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Washington Whispers 9/10/01

BY PAUL BEDARD

Clinton's 'Travelgate' kin has stepped in it again

Scandal just follows some people. That may be the case of Catherine Cornelius Smith, former President Clinton's distant cousin, whose grab for the White House travel office sparked the 1993 "Travelgate" affair. Now she's a VP at the Business Women's Network, working to nail down a $257,500 "women's outreach" contract with the Agriculture Department. The problem: The USDA is her former employer, and federal law bars her from contacting ex-colleagues for at least a year. But she says she regularly calls old pals about the deal. In an interview, she also says she joined the Network–owned by iVillage Inc.–in July after it got a $25,000 contract from her agency while she was Ag's Foreign Agricultural Service outreach director, a job she left in January. And at Ag she worked on the same deal she's now pushing for the Network, another potential legal sin. Ethics law experts say this is one for the Justice Department. But Smith says, "I just don't see the issue." She believes that her actions didn't violate the law and that agency foes want to keep the money for themselves. Worse, they're using Travelgate to get press attention. "I could just raise my hands and scream bloody murder."

-- Anonymous, September 01, 2001