It isn't quite Watergate redux, but the recently released videos of President Clinton's coffee klatches with campaign donors are being called the Clinton Tapes. The uproar over the tapes, however, has focused fresh attention on the organization that made them--the little-known White House Communications Agency (WHCA).
Created by President Franklin D. Roosevelt to provide secure wartime communications, the hush-hush Pentagon unit has gradually assumed responsibility for all telecommunications support for the President and his staff. At last tally, back in 1996, the agency employed just under 1,000 military personnel and had a $122 million budget. It supplies the White House with a range of services, everything from tap-free phone lines to a video archive of the events of the presidency.
This isn't the first time the spotlight has beamed on the agency. Responding to assertions of alleged fraud, the Defense Department's Inspector General (IG) issued the first-ever audit of the agency, in two installments, in November 1995 and in April 1996. These inquiries found that the unit had essentially lost its way and "need[ed] management attention" in a number of areas. The IG's report stated that nonsecurity-related projects, such as White House videotaping, were "not within the scope of the WHCA telecommunications mission" and should be paid for by the White House, not the Defense Department.
Following the IG's report, the House Government Reform and Oversight Subcommittee on National Security, International Affairs and Criminal Justice also looked into the matter. After often-heated hearings, the subcommittee reported "major mismanagement, lack of accountability and an unsettling degree of mission creep" in the agency, parts of which, the panel's report said, had become, "in effect, an adjunct to the White House press and publicity offices."
While stressing that the IG had found no evidence "of significant waste of agency resources," subcommittee Democrats acknowledged in their appended report that there had been "five decades of lax practices" in the agency and "commended" the White House for allowing the audit.
"This was exactly the type of thing we were hoping not to find and this is the type of flagrant thing that might make us want to take another look at the agency," said Mark E. Souder, R-Ind., a member of the subcommittee at the time of the oversight hearings. Starting with the 1998 fiscal year, the White House has agreed to begin bankrolling certain of the unit's projects, such as the audiovisual shop that taped the coffees.
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