldrich: Livingstone is on the West Coast and my last information on him was he was working for some kind of promotional company in San Diego. This same company has strong ties to the Democratic National Committee or at least to the re-election campaign of President Clinton. But I don’t know of any quid pro quo. I don’t know if anybody has actually looked at that, I hope Ken Starr has.
WND: Do you think Ken Starr will include a report on Filegate?
Aldrich: I think, yeah. Just in the last week when Larry Klayman of Judicial Watch wanted to depose Linda Tripp, he was stymied from getting her testimony because the Starr people filed a document in front of the Judge stating that Tripp should not be deposed by Klayman because Starr was working very hard on information with Linda Tripp related to Filegate and other matters.
WND: Why do you suppose Ken Starr took so long?
Aldrich: It only seems like nothing is happening because Ken Starr and his people are not leaking the progress they’re making on that investigation. There was speculation, it was erroneous speculation on the part of some media people, that Starr wasn’t going to do anything about that. But in fact that isn’t so as we are now learning.
WND: Can situations like the Monica Lewinsky affair affect national security in any way?
Aldrich: Oh yes, one of the most basic principles of national security is that if you have somebody in a position to influence — a federal employee or an elected official, in this case Clinton — who has damaging information about that person, such as Monica Lewinsky did have, then you have a circumstance where you can extort certain information or you can coerce certain behavior. This is the backbone of the security investigative process. To determine whether somebody has gotten themselves involved in a circumstance where they could in fact be blackmailed, and it is basic and common sense to the whole notion of checking people out before you hire them.
WND: What about reports of possible drug use in the White House by the president?
Aldrich: My sources are telling me that there is an inquiry into potential drug use by high Clinton officials in the White House. But at this moment in time I don’t have solid information that would suggest that Bill Clinton has used any. But again, there is information that’s developed rather recently to indicate that there may well have been use of cocaine somewhere in the West Wing. We’ll have to await the outcome of the investigation to determine that.
WND: There have been reports that the Secret Service may have been used to procure women for the president. Could that happen and would they admit to that?
Aldrich: I don’t believe that the Secret Service agents have knowingly done what was done by the Arkansas State Police in Little Rock to help this man continue his sexual aggression. But I would say that they would probably do nothing to stop his behavior either. So if the president was observed chasing women, so to speak, it would not be part of the Secret Service agent’s mission to attempt to stop him or attempt to report that behavior up the line to superiors. In that way, if they knew of certain behavior but they didn’t report it, are they part of the support system that enables the president to continue his behavior? I guess you could say yes.
WND: Privately, what is the Secret Service attitude toward testifying about the president?
Aldrich: Privately the Secret Service agents do not wish to become involved in this kind of morass because it’s not part of their mission and it’s a very unpleasant circumstance for federal agents to be in. Their position wouldn’t be any different really from any other sworn federal officer simply because it would be the same thing as if I had information about the director of the FBI, Louie Freeh, and I was asked to come forward and testify. My career at the FBI would be greatly impacted and my own personal circumstance would be greatly impacted. Therefore I wouldn’t want to do it unless I was ready to see my career end. It’s no different for the Secret Service agents.
WND: In your opinion, is the FBI politicized?
Aldrich: I think the FBI has become politicized under the leadership of the Clinton administration. How you do that is put plenty of political appointees into the Department of Justice. The Department of Justice has great influence over what happens next door at the FBI. So the only defense that any FBI official would have against politicization from the Department of Justice would be to report it to Congress or resign in protest. But we haven’t seen … I don’t think we’ve seen any of that.
WND: Have you heard anything from your sources lately about Starr’s investigation?
Aldrich: I can just nibble around the margin a little bit on this because my sources are highly placed and I don’t want to endanger them or their employment. But what I’m told is the Starr reports will include information that goes well beyond misconduct with Miss Lewinsky and will speak to other women in the White House, will speak to other misdeeds on the part of the president’s people related to all these scandals, and will show a pattern of obstruction of justice and perjury and misuse of government assets — kind of a misappropriation of government funds to run what appears to be a strictly political operation out of the White House to the end of trying to defend this president.
WND: Do you think Hillary would be included in that?
Aldrich: Oh, Hillary’s a major part of this, she has always been. She is defense attorney if you will for Bill Clinton when he gets in trouble and that’s quite often. She generally can be found pulling the strings on their plans whatever they may be in terms of defending this man. So she is as much a part of this as any one of his senior advisers at the White House.
WND: What is your opinion about what happened to Vince Foster?
Aldrich: Well, I’ve said consistently that I believe Vince Foster did die by his own hand, but that I was less convinced and I am still less convinced that he died in Fort Marcy Park. There isn’t sufficient evidence to lock in the fact that he died there.
WND: What would be the motive for moving him there?
Aldrich: Well, if he died in a place that was considered very inconvenient or embarrassing for others involved in the administration, that would be one major reason why he would be moved.
WND: What’s your opinion of the American press and media today?
Aldrich: I have said right along that the major reason I wrote my book in the first place was because the American people were not getting the information they needed to get from the press in 1992 and again in 1996. That’s why we have Clinton for two terms in a row. We shouldn’t have in the first place in 1992. But now you see media people coming out and fully admitting, especially the more liberal ones among us, they’re now coming out and admitting what they call a Faustian bargain. I don’t know what the hell that means because I wasn’t part of it. Nobody asked me whether or not it would be OK to look the other way and ignore Clinton’s misconduct. It was a Faustian bargain, they say, made by the media to get Bill Clinton elected, so that they would not have a conservative Republican or any kind of Republican in the White House in ’92 and ’96. So we can, I think point our finger directly at the American media for having given us Bill Clinton two times in a row. And, now of course, it’s to their financial benefit that he self-destructs because they’ll get to sell plenty of newspapers and lots of airtime on television as he does it. They were absolutely part and parcel of the reason why this guy’s in office.
WND: The security system at the White House is still pretty much shut down, isn’t it?
Aldrich: It never has been brought up to speed, if you will, in the way that it ought to be. So it’s been my contention all along that the Congress owes the American people at least the attempt to get that squared away. But they haven’t done it. I would suggest someone ought to get that fixed to protect our national security
WND: What about the anecdote of President Clinton being smuggled out of the White House?
Aldrich: That’s going to be proven by Ken Starr’s investigation. I have absolutely no fear at all about that. And it will be duly printed in the newspapers sometime soon that it was well known by the Secret Service that Bill Clinton was leaving the White House without his Secret Service detail because he wanted to go out and party. And that’s going to be coming out in Ken Starr’s report. Then I will be fully exonerated.
WND: You’ve heard that?
Aldrich: Oh yeah, I know the witnesses who are going to testify to it, I’ve always known that.
WND: The Secret Service already testified to that?
Aldrich: Yes.
WND: From your inside knowledge of the White House, right now, is there anything being portrayed to the American people that you know is false?
Aldrich: Anything the Clintons say. There’s nothing they say that people should put any stock in now and that’s part of his problem right now. He has no credibility. I would not believe anything those people tell me. I don’t think they have the country’s interest in mind. I think they have their own interests in mind, and they would do anything that they feel is necessary to stay in power. So we shouldn’t pay attention to anything that they tell us right now. It would be a big mistake on our part to take anything they say seriously.
WND: What about the conspiratorial view that they are working for someone else’s agenda?
Aldrich: Well of course their doing an agenda for other people. These people are called the New Left Democrats. These are the folks that David Horowitz is talking about when he does his writing. These people are radicals from the ’60s who have a common interest, a common goal. It’s all mixed up in the ism’s — Marxism, feminism, Stalinism, Communism, you name it. This is where they live in their hearts, and so this is why Clinton has been able to survive this long.
WND: Do you think President Clinton will resign or will he make Congress go the impeachment route?
Aldrich: I think it’s a little bit of both. We’ll have to go down that impeachment road for awhile until it’s absolutely clear that he can’t, that there’s nothing he can do to stave off impeachment, at which time he’ll resign.
WND: What about Al Gore?
Aldrich: I think he’s very, very mixed up in the fund-raising illegalities. I think that he too will not survive this investigation.
WND: Linda Tripp is afraid she’s in danger, What do you think about that?
Aldrich: Oh, I think she has every reason to be rationally concerned that she’s in danger. If not directly from people in the White House, then from people who are friends of the White House, who feel they’re doing the president and first lady or the administration a favor by doing something to Linda. We’ve seen this on the part of people in the media like Jane Mayer who has consistently written hateful, hateful, hit pieces about conservatives, including my publisher, because she believes she’s doing a service for the Clinton administration. Whether it’s being assassinated in terms of your reputation or being investigated by private investigators to look into every aspect of your life, to intimidate you, to try to destroy you, to destroy your public image or your reputation or your life or your family — whatever it is that they do, it’s highly dangerous. We’re not living in Communist China, for God’s sake, but these Clinton people act as if we are.
WND: Do you think they’ve done that in the past?
Aldrich: Oh, I know they’ve done that in the past.
WND: I mean physically harm somebody.
Aldrich: I don’t know, if they have physically harmed people. I would hope that there are state and federal prosecutors who are investigating that. But I personally don’t know. If I know of an instance where a person was physically harmed by somebody in the Clinton administration, I would report it to the proper authorities.
WND: You must at least suspect it.
Aldrich: I suspect a lot of things, but suspicions are not the same as facts. You can’t make conclusions. You asked me if Linda had a reason to be afraid, and I said yes. Even if there’s no proof that anybody’s been harmed by friends of the Clintons there is enough suspicion that would make a normal, rational person afraid to come forward and testify against the Clintons. In fact, the Clintons have done nothing at all to persuade people otherwise. I think they enjoy this air of intimidation because it keeps a lot of otherwise honest people silent. I think that this intimidation, whether it’s real or not, plays into the hands of the Clintons, because it keeps a lot of people quiet who would otherwise come forward and say, “Hey, the Clintons are wrong. What they’re doing is wrong, dishonest, illegal, whatever.” But people are silent simply because they’re afraid.
