-Caveat Lector-
September 27, 2000
ALL THE PRESIDENT'S SCANDALS
Cyberporn scandal hits Commerce Department
Personnel security officer suspended; follows HUD, White House
abuses
By Paul Sperry
© 2000 WorldNetDaily.com
WASHINGTON -- The security official in charge of investigating
the private backgrounds of Commerce Department employees has been
suspended for downloading and storing pornography on his
government computer, WorldNetDaily has learned.
It's the latest case of a federal employee misusing government
property for personal thrills. Over the past few months, the
Clinton administration has suffered a rash of smut-related
computer violations.
Several senior officials at the Housing and Urban Development
Department also were recently suspended after FBI agents and
other investigators discovered that they had downloaded Internet
porn last year and used their HUD computers to e-mail the illicit
materials, according to the Associated Press.
In both the Commerce and HUD cases, officials were punished after
news broke early last month that dozens of White House staffers,
including some senior officials, were caught downloading
real-time videos of hard-core porn.
As first reported Aug. 9 by WorldNetDaily, the megabyte porn
files made up most of the early 1999 traffic coming into the
Internet firewall protecting the White House computer network
from hackers and viruses.
The suspended Commerce official was escorted out of the main
building here Aug. 14, after investigators found a "monolithic"
stash of porn files on his computer. The scandal was supposed to
be kept secret.
But a Commerce employee recently alerted government oversight
committees in both the Senate and House to "chronic" porn,
sexual-harassment, computer-security and other security problems
in the department's own security office.
A House Government Reform Committee staffer told WorldNetDaily
that the Commerce employee decided to blow the whistle after
reading the report of White House cyberporn abuses on this
newssite.
Just one employee has been punished in Commerce's internal
investigation. Security Specialist Mike Seely, who has been
conducting the department's personnel background checks for the
past several years, was suspended with pay last month. Seely also
has vetted high-level political transfers from the White House.
He allegedly violated a Commerce Internet-use policy, instated in
August 1998, that prohibits "obtaining or viewing sexually
explicit material."
Counterintelligence agents at Commerce, while investigating
another security matter, uncovered a stash of pornography
residing on one of the department's e-mail servers, sources say.
And that led them to Seely's computer.
"The pornography on Mr. Seely's office computer was monolithic,"
said a former Commerce official who wished to go unnamed. "It was
also on the intranet, the local area network used by the
department," which posed a security risk for the entire system.
"He had files with names on them, and in those files were certain
pictures and graphics that he was maintaining of all these women
that he had working for him," he added. And he allegedly
juxtaposed them with pornographic material he pulled off the
Internet of naked women posing in sexual positions and performing
sex acts.
Several female employees have lodged sexual-harassment complaints
against Seely, the official said, but they've allegedly been
"overlooked" by the security office director.
"In the case of an intern who was there just this past summer --
a young girl, about 17 or 18 years old -- her mother came in
complaining about touching and different things that he was
doing," he said. "And that was just kind of let go, you know,
like 'We'll talk to him.' The daughter eventually quit."
Commerce's network administrator and its computer-security chief
obtained proof of Seely's Internet and computer activities by
copying the server files onto CD-ROMs.
"They confronted him (with the evidence) on Monday, August 14,"
said the official. "By the end of the day, he was escorted out of
the building."
Commerce refused to comment on the incident.
"The Privacy Act prohibits us from commenting on any current
employee," said Pat Woodward, Commerce's deputy press secretary.
Pressed about it, she insisted: "We can't comment on any of the
questions that you raised. I checked with our general counsel
people."
She claims that she also can't talk in broader terms about the
investigation.
"Since it has to do with the office of security, I'm sure I can't
comment on that either," Woodward snapped, before abruptly
hanging up the phone.
A security office staffer confirmed that Seely is on leave. He
says he doesn't know when he'll be back. Attempts to reach Seely
for comment were unsuccessful.
The security office is run by Dave Holmes, an ex-Secret Service
agent who headed Vice President Al Gore's security detail at the
White House.
"He knew of this perversion of (Seely's) but just allowed it to
continue," claimed the Commerce official.
And he only "reluctantly" suspended him, he added, "because it
just became so obvious that more than just he and a couple of
people knew about it."
The official maintained that Holmes has swept other problems in
the security office "under the rug."
"He's been able to, just through his connections, keep every
derogatory thing that's happened there under the rug," he said.
"And that's enraged quite a few of the security folks there."
Holmes' staff said he was out of the office and couldn't be
reached for comment.
Hey, the boss does it Meanwhile, across 15th Street at the White
House, there is still no indication that any staffers responsible
for a recent "uptick" in web-porn surfing have been "punished,"
as White House spokesman Jake Siewart promised last month.
"We're not certain who did it, but we're starting to sort it out
and those people will be punished, too," Siewart said Aug. 10.
Asked yesterday for an update on the investigation, Siewart told
WorldNetDaily: "I'll ask our folks. I haven't heard anything new.
That doesn't mean there isn't anything new. I just haven't
checked with them in a while. I can check on that."
He says porn-traffic volume has increased recently because White
House staffers are getting around network porn filters --
installed for the first time last year -- by surfing new porn
sites. Some 9,000 porn sites now dot the Web.
As a result of last year's probe, Siewart last month claimed a
"handful" of employees were "reprimanded" and "one was suspended
without pay" for getting their thrills on the taxpayer's dime.
Siewart didn't elaborate.
But White House employees argue the only staffer they're aware of
being punished wasn't a staffer at all, but a Northrop Grumman
contractor.
And, of the dozens of staffers caught downloading porn, none were
fired. In fact, one of the worst offenders, a senior official,
was allowed to stay on the job after claiming he had a porn
addiction and couldn't help himself.
"That's typical of the current administration," the Commerce
official said. "I mean, once the boss (President Clinton) is
doing it, it's free game."
He says the president -- who sets the tone in the White House,
and throughout his Cabinet, by his own behavior -- hasn't exactly
discouraged his staff from engaging in illicit and reckless
conduct on the job.
Clinton had adulterous sex with an intern in the Oval Office, not
to mention late-night phone sex on an unsecured line in the White
House residence. Also, according to a federal law-enforcement
agent, Clinton has watched porno flicks in the East Wing theater.
Amazingly, some of his staff were brazenly downloading porn video
files -- including ones showing sex acts with gays, farm animals
and teens -- at the same time Congress was debating impeaching
Clinton over perjury and obstruction charges tied not just to his
intern affair, but to a related sexual-harassment lawsuit filed
against him.
On moral grounds, the White House's relatively lenient response
to on-the-job porn-watching might have been expected. But such
disregard for security demands harsher action, experts say.
"The porn industry is notorious for (dropping) cookies and
mousetraps (into e-mail accounts)," said Bruce Taylor, chief
counsel for the National Law Center for Children and Families in
Washington. "It's like giving the Mafia a phone tap on a
government computer."
And bringing hard-core porn into the White House isn't just a
security breach, he says. It's illegal.
Federal law makes it a felony, punishable by up to 15 years in
prison, for "any person who knowingly receives any material that
contains child pornography by computer."
At a minimum, downloading porn using government equipment is
worthy of being fired, asserts Taylor, who prosecuted porn cases
as a senior Justice Department lawyer from 1989 to 1995.
Misappropriation of a federal asset is also a crime. Just ask
scientists at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, the
California nuclear-arms research lab owned by the Energy
Department.
In 1994, two managers were busted downloading and storing so much
web-porn that it took up "gigabytes" of space on the government
computer network, a Livermore spokesman says.
Both managers were fired, and one was charged with misusing
government property, a felony.
"It had nothing to do with the morality of pornography,"
explained lab spokesman David Schwoegler. "They took a government
asset of such a value and made it unavailable to others."
Another potential legal aspect involves misappropriation of
public funds. Porn sites won't let you download files without
payment.
Did any White House employees use government credit cards to
access porn sites? Siewart says he isn't sure and will have to
look into it.
White House spin The White House has made a number of other
claims about its recent cybersmut problems that don't hold up to
scrutiny, staffers and contractors familiar with the case have
told WorldNetDaily.
* "We've made it quite clear to everyone what the rules are,"
White House spokesman Joe Lockhart claimed last month.
Seiwart stressed that the White House has a "no personal use"
policy regarding computers. He said that after last year's
problem, employees must now follow a "strict no photo policy,"
meaning that e-mailing any photos is forbidden.
But White House employees point out that the porn problem has to
do with surfing and downloading, not e-mailing.
They say the White House made it sound as if it has put in place
a policy expressly prohibiting employee porn-surfing.
Not so, employees say. Its Internet policy warns against
inappropriate use, but still doesn't define what that is --
unlike the Commerce policy and most corporate policies.
"If they had put it in writing that you will be terminated if you
are ID'd using computers to surf porn, and (they) made everyone
sign it, then most people would not even pursue it," said one
employee who insisted on remaining anonymous. "But they haven't
done that."
A former top official who has worked in both the Bush and Clinton
White Houses notes that all new hires are supposed to go through
an orientation program before they get their e-mail accounts. The
training also stresses proper etiquette in conducting official
government business and warns how inappropriate behavior can be
used against you -- "how you can be turned," he said. Staffers
were made to sign an acknowledgment.
"They don't give a s--t now," the former official said.
Siewart also claimed last year's White House smutfest was "fairly
minimal" and involved only a "handful" of staffers.
"It's like any workplace," he said.
In fact, the investigation snared "dozens" of suspects and
involved an investigative team of several workers, not including
the San Francisco-based security-software contractor who
discovered the high-volume downloading while upgrading the
firewall, according to employees and contractors close to the
case.
And the probe turned up at least a dozen serious, repeat
offenders.
Lockhart said the perpetrators were low-level White House people.
"No one you ever heard of," Siewart told one reporter.
Trying to assure USA Today that no one of high rank was involved,
Siewart fingered cleaning crews and security staff for some of
the on-line ogling -- even though janitors don't have passcodes
to the computers.
But employees and contractors have said they heard and saw big
names.
"I saw the names," said one employee. "There were a handful of
big names."
One habitual offender, a GS-15 executive in the Office of
Administration, looked at porn for at least an hour each day, the
employee says. He was written up but not punished, and is still
working in the White House.
Another perpetrator, a Clinton appointee known inside and outside
the Beltway, is an assistant to the president in the West Wing.
(WorldNetDaily will not publish perpetrators' names without
official documentation. Sources who promised documentation have
been terrified by a White House security clampdown following
publication of the initial stories last month.
(The FBI was called in -- not to ID the porn offenders, but to ID
the leakers. As a result, sources are now so intimidated by this
administration that they say they are afraid not only for their
jobs, but for their security clearances, their ability to work in
government again -- and even for their lives.
(Congress can subpoena the firewall logs that show plainly who
the perpetrators were in 1999. But so far, it has not acted.)
In following up WorldNetDaily's story, at least one news
organization reported that, according to Siewart, "the surfing
took place mostly at night."
More White House spin, employees and contractors say.
"It definitely was not just during the night," according to one
source who has seen the firewall logs and times the files were
saved on individuals' computers.
"And most of the night porn-surfing was done in the White House
Communications office, where they monitor the press to prepare
responses in the morning," the source said.
Gun-powder residue If any high-level names did turn up in the
probe, White House spin doctors have proffered, there's no way to
be sure they did the downloading. After all, they say, one of
their aides could have accessed their account using their
passcode.
But sources say computer-security experts and other investigators
conducted a thorough probe that left little room for doubt. And
the probe took into account the unlikely (and equally disturbing)
possibility of officials sharing their computer passcodes.
After they pulled the firewall logs from the servers, they traced
porn-site URL (essentially the Internet zip codes) traffic back
to individual workstations. Then they checked individual
accounts.
Next, they looked at what time of day the downloaded porn files
were saved on the machines. They then checked security-card scan
logs to see if the suspected individuals were in the building at
the time the porn was downloaded.
Once they established opportunity, they asked the individuals if
they shared their passcode with others, giving them the chance to
blame someone else.
If they did, investigators checked building logs to see if the
other person they named would have had the chance to download the
files. If so, then they interrogated that person.
"It's not the gun in the hand, but it's definitely the gun-powder
residue all over the hand," one White House employee who worked
on the investigation has told WorldNetDaily.
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