To the White House coffee klatches, Lincoln Bedroom sleep-overs and the Buddhist temple fund-raisers, Republicans now want to add another alleged Clinton administration misdeed: selling plots in military cemeteries.
Sparked by a summertime article in a trade publication and an upcoming expose in a news magazine, critics of President Clinton now are charging that he gave plots at the hallowed Arlington National Cemetery to undeserving political donors.The White House and the Army moved quickly Wednesday to stanch this latest accusation, which follows months of allegations and investigations into fund-raising abuses during the 1996 presidential election.
The Army issued statements and fact sheets saying that exceptions to the rules about who is buried at Arlington were made strictly on merits, not because of generous donations to the Clinton-Gore re-election campaign.
"The president and this administration consider Arlington National Cemetery and other national and veterans cemeteries across the country to be hallowed ground," White House special counsel Lanny Davis said. "It would be outrageous for anyone to grant or influence the granting of exceptions under the rules for burial at national cemeteries because of political or fund-raising considerations."
Davis said a report to be published in the Dec. 8 issue of Insight magazine, a publication of The Washington Times, was "based on anonymous sources and innuendo, not the facts."
But as faxed copies of the report circulated to reporters and radio talk show hosts, calls of outrage from citizens and lawmakers began to pour in Wednesday.
A House panel announced it was investigating possible irregularities in the Army's granting of exceptions for nonmilitary Americans who want to be buried in military cemeteries. That probe actually started this summer after an article appeared in Army Times, an independent newspaper that covers the Army.
An article in the most recent edition of Insight suggests that some who received waivers for burial at the national cemeteries, including Arlington, got them because they made large donations to the Clinton re-election campaign and the Democratic Party.
The article quotes anonymous sources and says Clinton "may have `sold' " burial plots to a handful of Democratic donors. The magazine said some names of those granted exceptions also appear on lists of major donors to the Clinton-Gore campaign and the Democratic National Committee. The article does not appear to establish a link between the donations and decisions on burial rights at military cemeteries.
The Army said that for privacy reasons it would not release the names of those granted waivers.
With word of the latest story, members of the House Veterans Affairs Committee also were demanding responses from Army Secretary Togo West.
The Army oversees burial at Arlington, which lies across the Potomac River from Washington, while the VA oversees burial at other military cemeteries nationwide. Burial sites are difficult to obtain and usually require not only military service but an honorable discharge and military decorations.
Davis said Clinton has granted just four exceptions for burial at Arlington - for a Supreme Court justice, the wife of another Supreme Court justice, an Army veteran Drug Enforcement Agency agent killed on a mission in Peru and a Washington police officer and Marine Corps veteran killed in the line of duty.
He said the White House may have provided information to the Army in connection with burial requests for other individuals. The Army said Clinton granted one exception in 1993 and three in 1994.
The Army issued a list of 61 cases in which exceptions were made from 1994 through 1997.
In 42 of the cases, the exception was made for a spouse or immediate family member who was granted the right to be buried alongside a loved one already interred at Arlington. The burial took place at the same grave site and did not require the taking of additional burial space.