Waxman, White House Strike Deal on Security Officers’ TestimonyIt’s been one subpoena-crazy day, what with the White House refusing to comply with congressional demands for information about nine fired U.S. attorneys. But there’s at least one set of subpoenas that won’t be issued today. Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) has been able to come to terms with the White House about the deepening White House Security Office scandal.
On Tuesday, Waxman wrote to White House Counsel Fred Fielding to detail new allegations that the WHSO — entrusted to ensure compliance with procedures to safeguard classified information — is dysfunctional. The heads of the office, just-departed director James Knodell and deputy Ken Greeson, took no action when presented with charges that aides to President Bush and Vice President Cheney left classified documents strewn throughout hotel rooms and across their desks, and they themselves took cellphones and Blackberries into secure facilities in violation of protocol. A frustrated Waxman told Fielding that unless House Government Oversight Committee investigators received access to interview three current and former White House officials who could speak to the alleged pattern of abuse, Waxman would ask the committee for authority to subpoena them.
Waxman said he’d seek the subpoena authority at the committee’s business meeting today. But committee aides explain that the meeting is off, as Fielding and Waxman have reached an agreement, averting the subpoenas for now. The White House has consented to “transcribed interviews” with Alan Swendimen, director of the Office of Administration; Mark Frownfelter, an ex-security officer; and former WHSO head Jeff Thompson. “The fact that we were able to reach an agreement on testimony and getting the interviews to take place will be helpful in moving the committee’s inquiry forward,” says an Oversight Committee staffer.
Why is the committee so interested in the three relatively obscure bureaucrats? According to Waxman’s letter, Fielding offered the committee Swendimen, Frownfelter and Thompson in order to forestall Waxman’s efforts to get former White House chief of staff Andy Card before his panel. The committee considers the three well-positioned enough to shed light on how security procedures for handling classified information at the White House could have deteriorated to the degree Waxman detailed in his letter.
But the staffer adds that nothing in the deal restricts the committee’s ability to seek additional testimony, if necessary, from Card or anyone else. For now, the committee feels that the White House is dealing with it in good faith. We’ll see if that feeling lasts.