Judges Authorize Probe Into GOP Files

WASHINGTON — A panel of appellate court judges Friday authorized Whitewater independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr to investigate possible criminal wrongdoing by White House aides who obtained sensitive FBI files on more than 400 past employees of Republican administrations.

Acting at the request a day earlier of Atty. Gen. Janet Reno, the judges said that Starr should expand his jurisdiction to look into the conduct of Anthony Marceca, an Army employee and onetime political operative, and any other people who may have participated in obtaining the records.

White House officials, who have attributed the file episode to an innocent bureaucratic bungle, said they would cooperate in the investigation. Starr, who two years ago began examining whether President and Hillary Rodham Clinton illegally benefited from their investment in an Ozark real estate development known as Whitewater, already has taken his inquiry far afield.

He subpoenaed Mrs. Clinton in January to testify to a federal grand jury about the sudden appearance of long-sought billing records that reflected her legal work for a failed Little Rock, Ark., savings and loan, which is at the heart of the Whitewater case. Two months later--at Reno’s recommendation--he began looking into possible congressional perjury by a former White House aide who played a role in the 1993 firing of seven employees from the White House travel office.

Ten Republicans on the recently expired Senate Whitewater Committee also asked Starr on Friday to investigate possible perjury by three administration figures who testified during the committee’s 13-month investigation. But Starr’s office has not yet said whether he will accept that referral.

The judges said in their order that Starr should investigate whether Marceca violated the law by asking the FBI for confidential materials under false pretenses. Marceca, working in the White House office of personnel security, requested the files on grounds they were needed to give persons he named “access” to the White House.

However, 408 persons whose files were sought and obtained by the White House did not require such access because they already had left government service, including former Secretary of State James A. Baker III.

White House officials have said that an innocent mistake was made and that Marceca was working from an outdated Secret Service list in an effort to update clearances for Clinton administration employees.

Besides Marceca, the judges directed Starr to investigate “any [other] person or entity who has engaged in unlawful conspiracy or who has aided or abetted any federal offense, as necessary to resolve the matter.”

D. Craig Livingstone, who as director of the office was Marceca’s superior, last week was placed on indefinite administrative leave by the White House. Neither the two men nor their attorneys could be reached for comment Friday.

As House and Senate committees pursue their own inquiries, Starr’s new mandate may hamper the appearance of witnesses before Congress and reduce the flow of publicly available information. Legal sources said that Marceca and Livingstone, who are scheduled to testify next week to the House Government Reform and Oversight Committee, may refuse to appear on constitutional grounds because they could be the subjects of criminal prosecution. Both are former political operatives with no background in security work.

White House officials have said that they were working from lists obtained from the Secret Service that were out of date. A Secret Service official told the Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday that its own computer lists are never outdated, but are kept current month by month.

However, Lisa Wetzl, a former White House employee who took over the security clearance project after Marceca’s departure, contradicted Secret Service claims in interviews with reporters.

Wetzl, 25, said that during her two years at the White House it was not uncommon to find lists with errors.

“I never saw a Secret Service list that was completely up to date,” she said. “It was my impression that it [the agency] was a bureaucracy like any other.”

Times staff writer Ronald J. Ostrow contributed to this story.