FBI FILE WITNESS TAKES THE FIFTH.

Byline: David Hess Knight-Ridder Tribune News Wire

A key witness in the FBI files case took the Fifth Amendment against self-incrimination Friday and a Secret Service official contradicted the White House's explanation of how it got the confidential documents in the first place.

Both developments dealt sharp blows to the credibility of the Clinton administration's claim that a ``bureaucratic snafu'' had led to the mistaken ordering of the files on former Reagan and Bush administration employees.

As a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing got under way, Robert Muse, the attorney for witness Anthony Marceca, said his client would ``assert his right to remain silent under the Fifth Amendment in response to any questions he may be asked by the committee.''

Marceca, who had been scheduled to appear with several other witnesses, did not show up - and was excused by committee Chairman Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, until the panel could decide how to respond.

Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., urged the committee to act swiftly to grant immunity to Marceca for his testimony, since the panel's stated purpose is to determine whether higher-ups in the White House had sought the confidential files for political purposes.

Marceca, a civilian agent of the Army's Criminal Investigation Division, had been detailed to the White House Office of Personnel Security for six months in 1993-94 to help clear up a backlog of security clearances for employees and others seeking access to the president's offices.

During that span, he ordered from the FBI several hundred background reports, some of which were for former high-ranking Republicans who had worked for Presidents Bush and Reagan.

Congressional Republicans have charged that, at best, the request for the files was a gross invasion of privacy and, at worst, a plot to dig up dirt on the GOP officials.

As for Specter's proposal, Hatch said he would prefer to move more deliberately, and he quickly sought the views of Kenneth Starr, the independent counsel who is investigating an array of potentially criminal charges relating to savings and loan fraud in Arkansas as well as the FBI files case.

Late on Friday, Starr wrote to Hatch strongly opposing any grants of immunity to witnesses in the files case, saying it could throw up roadblocks to his own investigation of the matter.

Starr said grants of immunity in past congressional investigations - most notably the Iran-Contra case in the late 1980s - caused ``severe problems'' for later criminal prosecutions of committee witnesses.

``A grant of immunity to Anthony Marceca at this time would interfere with (our) ability . . . to investigate the matters within our jurisdiction,'' Starr wrote.

Marceca's attorney provided no explanation why his client exercised his Fifth Amendment privilege. However, committee staff said it was possible that Marceca was concerned about his earlier testimony before a House committee, in which he acknowledged entering confidential data from both Army and White House files on his CID laptop computer and taking it home with him.

In addition, Marceca has admitted in an unrelated federal court case that he sneaked a peek at his own unedited FBI file to find out who had provided derogatory information about him during a background investigation. Marceca said in a 1994 civil lawsuit that he was fired from his White House security job because the FBI was told by two Texas residents that he was a member of an organized crime family.

The law prohibits disclosure of the names of informants for federal law enforcement agencies.

The committee also heard testimony from Arnold Cole, a midlevel Secret Service official, who took issue with the White House's explanation of why it was examining the files of officials from Republican administrations.

Craig Livingstone, who resigned this week as director of the personnel security office, initially said through a statement from his attorney that the names came from an outdated Secret Service list and were mistakenly requested by Marceca from the FBI.

However, Cole testified that, on June 7, the day the story broke about the files, Livingstone told him: ``We just wanted you guys to know that we weren't blaming the Secret Service, that using the old list was our fault and we had the current stuff you gave us - and I don't know what happened.''

By the time of Cole's testimony, Livingstone - who had appeared on an earlier panel at the hearing - had departed and was unable to explain what he meant by those purported remarks.

But Republican panel members said Cole's testimony appeared to refute the notion that Livingstone's office was not aware that the list it used to order the FBI files was out of date.