Dang. I was hoping my name would turn up among those FBI files in the White House basement, but the list skips from Brock to Brott - no Bronsons.
Too bad. I imagine it would read something like: ''------ and ----. M-80 in mailbox. BB-gun vandalism. -----. Speeding. Excessive noise on motorcycle. Speeding. Speeding. Speeding. Traffic school. Speeding. Insubordination. Protests. ----- possession. Impersonating a student. Journalistic tendencies. Vandalism of the English language and ----!''
FBI files are a fill-in-the-blank test - multiple choice, use your imagination. The juiciest parts are the black marker ''redactions.'' A file could say ''----- sexual activity,'' and nobody who reads it will fill that space with ''normal.''
''Anyone who doesn't like you can say anything about you and it's in there,'' said a former White House official whose file was found in the hands of the ''We didn't peek'' Clinton crew.
''You could have led the cleanest, most wonderful life in the world and something could be taken out of there to smear you,'' he said.
As someone who has not led the cleanest, most wonderful life in the world, I think that's scary.
So did the people I talked to whose names were among 900 files the FBI ''loaned'' to the White House. They would rather not have their names published here because they're still in government, or close enough to fear retaliation. And just the thought of those files in the hands of paranoid political enemies is more chilling than a night in Joe McCarthy's crypt.
''At first I thought it was a joke, but now I'm really angry,'' said one. ''The lesson is to never work in government. The better and brightest people are staying away in droves because it's just not worth the risk to your family and reputation.''
Another name in the files, who was a senior official of the Bush administration, said, ''The point is, political people were perusing these files for political purposes. That (White House security) office was set up as a career office primarily to avoid using FBI files this way. The Clintons took an office staffed by a career officer, got rid of him and replaced him with a political guy from the Clinton campaign.
''It's like the travel office. The Clintons fired career people there too, to put in their own friends. . . . The same thing is working here, from the same paranoid wing of the White House.''
He was referring to the co-president who levitates missing Whitewater files and speaks to the dead.
Both former White House officials served in Republican administrations. And both scorned the ''no harm, honest mistake'' alibi from President Clinton.
''I know enough about the system to know that every excuse they've come up with is a lie,'' said one.
''These guys have still not said anything even resembling the truth,'' said the other. ''That is an explanation to gull them poor rubes outside the Beltway. That's the way they think of us. Everyone who has worked in the White House and everyone who works there now knows they are not telling the truth.''
He speculated that the files were ''salted'' with hundreds of names, to bury the files they really wanted (such as possible presidential opponent James A. Baker) among clerks and paper-pushers. ''The truth here is they were looking for dirt and they got exactly what they wanted.''
Both denied that Filegate is politics as usual. ''Mind boggling,'' said one. ''This is way, way beyond normal activities,'' said the other. ''These are the types of things Nixon never even got his hands on.''
Well, I was not so sure about that, so I did some checking.
I went to the original source of secrets - or at least as close as I could get to the FBI director who died in 1972.
According to J. Edgar Hoover, The Man and The Secrets, by Curt Gentry, Mr. Hoover used his extensive secret files to blackmail and intimidate several presidents and scores of politicians. But when President Nixon tried to extract files for his own use from Mr. Hoover, the old G-Man refused and scammed Mr. Nixon by sending over a file on muckraker Jack Anderson that contained only newspaper and magazine clippings.
President Nixon nearly got his hands on the files after Mr. Hoover died, but a loyal FBI secretary had already destroyed the most radioactive stuff. So President Nixon hired his own dirty tricksters - the White House Plumbers who unscrewed the main valve on Watergate.
Isn't that ironic. J. Edgar Hoover was more careful with secrets than current FBI Director Louis Freeh. And when it comes to collecting dirt, President Clinton leaves President Nixon in the weeds.
J. Edgar Hoover said, ''There's something addicting about a secret.'' If so, the Clintons are the First Crackheads of secrecy.
''We wouldn't even know about any of this if they hadn't been forced to turn over files that they tried to hide under executive privilege,'' said one X-filer.
The Clintons are still concealing and redacting 2,000 or so more documents. So, I might be in there yet. So could you. And that's creepy as hell.
Or, as President Nixon said of Hoover on the Watergate tapes: ''He's got files on everybody, God --- it.''
Peter Bronson is editorial page editor of The Enquirer. If you have questions or comments, call 768-8301, or write to 312 Elm Street, Cincinnati, Ohio 45202.
