"If they only had the facts straight it would have been entirely different. It was sloppy. It was terribly sloppy," says Ivan Michael Schaeffer, a travel industry executive and former assistant commissioner of travel and transportation for the government's General Services Administration.
This much is known. Back in May of 1993, just six months after winning the White House, Hillary Clinton pushed for the dismissal of Billy Dale, a long-time government employee who ran the White House travel office, and his staff on the grounds that the office was being run improperly.
She wanted an outfit called World Wide Travel, based in Little Rock, to handle travel for White House officials and the media attached to the President. A cousin of Bill Clinton supposedly wanted to run the travel office.
The furor that resulted has led to a Congressional investigation, the exoneration of Dale in court, an apology from President Clinton, and - lately - the disclosure that the White House had pulled the files of Dale and 400-or-so other Republicans in a case that has raised public anger from all part of the political spectrum.
Even those who believed that the firings of the White House travel office were an unfortunate but minor incident - as I do - by a giddy new Administration wishing to spread the wealth to the folks back home haven't been able to shrug off the FBI incident.
The FBI incident has already been likened to what happened during the Watergate scandals when the Nixon Administration employed dirty tricksters to foul up its political opponents. But the two political scandals are also similar in that they both began because of pure and simple stupidity. "If it wasn't so sad," says Schaeffer, "it would be funny."
Schaeffer, who now runs Woodside Travel Trust in Bethesda, Md., says that World Wide is a company that was completely qualified to handle government travel plans. It was already cleared by the state of Arkansas to handle government travel arrangements.
In fact, Schaeffer says he used the company all the time when he was in charge for making huge govrenment travel purchases. And the White House travel office did have a bad reputation, Schaeffer says, even when he was with the government.
Here's the simple way the White House could have avoided the whole mess - if only the Clinton Administration had known its way around the bureacracy. First, Schaeffer says, the White House could have put the travel business up for competitive bidding. But if the White House was worried that World Wide wouldn't win out, it could have asked for a Federal Acquisition Waiver - it's done all the time - and then it could have picked any qualified travel agent to arrange trips.
It could have then picked World Wide without doing anything wrong. "You can follow the rules and follow a procurement very quickly and you can give a contract over night," says Schaffer.
Once the White House general counsel or chief of staff signs the procurement waiver "you can essentially do whatever you want."
Schaeffer chuckles about the fact that the attempted hiring of World Wide - which was bounced after just 10 hours on the job - led to such a firestorm. It could have all been handled so easily and so inconspicuously.
"To get thrown out of the White House after 10 hours is not good. I feel sorry for them", says Schaeffer. "World Wide was real careful. They didn't say anything. They didn't want to embarrass the President." World Wide didn't return my telephone calls.
"It was one of those situations that should never have happened," says Schaeffer.'
(John Crudele is a financial columnist with the New York Post. His mailing address is P.O. Box 610, Lincroft, N.J. 07738. Click here to send him e-mail).