Eagleburger and his top aides said he was “stunned” by press reports last week that Assistant Secretary of State for Consular Affairs Elizabeth Tamposi personally called U.S. embassies in London and Oslo with instructions on how to handle a request from the Freedom of Information Act office for material on Clinton. While publicly defending Tamposi, a top State official privately called her actions “monumentally stupid.” Tamposi is the daughter of a New Hampshire real-estate developer and GOP fund raiser who helped President Bush win his primary victory in that state in 1988. She was recommended for her State post by former White House chief of staff John Sununu. Tamposi has told friends she called the embassies to make sure the politically sensitive search was handled " by the book," but she herself has been unavailable for comment. Potentially more trouble-some was State’s discovery that the FOIA office improperly sought to expedite the department’s response to requests for Clinton’s records so any material could be unearthed before the Nov. 3 election. State spokesman Richard Boucher said " low-level clerks" acted on their own. But other officials find that explanation hard to believe. “FOIA clerks don’t take initiative,” said a Hill staffer. Frank Machak, director of State’s FOIA office, has told in-house investigators he gave no orders to rush the search, leaving open the question of who, if anyone, did.
Hill Democrats, meanwhile, want to explore the role of Under Secretary for Management John Rogers, the man ultimately responsible for the FOIA office. Rogers, another political appointee and longtime associate of White House chief of staff James Baker, has been out of the country touring U.S. embassies in the newly independent republics of the former Soviet Union since before the FOIA’s rush orders came to light. He has not been questioned about whether he played any part in the stepped-up review. “That’s a wild-goose chase,” said one top official. “John is too uptight, too by-the-book to do anything like that.
