The FBI files: Let's see. As we understand it we are meant to believe that an Army operative looking through the White House-obtained files on James Baker wouldn't have noticed that Baker was something of a Republican. Some gum shoe.

But don't put all the blame on the FBI for collecting the stuff. The FBI increasingly is relying on Pentagon and NSA files. Less and less material comes from agents chatting with the neighbors, more and more from monitored phone calls. Although wire tapping is theoretically under court control and the NSA theoretically has no role in domestic law enforcement, the agency gets around this little problem by monitoring long distance phone calls downloaded in England and Australia.

Let's say you're on the NSA watch list. The agency will electronically listen for certain key words, transcribe any messages dealing with these key words and pass them on to whatever other agencies might be interested. This helps to explain how the agency ended up with hundreds of documents on Vince Foster that it's refusing to release.