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®RM80¯     In the monumental tapestry of deception woven by the Clinton administration, the scene of the Democratic National Committee helping itself to information from the White House's official database is only a tiny detail in an obscure corner. 
     But it illustrates as well as larger events that indifference to ethical standards was pervasive, and how White House staff at all levels became complicit in assuring a 1996 Clinton/Gore victory by any means necessary. 
     You can read all about it in a Congressional report from the House Committee on Government Reform and Oversight, based on an investigation by the Subcommittee on National Economic Growth, Natural Resources and Regulatory Affairs headed by David McIntosh, R-Ind. The complete report is at www.house.gov/reform/neg on the Web, but if you plan to download it you should know it totals some 12 megabytes, about 60 pages of narrative with almost 600 pages of notes and supporting documents. 
     McIntosh's report is typical in another way. It was released in October, and it has been virtually ignored. 
     The contention of the report is that the conversion of official White House records to the use of the DNC may constitute the theft of government property, as may the time of government employees and the use of government property such as computer time and storage. 
     The committee cites the case of one Peter Collins, who was convicted of using government office supplies to support the U.S. Amateur Ballroom Dancing Association. 
     Any administration collects information that would be of enormous value to party fundraising, from White House guest lists to mailing lists for holiday cards. But the principle has been that it can't be distributed in that way. 
     Early on, that was the Clinton administration's position too. Cheryl Mills, then associate counsel to the president, wrote in a memo dated Jan. 17, 1994, ``Once White House employees integrate information provided by any source into the database system, it becomes government property . . . (and) may be provided to a source outside the federal government only for authorized purposes.'' 
     But that policy didn't jibe with the DNC's fundraising efforts. One document objects to the ``territorial'' nature of the Social Office of the White House and its difficulty in finding out ``who has been taken care of to date.'' 
     Under the heading ``Fundraising Interference,'' it complains, ``DNC solicitation is subverted due to major donors being invited to high level White House events regardless of the date of amount of contribution. This is a disincentive especially for the Trustee level contributor.'' 
     Can't have that. 
     It didn't take long for the White House to come around to the DNC's way of thinking. A June 28, 1994, memo from Marsha Scott, a staff member in the White House Office of Political Affairs, to Harold Ickes and Bruce Lindsey (with a copy to Hillary Rodham Clinton) describes a new White House Database (WhoDB) to be integrated with the campaign. 
     ``By the first of the year (1995) we should have any flaws identified and corrected and the majority of the White House using the system. We will then have a year (until 1996) to fully train and familiarize our folks to its many possibilities and uses,'' she wrote. 
     In a draft of another memo, Scott discusses a plan to ``identify and contact the key early supporters in all fifty states . . . put in WhoDB the names and relevant information about those early supporters . . . (and) add to this base group by early 1995, those folks we will be working with in 1996.'' 
     She adds, ``This is the President's idea and it's a good one.'' 
     Why didn't you hear about this in 1996, before the presidential election? Because that same Cheryl Mills held the documents back from the committee investigation, delaying it for months. There was a brief flare of publicity in 1997, when the Los Angeles Times reported on misuse of the official database, but then the story faded into invisibility in the blinding light of the Monica Lewinsky investigation. 
     And despite McIntosh's thorough and damning report, invisible it is likely to remain.