Agent X-000065

Bert Lance's continuing ties with his old friend Jimmy Carter are well known in the U.S., but on foreign trips the former budget chief can flash more tangible evidence of his White House clout: a diplomatic passport bearing the serial number X-000065 and the assertion, "The bearer is abroad on a diplomatic assignment for the Government of the United States of America." As it happens. Lance's most recent missions abroad, including a trip to London and the Middle East to help Arab interests angling for control of a $2.2 billion bank holding company in the Washington, D.C., area, have been clearly undiplomatic.

There are indeed 151 private citizens who hold what the State Department calls "courtesy" diplomatic passports, although by law they are available only to former Presidents, Vice Presidents, Chief Justices, Cabinet members and career ambassadors. Yet Lance's passport is not the courtesy model but the one he got when he was running Carter's budget office. Passport Office staffers say Carter wanted Lance to keep his special passport because "he may be sending Lance on a diplomatic mission." That argument was not convincing to Frances Knight, the former chief of the Passport Office. "If I had been there, he would never have gotten it," she huffed. "I wouldn't have called the White House. I would have called Bert."

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