-Caveat Lector- From: http://insightmag.com/archive/199912103.shtml INSIGHT MAGAZINE December 10, 1999 Former Aide Fights White House on Abuse -------------------------------- By Paul M. Rodriguez -------------------------------- The Clinton administration�s Big Brother computer cost taxpayers more than $1.7 million and an exemplary federal employee her job. Sheryl Hall won�t take it sitting down. This is a story about a modern-day David and Goliath. But instead of two men, it involves two women � one a career civil servant and the other the first lady of the United States. It begins about 18 months before Insight began reporting in 1996 about a sophisticated computer system at the White House designed to collect data on virtually everyone who did, might, or had come into contact with the president and his wife or their staffs. This system was called the White House Office Data Base, or WHODB. Some just called it Big Brother (see �More Personal Secrets on File @ the White House,� July 15, 1996). Ultimately, WHODB cost taxpayers more than $1.7 million to build and operate based on estimates compiled in 1998 by the House Government Reform subcommittee on National Economic Growth, Natural Resources and Regulatory Affairs. Besides being used as a sophisticated Rolodex to reward the president�s friends and supporters with invitations to events and other perks, the computer system was employed to coordinate a variety of political and fund-raising events that, according to Republican Rep. David McIntosh of Indiana and other investigators (see �McIntosh Report Startles Congress,� Nov. 9, 1998), involved illegal activities by the White House and the Democratic National Committee, or DNC. Remember those infamous White House kaffeeklatsches? How about those Lincoln Bedroom sleepovers and the political fund-raising events and donors linked by federal investigators to possible illegal campaign activities directed by the president and his aides? Many of these activities have been traced to data stored in the Big Brother computer, a virtual warehouse in which every favor, perk and trick, nickel and dime can be found neatly indexed. Here is a trove of detail and evidence filled with artifacts that parallel the news coverage and congressional hearings dating even prior to the Monica Lewinsky caper that led to the first impeachment of a sitting president since Reconstruction. But before the beret-wearing young intern became infatuated with a manipulative president there was Sheryl L. Hall, a middle-aged woman living a middle-class life. Hall inadvertently irritated key staff in the White House � and ultimately, according to a lawsuit filed in federal court in the Eastern District of Virginia, even the first lady. A career civil servant with grown children, she did her job and did it well, according to performance evaluations, joining the White House staff under President Bush. She was a model manager, a savvy professional thoroughly familiar with computer and telecommunications systems. As a holdover during the Clinton administration, Hall operated much as she did before, supervising up to 30 or so people who operate the sophisticated computers and telephone systems of the White House. Politics for this Nevada transplant never was an issue when it came to work, and her rise to the position level of GS-15 was based on merit. Sometime in 1993 and early 1994, according to her deposition, Hall says just doing her job by the book got her caught in a web of politics and personal attacks the like of which she had never experienced, let alone understood, even after Insight first broke the WHODB story. It wasn�t until Congress investigated the Big Brother computer system and issued a scathing report with detailed appendices that Hall realized what really had happened to her on the job. In fact, it is from the pages of an October 1998 report released by McIntosh�s subcommittee that Hall was able to piece together the importance of a sequence of events that had happened on the job. And it was this that led her to file job-discrimination claims with two federal employment services and then file a federal lawsuit against Hillary Rodham Clinton and several White House aides. Hall claims in court papers that during development phases of the WHODB project she warned senior White House aides of potential violations of law, including the Hatch Act, as a result of attempts to merge official, political and campaign-related data into the federally funded Big Brother computer system. It was these repeated warnings of potential lawbreaking, she claims, that caused her superiors to brand her a traitor, unreliable, �old� and even disloyal to the president. She lost her management position, her employees, access to the senior staff and, finally, even her office as she was relegated to an empty room with nothing to do. Hurt and confused, she found a new job at the Treasury Department as a manager in internal computer-services support and quit the post at the White House in which she says she was being harassed. The warnings Hall had given her White House superiors ultimately proved true, according to federal law-enforcement and congressional investigators who have spoken to Insight. Consider the opening chapter of a McIntosh report following a nearly two-year probe into the Clintons� creation and use of WHODB. �The story of the White House Database is one about a White House that disregarded the difference between the official business of the United States government and the political business of reelecting the president,� it states. �Because the line between official business and campaigning was obliterated, this president and his White House subordinates proceeded to spend at least $1.7 million of government funds on a complex, centralized computer � used not just for official purposes [but] in fact, used [by the president and all his men and women] to advance the campaign fund-raising objectives of the DNC [which] constitutes a theft of government property.�� Hall is but a footnote in the history of the Big Brother project and the larger campaign fund-raising mess that still is being investigated by the Justice Department, the FBI and at least one federal grand jury. But she is a footnote with a human face. The plethora of typed and handwritten notes by White House staff, discovered by McIntosh, helps to personalize the damage caused by the misdeeds and possibly illegal activities of Clinton and company. This includes Mrs. Clinton, who allegedly was a chief instigator (or at best a chief motivator) for staff eager to please at any cost � a cost including Hall�s career. Federal District Judge Albert V. Bryan Jr. was assigned the case [Civil Action No. 99-694-A] and, though the Justice Department argued he had no jurisdiction, he accepted the Hall lawsuit only to dismiss it with prejudice without even hearing oral arguments. His decision was based on the fact that Hall, notwithstanding her claims of on-the-job abuse, still received the highest or next-to-highest ratings on her job evaluations, which included several citations for meritorious service. Bryan concluded that under the laws and precedents Hall well may have suffered discrimination and been subjected to subtle or perhaps even overt retaliation, but the action should be pursued administratively rather than in his court. At the same time he also opened the door to the filing of another line of action in his court. Hall and her family are aware that the mills of the gods grind slowly in Washington and have come to expect delays. But they also expect justice. The White House should realize that Hall won�t go away without receiving a chance to confront her tormentors. Maybe you can�t fight city hall, but don�t tell that to Larry Klayman of Judicial Watch. In addition to representing Hall in her federal administrative claims, Klayman has filed a new lawsuit against Mrs. Clinton and the DNC for intentional infliction of emotional distress and improper interference with Hall�s duties and related activities. Klayman, in a statement to Insight, says that �the treatment of Miss Hall by Mrs. Clinton and her agents regrettably has been consistent with what we know about the first lady�s own conduct toward others who question her actions or that of subordinates. Based on a number of sources, including Mrs. Clinton�s own friends, she appears to be a very vindictive person who will let nothing stand in the way of her political and other ambitions.� And, Klayman adds: �This is part of the mentality of the �Filegate� scandal which touches not only Mrs. Clinton but also her subordinates � just as does the launching of WHODB over the objections of Miss Hall.� Indeed, a little David is standing firm before a very big Goliath. Copyright � 1999 News World Communications, Inc DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion and informational exchange list. Proselyzting propagandic screeds are not allowed. Substance�not soapboxing! 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