page_title: White House FBI files controversy
section_title: Judicial Watch lawsuit
hierarchical_section_title: White House FBI files controversy / Judicial Watch lawsuit
caption_attribution_description: English: Judge Royce C. Lamberth.English: Royce Lamberth Official Photo
context_page_description: The White House FBI files controversy of the Clinton Administration, often referred to as Filegate, arose in June 1996 around improper access in 1993 and 1994 to FBI security-clearance documents. Craig Livingstone, director of the White House's Office of Personnel Security, improperly requested, and received from the FBI, background reports concerning several hundred individuals without asking permission. The revelations provoked a strong political and press reaction because many of the files covered White House employees from previous Republican administrations, including top presidential advisors. Under criticism, Livingstone resigned from his position. Allegations were made that senior White House figures, including First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton, may have requested and read the files for political purposes, and that the First Lady had authorized the hiring of the underqualified Livingstone.
  The matter was investigated by the House Government Reform and Oversight Committee, the Senate Judiciary Committee, and the Whitewater Independent Counsel.
context_section_description: Separately from the Independent Counsel investigation, Judicial Watch, a conservative watchdog group, engaged in long-running litigation over the White House personnel file controversy.  It was initially filed in September 1996 and sought $90 million in damages.  Judicial Watch's Cara Leslie Alexander et al. vs. Federal Bureau of Investigation et al. class action lawsuit, filed on behalf of five low-level former members of the Reagan and George H. W. Bush Administrations, alleged that Livingstone, along with Anthony Marceca and William Kennedy, obtained the files and then rifled through them.  Judicial Watch founder and Clintons antagonist suprême Larry Klayman attracted enough attention with the case to have the recurring Larry Claypool character modeled after him on the television series The West Wing.  As late as January 2000, Judicial Watch was filing affidavits in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia under Judge Royce C. Lamberth related to the case.  In December 2002 Judicial Watch obtained a ruling from Judge Lamberth that recently uncovered White House e-mails be searched for possible evidence in the lawsuit.  Klayman said, "Hillary Clinton was the mastermind of Filegate. She will not escape justice."  Klayman and Judicial Watch had a severe falling out in 2003, however, and several years went by with little or nothing happening in the lawsuit.
  On March 9, 2010, Judge Lamberth dismissed the case.  The judge asserted that the plaintiffs, despite years of opportunity, had failed to provide any evidence that the affair was a grand conspiracy rather than a bureaucratic mistake, and said that "this court is left to conclude that with the lawsuit, to quote Gertrude Stein, 'there's no there there.'"  Nussbaum, one of the defendants, derisively said "No kidding" when informed of the dismissal.  Media reports concluded that, fourteen years after the initial events were set in motion, Filegate was finally over. In May 2010, Judicial Watch filed an appeal of the dismissal with the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, but the Court of Appeals affirmed the dismissal on November 14, 2011, finally bringing the case to an end.
caption: For over a decade, Federal Judge Royce C. Lamberth presided over a civil lawsuit emanating from the Filegate matter.
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