Closing probe into release of information about Tripp

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Justice Department said Thursday it will not bring any criminal charges in the Pentagon's release of<br>information from Linda Tripp's personnel file.<br><br>In the midst

Thursday, April 6th 2000, 12:00 am

By: News On 6

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Justice Department said Thursday it will not bring any criminal charges in the Pentagon's release of
information from Linda Tripp's personnel file.

In the midst of the Monica Lewinsky scandal in 1998, Pentagon spokesman Ken Bacon and Pentagon employee Clifford Bernath were
involved in informing The New Yorker magazine that Tripp stated on a security clearance form she never had been arrested.

In fact, Tripp was arrested for grand larceny as a teen-ager, a charge later reduced to loitering in an incident Tripp's lawyers called a youthful prank.

The Justice Department investigated whether a violation of the Privacy Act occurred. Word of the decision not to prosecute emerged in Senate Armed Services Committee testimony by the Pentagon's deputy inspector general, Donald Mancuso, and Justice Department
spokesman John Russell later confirmed it.

Pentagon spokesman Navy Rear Adm. Craig Quigley said the IG's tentative findings in the matter have been provided to Bacon and
Bernath, and they have 14 days to provide comment before the report is made final. The report goes to Defense Secretary William Cohen.

Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., accused the Clinton administration of a "cover-up."

"What does it say to citizens who want to serve in government that their most private confidential personnel file can be leaked
to the press in clear violation of the law, the perpetrators can be caught, and yet nothing is done -- no one is held accountable?" asked Inhofe.

Bacon's lawyer, William Murphy, called the senator's statement "misleading and simplistic. It implies that Mr. Bacon and Mr.
Bernath leaked a confidential personnel file to the press. That is untrue. The information at issue was a single negative response on a security clearance application. ... No file was leaked and no other information contained in the file was described to the reporter."

Bacon has said that he regretted answering a reporter's question about Tripp. Attorney Murphy said that under the Freedom of
Information Act, the reporter's inquiries were treated as a FOIA requests.

A Justice Department, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the criminal provision of the Privacy Act sets a very high standard of intent that requires knowingly and willfully intending to violate the law.

Tripp attracted national headlines by secretly recording conversations with Lewinsky, a former White House intern. Tripp worked for Bacon in the Pentagon's public affairs office, as did Lewinsky. In the recorded conversations, Lewinsky said she had had
an affair with Clinton.

Last week, a federal judge found Clinton engaged in a criminal violation of the Privacy Act when he released letters from presidential accuser Kathleen Willey. The president's supporters said the warmly worded letters, released during the Lewinsky scandal, undermined Willey's contention that Clinton had made an unwanted sexual advance against her. The White House is appealing
that ruling.