EXHIBIT 2 >From the Washington Times, May 27, 2000 Clinton Accused in `Smear'--Tripp Lawyers Blame White House for Leak By Jerry Seper Attorneys for Linda R. Tripp yesterday said the release of information from her confidential personnel file was `wrong and illegal,' and part of a `smear campaign' by the White House to damage her reputation. The attorneys said the campaign was engineered by President Clinton and his senior advisers, who `turned their public relations machine against Mrs. Tripp' to divert attention from the president's conduct with former White House intern Monica Lewinsky. `The campaign worked, and Mrs. Tripp was publicly humiliated on numerous occasions,' attorneys Stephen M. Kohn, David K. Colapinto and Michael D. Kohn said in a statement. `Her reputation was poisoned, her motives questioned and even her personal appearance became fair game for ridicule.' They said the leak of the Tripp file by Pentagon spokesman Kenneth Bacon to a reporter looking to write a critical story of Mrs. Tripp was part of that scheme, and that the file's disclosure was prohibited under the federal Privacy Act. The Defense Department's Office of Inspector General concluded that Mr. Bacon and his former top deputy, Clifford H. Bernath, violated Mrs. Tripp's privacy rights by providing information from her confidential personnel file to a reporter for the New Yorker magazine. But the two men received only mild reprimands Thursday from Defense Secretary William S. Cohen. Mr. Cohen criticized Mr. Bacon and Mr. Bernath in letters for what he called a `serious lapse of judgment,' although neither letter was made part of the men's personnel files and no further disciplinary action was recommended. The case is closed. Mr. Clinton, through a spokesman, yesterday said he had `full confidence' in the Cohen decision. `The president has full confidence in the secretary of defense's management of his staff and the Pentagon and supports the judgment of the secretary of defense to take the actions appropriate,' said P.J. Crowley, chief spokesman for the White House National Security Council, Mr. Crowley formerly worked for Mr. Bacon. Mrs. Tripp is the Pentagon official who blew the whistle on Mr. Clinton's affair with Miss Lewinsky. Both Mrs. Tripp and Miss Lewinsky worked for Mr.Bacon. Mrs. Tripp has since field a lawsuit accusing the White House and the Defense Department of using her confidential file to smear her reputation. In a five-page statement, her attorneys noted that the leak to Jane Mayer, a reporter for the New Yorker, came after Mr. Bacon met privately over dinner with former White House Deputy Chief of Staff Harold Ickes--who `volunteered' to help Mr. Clinton in damage control after the Lewinsky accusations surfaced. They said Mr. Ickes also had met with Miss Mayer before the information was released. `This was simply not an innocent release of information in response to an inquiry by a reporter,' they said. `It is well-established that Mr. Baconand his associate who was involved in the illegal leak knew that the information requested from Mrs. Tripp's security file would be used in a derogatory manner to smear Mrs. Tripp and question her credibility.' They also said Mr. Bacon and Mr. Bernath had been told the information from the file was covered by the Privacy Act and could not be released without Mrs. Tripp's consent. Mr. Ickes, now coordinating first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton's run for a U.S. Senate seat in New York, did not return calls to his office for comment. He previously denied any wrongdoing, saying that while he met with Mr. Bacon and Miss Mayer before the file was leaked, he denied the discussions were part of a conspiracy. The White House also has denied any involvement in the leak, and Mr. Bacon, in a statement on Thursday, said he did not believe he violated Mrs. Tripp's privacy rights and that `ultimately my conduct will be found lawful.' Sen. James M. Inhofe, Oklahoma Republican who denounced a Justice Department decision last month not to seek an indictment of Mr. Bacon or Mr. Bernath, despite concerns outlined in a July 1998 report by the inspector general, called the Cohen reprimand `a travesty.' `At a minimum, Bacon and Bernath should have been fired,' said Mr. Inhofe. `This is what happened to the Bush administration official who misused candidate Bill Clinton's passport file in 1992. It is what Bill Clinton said would happen to anyone in his administration found guilty of a similar invasion of privacy.' Mr. Cohen yesterday denied that he whitewashed the release of information from Mrs. Tripp's confidential file, saying there was `no attempt to injure Miss Tripp's credibility or her reputation.' He told reporters at Morristown Airport after touring nearby Picatinny Arsenal that Mr. Bacon and Mr. Bernath were seeking to respond to pressure from the media and that there was no attempt to orchestrate any campaign to discredit Mrs. Tripp. `I don't intend to fire him,' Mr. Cohen said of Mr. Bacon. In a final report made public yesterday, acting Inspector General Donald Mancuso said the harm to Mrs. Tripp's privacy interests caused by the release of her confidential personnel file outweighed any public benefit. `Accordingly, the release constituted a clearly unwarranted invasion of her privacy,' the report said. The report said the actions of Mr. Bacon and Mr. Bernath constituted a violation of the federal Privacy Act. The documents leaked showed that Mrs. Tripp had said she never had been arrested, when in fact she had--in what later was described as a teen-age prank that occurred more than 30 years ago. EXHIBIT 3 >From The Weekly Standard, June 12, 2000 Why Didn't Bacon Get Fried?--The Pentagon's Anti-Tripp Leakers Get a Slap on the Wrist, and the Privacy Act a Slap in the Face By Jay Nordlinger It's just a small matter, in all the Clinton grossness, but it counts. Linda Tripp was the victim of a dirty, and illegal, trick. It was played on her by her own bosses at the Pentagon. And now those men--Kenneth Bacon and Clifford Bernath--have escaped with the wispiest slaps on the wrist. This is ho-hum for the Clinton administration; but it is a reminder of how unlawful and indecent this administration has been. Before this little affair slides all the way down the memory hole, recall the essential facts: In January 1998, the Lewinsky scandal exploded on Bill Clinton's head. From the point of view of the White House, Linda Tripp was the major villain. It was therefore a matter of urgency to discredit her. In March, Jane Mayer, a Clinton-friendly reporter for the New Yorker, acquired what seemed a valuable piece of information: Tripp, as a teenager, had been arrested for larceny. Mayer put in a call to Ken Bacon, assistant secretary of defense for public affairs. He was an old friend; the two had worked together at the Wall Street Journal. Mayer had an amazingly specific question for him: How had Tripp responded to Question 21, parts a and b, on Form 398? This was a highly sensitive national-security questionnaire, under the eye of the Privacy Act Branch of the Defense Security Service; Question 21 dealt with arrests and detentions. Bacon quickly swung into action. He ordered his deputy, Cliff Bernath, to get Mayer her answer. Hours before the reporter's deadline, Bernath told her not to worry: `Ken has made clear it's priority.' Moving heaven and earth, and alarming career officers as he went, Bernath delivered--right on time. It looked like bad news for Tripp: She had not, in fact, disclosed on Form 398 her 1969 arrest. Bernath told the New York Times that Tripp faced the `very serious charge' of lying to the government. Defense secretary William Cohen declared on CNN that Tripp was `guilty of a contradiction of the truth,' which would be `looked into.' It soon emerged, however, that Tripp's arrest had been the result of a juvenile prank, perpetrated against her. The judge had reduced the charge to one count of loitering, telling her, as she recalled it, that her record would be clear. The Pentagon, rather sheepishly, dropped its investigation of Tripp. Instead, Congress demanded that the department investigate Bacon and Bernath--for violating the Privacy Act. In their attempt to help Mayer nail Tripp, the two men seemed to have nailed themselves. The Pentagon's inspector general, Eleanor Hill, duly launched an investigation. The case being clear-cut, it didn't take her long to find that Bacon and Bernath had indeed violated the Privacy Act. In July 1998, she referred the matter to the Justice Department--which then sat on it for almost two full years. This would have been incomprehensible in any other administration. Only in April 2000 did Justice announce that it would not prosecute. Incredibly, the department claimed that there was `no direct evidence upon which to pursue any violation of the Privacy Act.' It was then left to Secretary Cohen to determine a penalty for Bacon and Bernath--if any. What he decided to do was write a letter expressing his `disappointment' in the men. Each would receive a copy. In this letter, Cohen said that his subordinates' actions had been `hasty and ill-considered.' He noted that, at the time of the incident, they and others at the Pentagon were under instruction not to release anything concerning Tripp without first consulting department lawyers. The strongest language he used was `serious lapse of judgment.' But this was balanced against `the very high quality of the performance that you have otherwise exhibited.' Amazingly, Cohen told the press that `there was no attempt to injure Miss Tripp's credibility or her reputation.' Contemplating this, Dick Morris, the former Clinton adviser, had no choice but to remark, `Generally, it is a good political rule never to say anything that the average 6-year-old knows isn't true.' The most striking thing about the Cohen letter is that it will not even be placed in either Bacon's or Bernath's permanent file. According to the Pentagon, this is not a letter of reprimand. A department spokesman, Craig Quigley, described it as `a personal letter to both Mr. Bernath and Mr. Bacon.' Incredulous, a reporter said, `So, it's not a letter of reprimand?' `No,' said Quigley, `Well, what would you call it?' Said Quigley, `It's an official letter expressing the secretary's disappointment in the judgment' of the two officials. Quigley, like his boss, Bacon, also persisted in the fiction that the leak to Mayer was no big deal--a matter of routing, just business as usual. `This information was taken in the normal course of the day.' It was `done very clearly and above board.' You know how it is at the Pentagon: `A reporter will call with a question or request for data of some sort, and it's provided as best we can.' Anyone who has ever covered, or tried to cover, the Defense Department will gladly tell you this is rot. Quigley trotted out another line as well, one that is increasingly becoming the Bacon defense: `You always do a balancing act between the Freedom of Information Act and the Privacy Act.' This assertion is absurd: Form 398 is strictly a Privacy Act document. After Cohen's non-reprimand, a few Republicans properly cried bloody murder. Sen. James Inhofe of Oklahoma accused the Pentagon of `a whitewash and a coverup.' He said that `the law was broken, and nothing is being done about it.' The failure to punish the leakers would `send a signal to millions of federal civilian and military employees that their private government records can be made public for political purposes, and no one will be held accountable.' For their part, Bacon and Bernath are denying any violation of the Privacy Act. At a press conference, Bacon was asked whether he would apologize to Tripp. `Well,' he replied, `I have already issued the apologies that I have to issue.' (He didn't specify what those were.) `I don't think that I performed unlawfully,' he continued. His only regret was that he had not `checked this with lawyers.' In an official statement, Bacon said, `It certainly never occurred to me that the Privacy Act would preclude disclosing how a public figure recorded a public arrest record on a security clearance.' And here is more, perhaps Bacon's richest utterance to date: `I obviously knew that this was an issue of considerable public concern and that the public had an interest in knowing whether Ms. Tripp had accurately acknowledged her arrest record.' Bernath, the junior partner in the enterprise, following orders, although blindly, was similarly unbowed, saying, `My actions were not only legal, but also ethical and correct.' Meanwhile, Tripp is suing both the Pentagon and the White House for Privacy Act violations and witness intimidation. This suit may in fact have been on Cohen's mind when he declined to take serious action against his guys. Cohen gave the game away somewhat on Meet the Press, saying of Bacon, `He is now the subject of a major lawsuit. And so he will continue to be held accountable to the legal process.' This is exactly the sort of thinking that worries many observers, including Joseph diGenova, a former U.S. attorney with long experience in this area. Says diGenova, `The treatment of Bacon and Bernath suggests that the Privacy Act will be enforceable only in civil lawsuits filed by the victims. It there's no adverse action--not even a letter that goes into somebody's file--there's no deterrence here. None whatsoever.' In other words, `Don't leave it solely to the victim, who has to pay lawyers and so on, to enforce her rights under the Privacy Act. The government should enforce those rights, especially given that it was government people who broke the law.' The President and his men have a bit of a history with the Privacy Act. You perhaps remember Passportgate. Toward the end of the 1992 presidential campaign, it was learned that political appointees in the Bush State Department had rifled through candidate Clinton's passport files and those of his mother. Democrats demanded an independent-counsel investigation. They got one--led by diGenova. One of the officials involved, Elizabeth Tamposi, was dismissed. The acting secretary of state, Lawrence Eagleburger, offered to resign over the matter (President Bush refused). Said Clinton, in his first press conference as president-elect, `If I catch anybody doing [what the passport-file offenders did], I will fire them the next day. You won't have to have an inquiry or rigmarole or anything else.' About a year later, Passportgage had something of a reprise, this time featuring appointees in Clinton's own State Department. A few of them got hold of Bush-administration personnel files and leaked them to Al Kamen of the Washington Post. Kamen thus had the following story: `Guess whose working file was empty? That of very controversial longtime Bush employee Jennifer Fitzgerald.' Kamen, of course, was being coy here: Fitzgerald was the woman rumored to have had an affair with President Bush. Damen was also able to report that Elizabeth Tamposi's file included `concerns from very senior State Department types that she was not ready for an assistant secretaryship.' Immediately, the State Department's inspector general, Sherman Funk, began an investigation. He found that two employees--Joseph Tarver and Mark Schulhof--were stone-cold guilty. Funk told Congress that the pair had engaged in `criminal violations of the Privacy Act provable beyond a reasonable doubt.' The Justice Department (developing a pattern) refused to prosecute. In November 1993, the department secretary, Warren Christopher, fired Tarver and Schulhof. This must have been one of the last acts of Clinton-administration honor. The contrast with the Bacon-Tripp case--in this last respect--is overwhelming. ### U.S. Senator James M. 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