Anthony B. Marceca's life has followed two paths since his childhood in Meadville, Pa.
His love of criminal investigations led him to work decades to improve his skills and gain a reputation as a dogged, and sometimes brilliant, sleuth.His unbridled passion for politics, particularly Democratic politics, led him to work tirelessly - planning events, stuffing envelopes, leading the cheers - for any candidate he thought had a chance.
This unusual combination of interests led him to the White House and then thrust him into the center of a major political scandal. It was Marceca who requested and got the FBI background files now under investigation.
Suddenly, Marceca's political savvy and investigative talents became a volatile mix that exploded in his face.
In the wake of the revelations that his work at the White House led him to procure background files on Republicans, Clinton administration spokesmen have characterized him as a low-level Army detailee, suggesting he was a mindless functionary who committed a bureaucratic error.
But Republicans have painted him as a seasoned Democratic operative and ideologue motivated more by politics than White House security - a Democratic version of G. Gordon Liddy from the Watergate era.
Al Pearson, a retired state police investigator and longtime friend in Meadville, said the issue has left his friend, who once thought the Democratic Party would solve the problems of the world, disillusioned.
"I hear my name on television," Marceca told Pearson. "It's like they are talking about another person."
The son of a Meadville butcher, Marceca developed an early interest in politics and government.
In the mid-1960s, he was a political science major at the University of Pittsburgh. Even then, Meadville City Councilman Jim Roha said, Marceca displayed the behavior of "an optimist born out of naivete."
His introduction to politics came in 1967 when he was first elected as a Democratic constable for Crawford County - a position he held until 1980 when he was appointed chief constable.
Shortly after his election as constable, he directed the Democratic campaigns of candidates for state House and Senate. Both of those candidates lost.
He got his first taste for national politics in the summer of 1972 when, as a paid campaign worker, he joined George McGovern's unsuccessful run for president.
Making his living off of fees and commissions as an elected constable, his political ambitions prompted him to run for chairman of the Crawford County Democratic Committee.
Marceca, a perennial loser in his bids to become a Democratic National Committee delegate, thought he could revive the county Democratic Party. He got only 12 votes.
In 1981, Marceca and two other Crawford County constables were suspended two weeks without pay in connection with the alleged theft of county money. An investigation cleared Marceca of any wrongdoing.
Later that year, Marceca sued his wife Bonnie for divorce. According to court records, the marriage was "irretrievably broken." The divorce wasn't finalized until July 1988.
In 1983, Marceca resigned his $13,000-a-year constable position to be an investigating coordinator for Texas Attorney General Jim Mattox, a career advancement.
Federal Election Commission records state that Marceca made a $500 contribution to Mattox's Senate campaign committee in 1994 - the only contribution by Marceca on federal record since that time. Mattox lost in the Democratic primary.
"Early on, I know he was interested in politics and government," Mattox said. "He was a professional investigator, but to the best of my knowledge, he was not a political operative."
During the mid-1980s, Marceca also landed an investigator's job with then-Pennsylvania Auditor General Don Bailey, who remains a friend and legal adviser.
"He was interested in politics per se, but more interested in being a professional investigator," Bailey said. "He was very professional and thorough and very objective. He was not the kind who would intentionally go out and deprive someone of his rights."
After leaving Texas in 1983, Marceca joined a CID military reserve unit headquartered in Erie, Pa. In 1988 he was granted a full-time active-duty CID assignment as a civilian special agent.
As an Army Reserve CID agent, he was one of 23 investigators in his Erie unit with top-secret security clearance. He handled felony cases involving Army personnel or companies under contract with the Army.
"All agents have top-secret clearance because of the sensitive nature of cases they have to investigate," said Marceca's unit commander Greg C. Hicks of Warren, Ohio. "To get top-secret clearance, you have to have a certain skill level that requires a great deal of training. We don't just hand a badge to anyone."
Hicks said Marceca was one of the best investigators in his command - "an outstanding individual who is extremely moral and with integrity beyond question."
As a CID investigator, Marceca was assigned to a land fraud case in Arizona for nine months, then worked for a Senate investigating committee and the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs.
Also in 1988, Marceca indulged his passion for politics by joining as a paid political worker Sen. Gary Hart's ill-fated bid for the Democratic presidential nomination.
Following Hart's political demise, Marceca signed on with Sen. John Glenn's bid for the Democratic nomination for president.
This wasn't his first paid position in a presidential campaign. Following the McGovern campaign, he was a paid worker for Ted Kennedy's campaign and was associated with a who's who of Democratic luminaries, including Edmund Muskie, Jimmy Carter and Al Gore.
Marceca principally functioned as an advance man, publicist, public relations coordinator and fund raiser.
In 1992, Marceca told co-workers that he was taking a leave of absence from his full-time CID post to work on the Clinton campaign. He also worked with Secret Service agents for security at Clinton's inauguration.
Then in August 1993, White House Director of Personnel Security Craig Livingstone of Beaver County, Pa., west of Pittsburgh, asked for Marceca by name to help with background checks on people seeking access to the White House.
Livingstone and Marceca had worked together on the Hart and Gore campaigns.
In his signed affidavit, Marceca said one assignment was "The Update Project" - recreating personnel security files on employees from the Bush administration who continued in their positions with the Clinton administration and other officials who needed access to the White House.
A retiring White House employee, he said, showed him the lists of names of people for whom files had to be recreated. He said he understood that the lists came from the Secret Service and everyone on the lists had to be checked out before they could get access to the White House.
"I was not told, and I had no reason to believe, that some of the persons on the lists no longer should have been included on the Secret Service's White House access list," he said in his affidavit.
Once he obtained the FBI files, his job was to compare information in the files with information provided by officials seeking White House clearance. If he found discrepancies, he forwarded the information to Livingstone. Only three files were sent to Livingstone, he said.
Pearson, one of the few people Marceca has spoken with since the controversy broke, said Marceca wasn't sure he wanted the White House assignment because he thought the Clinton presidency was in trouble over the health-care issue at the time.
He also told Pearson that he didn't want to leave his position at Fort Meade. According to Pearson, Marceca probably took the post because Livingstone knew nothing about security and needed a pro in the White House.
"Bill Clinton calls me by my first name," Marceca told Pearson. "He's the nicest guy you would ever want to meet."
After leaving the White House in February 1994, Marceca was reassigned to the Economic Crime Resident Agency, but at Fort Belvior, Va. He also remarried his wife, Bonnie, who left the Meadville house to rejoin him in Maryland.
(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service.)