Are the bosses watching?

There is no question that President Clinton's staff has a talent for forcing people to choose between incompetence and skullduggery as an explanation for their managerial "snafus" - to use Clinton's term. The Clinton staff's initial foray into misuse of the FBI was in 1993, when it asked the bureau to invent a cover story for the decision to sack the travel office staff. The latest shenanigan was the collection of Republicans' FBI files as part of a purportedly mismanaged effort to speed up security clearances.

Leon Panetta says the latest meddling with the FBI was "completely inexcusable", and indeed the thing was so amateurish that incompetence may stand up as the eventual explanation. But this is a serious matter that deserves searching inquiry. Whether Democrats or Republicans occupy the White House, no mid-level employee should be able to order up sensitive files from an agency that has an obligation to safeguard the privacy of the innocent while its enforces the law.

Rep. William Clinger of Pennsylvania, chairman of the House Government Reform and Oversight committee, is right to pursue the matter, although we would urge him not to hurriedly assume that the White House was simply pursuing a vendetta against Billy Date, the ousted head of the travel office.

There are deeper questions here. What, for example, were the attorney general and the FBI director doing while their control of their agency was being usurped? If Bernard Nussbaum, then White House Counsel, was out of the loop, why was his letter-head weighty enough to unlock hundreds of confidential files at an agency not under his supervision?

All these questions need to be answered, given abuses of the FBI under president Nixon and the messy beginning of the Clinton team in 1993. These are executive questions of a historically important nature. We would think the current chief executive would be first in line demanding answers.

-- New York Times