Clinton Dogged by FBI Files, Travel Office Trial

From Correspondent Jill Dougherty

CLEVELAND (CNN, June 23) -- As President Clinton prepared for a speech in Cleveland Saturday, Bob Dole unleashed a stinging attack on the Clinton White House for collecting FBI files on Republicans.

"The Clinton administration came into office vowing to set a new ethical standard. Unfortunately, the standard they have set cannot be defended. America deserves better," Dole said in Saturday's Republican radio address.

"They misused the FBI and revealed a pattern of ethical arrogance, the full extent of which even today we are just beginning to discover."

The president made no public statement about Dole's address, but his campaign spokesman, traveling with him, fired back.

"It is unfortunate that Bob Dole has used his first national forum to speak to the public since wrapping up his nomination to talk about only negative partisan attacks. Bob Dole has yet to give the country any reason to vote for him."

And White House deputy press secretary Mary Ellen Glynn asked rhetorically, "Doesn't Dole have anything new to talk about?" She said Dole had "no new ideas or policies about the future of the country, whereas Clinton has offered substantive proposals on welfare, balancing the budget, creating new jobs."

Clinton stuck to his script as he spoke to the U.S. Conference of Mayors. He announced new steps to track sex offenders, including the development of a national registry to track sexual offenders and child molesters across the country. Sens. Joe Biden, D-Delaware, and Phil Gramm, R-Texas, have introduced a bill in Congress to develop that registry, he said.

"We must make sure police in every state can get the information they need from any state to track sex offenders down and bring them to justice when they commit new crimes," Clinton told the conference.

Meanwhile, Republicans and Democrats traded furious charges regarding the FBI files controversy.

House speaker Newt Gingrich said Saturday that the White House must turn over 2,000 pages of travel office files or the House will declare it in contempt of Congress next week.

"Over 400 files from the Federal Bureau of Investigation have been taken by political operatives working for Clinton," House Speaker Newt Gingrich said. "They were kept in the White House for two years. They were kept in a room which we are now finding out that interns routinely went in and out of. And I think that it is a little disgusting to have the White House pretend that everything is normal."

Rep. Tom Lantos, D-California, responded on CNN's "Evans and Novak" that "clearly some of my Republican colleagues would like to see nothing more than to have a gigantic ceremonial sword set up in front of the White House and have the president fall on it. He's not going to do that."

Despite the controversy, Clinton's rating remains relatively high, even though polls indicate that the majority of voters believe the White House did something improper with the FBI files. On "CNN Saturday Morning," Republican strategist Lynn Nofziger predicted the president's approval rating could take a downturn.

"The buck does not stop with Mr. Livingstone, does not stop with Mr. Lindsey, does not even stop with Leon Panetta. It stops in the Oval Office with President Clinton. I think you're going to see a change in attitude among the voters," he said.

The Clinton campaign claims that voters care mostly about job performance, not FBI files. Their strategy: keep showing the president is delivering on issues that really matter to them.

Clinton Dogged by FBI Files, Travel Office Trial

Related Stories: