    [House Hearing, 106 Congress]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]

       CONTACTS BETWEEN NORTHROP GRUMMAN CORPORATION AND THE WHITE HOUSE
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                                    HEARING

                                   before the

                                  COMMITTEE ON
                               GOVERNMENT REFORM

                            HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

                           ONE HUNDRED SIXTH CONGRESS

                                 SECOND SESSION

                                   __________

                               SEPTEMBER 26, 2000

                                   __________

                               Serial No. 106-258

                                   __________

           Printed for the use of the Committee on Government Reform

      Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.gpo.gov/congress/house
                          http://www.house.gov/reform

                                   __________

                       U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE
    74-496                     WASHINGTON : 2001

    _______________________________________________________________________
     For sale by the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Printing
                                     Office
    Internet: bookstore.gpo.gov  Phone: (202) 512-1800  Fax: (202) 512-2250
                   Mail: Stop SSOP, Washington, DC 20402-0001

                         COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT REFORM

                         DAN BURTON, Indiana, Chairman
    BENJAMIN A. GILMAN, New York         HENRY A. WAXMAN, California
    CONSTANCE A. MORELLA, Maryland       TOM LANTOS, California
    CHRISTOPHER SHAYS, Connecticut       ROBERT E. WISE, Jr., West Virginia
    ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN, Florida         MAJOR R. OWENS, New York
    JOHN M. McHUGH, New York             EDOLPHUS TOWNS, New York
    STEPHEN HORN, California             PAUL E. KANJORSKI, Pennsylvania
    JOHN L. MICA, Florida                PATSY T. MINK, Hawaii
    THOMAS M. DAVIS, Virginia            CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York
    DAVID M. McINTOSH, Indiana           ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, Washington,
    MARK E. SOUDER, Indiana                  DC
    JOE SCARBOROUGH, Florida             CHAKA FATTAH, Pennsylvania
    STEVEN C. LaTOURETTE, Ohio           ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland
    MARSHALL ``MARK'' SANFORD, South     DENNIS J. KUCINICH, Ohio
        Carolina                         ROD R. BLAGOJEVICH, Illinois
    BOB BARR, Georgia                    DANNY K. DAVIS, Illinois
    DAN MILLER, Florida                  JOHN F. TIERNEY, Massachusetts
    ASA HUTCHINSON, Arkansas             JIM TURNER, Texas
    LEE TERRY, Nebraska                  THOMAS H. ALLEN, Maine
    JUDY BIGGERT, Illinois               HAROLD E. FORD, Jr., Tennessee
    GREG WALDEN, Oregon                  JANICE D. SCHAKOWSKY, Illinois
    DOUG OSE, California                             ------
    PAUL RYAN, Wisconsin                 BERNARD SANDERS, Vermont
    HELEN CHENOWETH-HAGE, Idaho              (Independent)
    DAVID VITTER, Louisiana

                          Kevin Binger, Staff Director
                     Daniel R. Moll, Deputy Staff Director
                         James C. Wilson, Chief Counsel
                            Robert A. Briggs, Clerk
                     Phil Schiliro, Minority Staff Director

                                C O N T E N T S

                                  ----------
                                                                       Page
    Hearing held on September 26, 2000...............................     1
    Statement of:
        Gershel, Alan, Deputy Assistant Attorney General, U.S.
          Department of Justice......................................   242
    Letters, statements, etc., submitted for the record by:
        Burton, Hon. Dan, a Representative in Congress from the State
          of Indiana:
            Exhibit 10...............................................   250
            Exhibits relevant to hearing.............................     2
            Prepared statement of....................................   197
        Chenoweth-Hage, Hon. Helen, a Representative in Congress from
          the State of Idaho, prepared statement of..................   288
        Ford, Hon. Harold E., a Representative in Congress from the
          State of Tennessee, letter dated April 13, 1999............   260
        Gershel, Alan, Deputy Assistant Attorney General, U.S.
          Department of Justice, prepared statement of...............   245
        Waxman, Hon. Henry A., a Representative in Congress from the
          State of California, letter dated September 26, 2000.......   215

       CONTACTS BETWEEN NORTHROP GRUMMAN CORPORATION AND THE WHITE HOUSE
                     REGARDING MISSING WHITE HOUSE E-MAILS

                                  ----------

                          TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 26, 2000

                              House of Representatives,
                                Committee on Government Reform,
                                                        Washington, DC.
        The committee met, pursuant to notice, at 3:10 p.m., in
    room 2154, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Dan Burton
    (chairman of the committee) presiding.
        Present: Representatives Burton, Gilman, Ros-Lehtinen,
    Horn, Barr, Waxman, Norton, Cummings, Kucinich, and Ford.
        Staff present: Kevin Binger, staff director; James C.
    Wilson, chief counsel; David A. Kass, deputy counsel and
    parliamentarian; Sean Spicer, director of communications; Josie
    Duckett, deputy communications director; M. Scott Billingsley
    and James J. Schumann, counsels; Pablo Carrillo and Jason
    Foster, investigative counsels; Robert Briggs, clerk; Robin
    Butler, office manager, Michael Canty, legislative assistant;
    Leneal Scott, computer systems manager; John Sare, staff
    assistant; Maria Tamburri, assistant to chief counsel; Corinne
    Zaccagnini, systems administrator; Phil Schiliro, minority
    staff director; Phil Barnett, minority chief counsel; Kristin
    Amerling, minority deputy chief counsel; Paul Weinberger,
    minority counsel; Michael Yeager, minority senior oversight
    counsel; Ellen Rayner, minority chief clerk; Jean Gosa and
    Earley Green, minority assistant clerks; and Tersa Coufal,
    minority staff assistant.
        Mr. Burton. Good afternoon. A quorum being present the
    Committee on Government Reform will come to order.
        I ask unanimous consent that all Members and witnesses'
    written opening statements be included in the record and
    without objection, so ordered.
        I ask unanimous consent that all articles, exhibits and
    extraneous or tabular material referred to be included in the
    record and without objection, so ordered.
        I ask unanimous consent that a set of exhibits shared with
    the minority staff prior to the hearing be included in the
    record. Without objection, so ordered.
        Mr. Waxman. Reserving the right to object. Yes--withdrawn.
        [The information referred to follows:]

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        Mr. Burton. I also ask unanimous consent that questioning
    in the matter under consideration proceed under clause 2(j)2 of
    House rule 11 and committee rule 14, in which the chairman and
    ranking minority member allocate time to committee counsel as
    they deem appropriate for extended questioning, not to exceed
    60 minutes divided equally between the majority and minority
    and without objection, so ordered.
        Seven months ago--and I'd like to say to my colleague Mr.
    Waxman, this is a little bit lengthy, this opening statement,
    but I think it's necessary in order to cover everything. So
    we'll allow you whatever time you need.
        [The prepared statement of Hon. Dan Burton follows:]

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        Mr. Waxman. If you would permit, there was an item that you
    went by quickly. I just wanted to put on the record. You asked
    unanimous consent for all documents referred to to be made
    public, and I generally have no objection to that, but there
    are some exhibits that I understand the majority wishes to
    release publicly today. These are exhibits 6 through 14.
    They're documents provided to the committee in response to a
    request for grand jury subpoenas and other documents relating
    to evidence the Department of Justice's Campaign Finance Task
    Force has gathered.
        The committee, however, received a letter from the
    Department of Justice yesterday objecting to the recent
    practice by the committee of subpoenaing the subpoenas, which
    resulted in the production of these documents. According to the
    Department of Justice, this practice could undermine effective
    law enforcement by creating a substantial risk that sensitive
    and confidential investigative information will be disclosed to
    targets of investigations and to other persons who might use
    the information to thwart our law enforcement efforts. That was
    what they said.
        I am also concerned that the committee's actions could
    undermine important grand jury secrecy requirements. There may
    be situations where the reasons for release of grand jury
    materials by a committee would be so compelling as to outweigh
    the potential harm to ongoing investigations. However, I am not
    currently aware of a compelling reason to release these
    documents today.
        The minority received notice of the majority's interest in
    releasing these documents just a few hours before today's
    hearing. I have not had the opportunity to discuss with the
    Department of Justice their concerns about the committee's
    practice or assess the merits of such concerns in relation to
    the need to release these documents today. Therefore, I would
    hope that when you talked about documents, you weren't
    referring to these documents, and that we're not going to make
    these documents public.
        Mr. Burton. Mr. Waxman, excuse me 1 second. There are
    several facts that must be pointed out in response to Mr.
    Waxman's objection. As he pointed out, the Justice Department
    has objected to the committee's recent practice of subpoenaing
    subpoenas which are issued by the Campaign Financing Task
    Force. Why is the Justice Department objecting? It's pretty
    simple. They're embarrassed.
        At a hearing on July 20th, we pointed out that the Justice
    Department had never subpoenaed information on Maria Hsia from
    the White House. It waited 3 years to get information on Mark
    Middleton and Ernie Green. Those facts are embarrassing, and
    the Justice Department doesn't want the committee or the public
    to find out about that.
        Second, Mr. Waxman has objected to the release of three
    sets of documents. Two of them don't even seem to have any
    relation to the Justice Department's arguments. One set of the
    documents is correspondence between Tony Barry's lawyers and
    the task force. There isn't any substantive information about
    the investigation in those documents. The second set of
    documents are letters and subpoenas issued by the task force to
    the State Department. Every piece of sensitive information in
    those documents has already been redacted by the Justice
    Department.
        Mr. Waxman's objection to the unanimous consent is heard
    and we will not release those documents today in accordance
    with your objection. I would like to move to release it but I
    think we'd have to call everybody from the floor here and we'd
    be here for some time waiting to get the votes. So we'll deal
    with that at some future date.
        Mr. Waxman. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
        Mr. Burton. Seven months ago, the Washington Times reported
    that the White House covered up--and as I said, I don't know if
    you heard me, Henry, but this is a fairly lengthy statement,
    and I apologize for that, but we have a lot we have to cover
    here before we get to the questioning, but we'll allow you
    whatever time you want and we'll be lenient with the rest of
    your committee members as well.
        Seven months ago the Washington Times reported that the
    White House covered up a problem with their e-mail records for
    over 2 years. As a result of the White House cover-up,
    information was kept from this committee, but not just this
    committee, but other committees of Congress, the Justice
    Department and various independent counsels.
        In March we had a number of witnesses who worked on the e-
    mail system testify. Some told us they were threatened. One was
    told there was a jail cell with his name on it if he talked to
    anyone about the problem. Another said that she would rather be
    fired than go to jail for telling her own boss what she was
    working on. Employees were told they couldn't write things
    down. Notes of meetings were confiscated. People had to talk
    about the e-mail problem in a park or at a Starbucks restaurant
    near the office.
        The problem was brought to the attention of high level
    political appointees. The Office of Administration general
    counsel was informed. An assistant to the President was told
    about the problem. The President's deputy chief of staff, one
    of his main scandal managers, was brought into the loop. The
    counsel to the President was even briefed.
        And then nothing happened for months. The main problem
    never got fixed. Congress was never told. The Justice
    Department was not told. The various independent counsels were
    not told.
        When we subpoenaed documents, we found out that the lower
    level employees were begging for help, that they couldn't get
    any direction from their bosses in the White House. The problem
    was covered up. Nearly 2 years went by before the White House
    counsel told us that they hadn't complied with the committee
    subpoenas. Even after the first newspaper article about the
    problem appeared, the counsel to the President didn't let on
    there was a problem. They only reason they ever informed us was
    because we started interviewing people and finding out how
    extensive the problem was. Even now after the first batch of
    reconstructed e-mails was produced late last Friday, the White
    House is spinning and stalling.
        We all make mistakes, but week in and week out, this
    administration and its leaders look the public in the eye and
    make things up. I called today's hearing because the cover-up
    mentality in the White House counsel's office and the
    Department of Justice has not changed. We needed to get answers
    to important questions and we were getting the runaround. The
    administration is trying to run out the clock. We've got an
    election coming up. We can't get the White House to answer
    simple questions. We can't get the Justice Department to answer
    simple questions. I didn't really want to even have a hearing
    today, but as usual, we can't get anyone to answer the simplest
    of questions unless I notice a hearing and send out the
    subpoenas, and that's why we have to send out these subpoenas.
        Then we start to get a little bit of movement. I shouldn't
    have to subpoena witnesses to get them to answer simple
    questions. It really is disappointing. At least none of the e-
    mail witnesses have fled the country like so many in the
    campaign finance investigation, at least not yet.
        Before we get to Mr. Gershel, I want to talk about two
    witnesses who had to be subpoenaed before they would cooperate.
    White House Counsel Beth Nolan and Washington lawyer Earl
    Silbert. Yesterday, Mr. Silbert came in for an interview, and
    today, Ms. Nolan promised to provide written answers to our
    questions. So I have postponed their appearances, but I do want
    to tell you why they were subpoenaed and what we've learned.
        Mr. Silbert is a highly respected Washington lawyer. He's a
    former U.S. attorney. He was a Watergate prosecutor. He
    represented President Clinton's former chief of staff, Erskine
    Bowles, during the Monica Lewinsky matter. He also represented
    Vice President Gore's friend, Peter Knight, during a
    congressional investigation. His clients have many reasons to
    be worried about what will come out when all the e-mails are
    reconstructed, which makes him a strange choice to represent
    the employees that were begging for help and telling their
    bosses that the White House was breaking the law by hiding the
    e-mails.
        Mr. Silbert came to the committee's attention because he
    was hired by Northrop Grumman after their employees were
    threatened. Until a week ago, when we got his law firm billing
    records, no one knew exactly what Mr. Silbert did for Northrop
    Grumman. His faulty memory and the refusal of his employer to
    waive attorney client privilege mean that we still don't know
    everything, but we do know an awful lot more.
        When we first asked Mr. Silbert to come in for an
    interview, he point blank refused, so I had to issue a
    subpoena. Yesterday, he finally made himself available for an
    interview, and this is what we learned. A couple of months
    after they were first threatened, three Northrop Grumman
    employees asked for a meeting with the company lawyer. This was
    an extraordinary meeting. The employees had never had one like
    it. They explained the problems that they faced. They talked
    about the threats. They explained they were told not to write
    anything down. They told company lawyers that they thought a
    quick reconstruction of the e-mails was required by law. And
    the company did something. They hired a high priced Washington
    lawyer, someone who was friendly with the White House counsel,
    Chuck Ruff, and who knew the scandal minders in the White
    House, Cheryl Mills and Lanny Breuer.
        Earl Silbert went to work. He talked to lawyers. He talked
    to one of the employees and then he called the White House, and
    I'll put the chronology up on the screen so everyone can take a
    look at it.
        September 9th, Northrop Grumman lawyer Joseph Lucente meets
    with Golas, Haas and Spriggs. They tell him about threats,
    express concern about document searches, tell him they can't
    write things down and say they have been prohibited from
    speaking to superiors. He feels they have been treated
    unfairly.
        Earl Silbert--September 11, 2 days later, Earl Silbert has
    a teleconference, has a teleconference with the Northrop
    Grumman counsel and Northrop Grumman employee.
        Same day, Earl Silbert has a teleconference with Northrop
    Grumman employees. September 12, he reviews the document.
    September 12, Earl Silbert has a teleconference with Northrop
    Grumman counsel. September 14, Joseph Lucente of Northrop
    Grumman sends a letter to Dave Helms at the White House
    notifying him of a dysfunction in the e-mail system which was
    detected in late May. In the letter, Lucente complains that
    Laura Crabtree was notified of the problem and kept Northrop
    Grumman management out of remedial action. The letter states
    that as a consequence, we are not proceeding with our efforts
    to remedy the dysfunction until we have received further
    contractual direction. September 15, Earl Silbert has
    teleconference with Northrop Grumman counsel. September 22, he
    has another conference with the Northrop Grumman counsel.
        As you can see, Mr. Silbert called the White House on
    September 28, 1998. We don't show that on there, do we yet? Oh,
    excuse me, and then the last one is Earl Silbert has a
    teleconference with the White House counsel. That was on
    September 28th. So as you can see, Mr. Silbert called the White
    House on September 28, 1998.
        That was at the height of the impeachment investigation.
    People were talking about a possible Presidential resignation.
    Do you think that the White House would take notice if they
    find out in the middle of an impeachment debate that they had a
    problem which meant that hundreds of thousands of e-mails had
    never been searched? You bet they would.
        Yesterday we asked Mr. Silbert about what happened. You can
    all guess what comes next. He told our staff that he didn't
    remember who he called or what he discussed. We've had an
    epidemic of memory loss in this town. Significant things, an
    absolute epidemic. I can't believe it. Must be something in the
    water.
        He didn't remember who called him or what he discussed or
    who he had called at the White House or what he had discussed.
    Imagine that. He hears a story about possible law breaking and
    threats to his client's employees and he doesn't even remember
    who he talked to at the White House. And he was careful enough
    not to write it down. That was his first interaction with the
    White House.
        A couple of months later, just before the Senate trial of
    the President started, an Insight Magazine article appeared
    that had the potential to upset the entire impeachment debate.
    It mentioned something going on in the White House called
    project X. It described what was going on with project X and
    how there were 100,000 e-mails that had been kept from
    investigators. Here's one quote from that story.
        ``So why hasn't the White House come clean and informed
    various panels and Starr of the discovery? Insiders say there's
    a lively debate going on involving a fair amount of legal hair
    splitting. Some folks in the West wing believe that unless
    subpoenaed, the White House doesn't have a duty to tell anyone
    about the irritating new batch of e-mails that have been
    discovered.''
        Right after this article came out, Earl Silbert was once
    again brought into the loop. He talked to Northrop Grumman
    counsel, and then he again called the White House counsel's
    office. Again, I will put the chronology up on the screen.
        October 9th, Earl Silbert has teleconference with Northrop
    Grumman counsel. December 11th, Joe Vasta of Northrop Grumman
    prepares a memo and notified the government about the Insight
    article about the e-mail problem. December 15th, Earl Silbert
    has a teleconference with Northrop Grumman counsel. December
    28th, official publication date of initial Insight article on
    computer glitch leads to trove of lost e-mails at the White
    House. And 2 days later, on December 30th, Earl Silbert has a
    teleconference with the White House counsel, according to his
    billing records.
        So yesterday, we asked Mr. Silbert who he talked to and
    what was discussed. Again, guess what happened? He couldn't
    remember a thing about who he talked to at the White House
    counsel's office, and he won't tell us anything about the other
    calls he had with Northrop Grumman lawyers because his client
    won't waive its legal privileges.
        Two major events in the e-mail matter. Two calls to the
    White House by a Washington superlawyer. It really makes you
    stop and think about Chuck Ruff's, the former counsel to the
    President's claim that there was a disconnect.
        At the time Mr. Silbert was brought into the loop, there
    were four major things going on in the White House e-mail
    problem. Employees had been threatened and they were
    frightened. Documents were being withheld from Congress and
    other investigators. The Northrop Grumman employees were saying
    that the White House might be breaking the law by failing to
    fix the e-mail problem. Computer people in the White House
    understood that the e-mail might be relevant to the impeachment
    debate and the campaign finance investigation.
        It's highly unlikely that Earl Silbert called the White
    House counsel's office to talk about the weather. The fact that
    a lawyer of Mr. Silbert's stature was hired at all suggests
    that Northrop Grumman understood that the problem was very
    significant. Silbert's two separate contacts with the White
    House casts even more doubt on the White House's claim that
    they weren't actively covering up the problem.
        The White House keeps telling us that they didn't
    understand the problem. They got a memo, they didn't understand
    it. They had a briefing, they didn't understand it. Earl
    Silbert called twice, they still didn't get it. Mark Lindsay
    went back to the White House counsel's office when another
    problem was discovered and they didn't understand that either.
    As one White House official told the committee, you would have
    to be an idiot not to understand that the problem affected the
    subpoena compliance.
        You really have to ask yourself, why is it that President
    Clinton's White House counsel's office manages to forget
    everything or be so stupid when it's really convenient?
        I sent a letter to Judge Lamberth today about the Silbert
    matter. Mr. Silbert's billing record makes it clear that one of
    his colleagues provided false information to a Federal court on
    two separate occasions. In Judge Lamberth's court, another
    Northrop Grumman lawyer testified that Mr. Silbert didn't have
    any contact with the White House about the missing e-mails. We
    know this isn't true. I know that Earl Silbert has a reputation
    for integrity. However, I find this entire incident very
    troubling. And I ask unanimous consent to include in the record
    a letter that we're talking about, that we sent to Judge
    Lambert. Without objection, so ordered.
        White House Counsel Beth Nolan was also scheduled to
    testify today. I issued the subpoena to her after trying to get
    answers to questions for months. It seems she only really
    focuses her attention on congressional requests when she is
    worried she'll have to explain herself before Congress.
    Yesterday we reached an accommodation with her. We agreed that
    if she answers the questions we put in a letter to her
    yesterday, then we would postpone her appearance, and I ask
    unanimous consent to include my letter to her dated September
    25th in the record and without objection, so ordered.
        I also ask unanimous consent to have her response included
    in the record when we receive it. And without objection, so
    ordered.
        The questions we have for Ms. Nolan are related to the
    campaign fundraising investigation. They go to a failure by the
    Justice Department to review evidence. So it is related to the
    White House e-mail investigation. Let me explain briefly.
        One of the questions that went unanswered for a very long
    time was whether the original videotape of the December 15,
    1995 White House coffee had been reviewed by the Justice
    Department. The White House had custody of the original tape,
    so that's why I asked the Justice Department if they had
    reviewed it or who had reviewed it.
        This is the tape where Indonesian gardener Arief
    Wiriadinata, who gave $455,000 to the Clinton Gore campaign,
    tells the President James Riady sent me. It is also the tape
    where the Vice President appears to tell Mr. Wiriadinata ``We
    oughta, we oughta, we oughta show Mr. Riady the tapes, some of
    the ad tapes,'' and someone else says, ``I'll see if I can do
    that.'' This statement came 4 days after Vice President Gore
    had shown copies of issue ad tapes to political contributors in
    Chicago.
        The Justice Department has so far failed to ask the Vice
    President one single question about this exchange. Why the Vice
    President of the United States would suggest showing political
    advertisements to someone who lived in Indonesia is a matter of
    some interest, particularly when it's James Riady, a man with
    extensive ties to the Chinese Government and someone who had
    promised to give the President a million dollars in illegal
    money during his 1992 campaign, and he ended up giving him we
    know $700,000 to $800,000 in illegal contributions that were
    returned.
        Did he want to show the tape to Riady for the same reason
    he had shown it to contributors in Chicago? Did he know that
    Riady had been contributing heavily? Are there contributions we
    don't know about that he was aware of?
        I asked the White House for months if the Justice
    Department had looked at or reviewed that original tape. The
    copies that were provided earlier are very poor and some of the
    audio is very difficult to hear. I could not get an answer. So
    once again, I had to notice a hearing just to get an answer to
    a simple question like that.
        Late last week the White House informed us that the Justice
    Department has not looked at these tapes since, ``a short
    period of time in October 1997.'' This delay can only be
    explained by a desire not to embarrass the Justice Department
    and to protect the Vice President from additional questioning.
        I have also been asking the Justice Department about this
    tape. We held a hearing in July with four senior Justice
    Department officials. We played the tape several times. We
    asked them if they wanted to examine the original tape and they
    would not respond. I know that they haven't examined the
    original because I have it. I subpoenaed it. I wrote to them on
    August 25th to ask if they wanted the tape. They did not
    respond. I wrote to them on September 7th if they wanted to
    look at the tape. No response. So I scheduled this hearing for
    today and I sent Mr. Gershel a subpoena to testify, and guess
    what, yesterday the Justice Department sent us a letter saying
    they want to see the tape. All you have to do is jump on this
    thing and bring it to the public, and then they will look at
    it. Once again, we have to embarrass the Justice Department to
    get them to do their job. So they're now going to look at the
    tape after we've been on this since literally who knows when.
        I am pleased that we have Mr. Gershel here today. When he
    was last here, I was critical that he had taken time away from
    his responsibilities supervising the Campaign Financing Task
    Force to be a lead prosecutor in the trial of Independent
    Counsel Starr's former spokesman, Charles Bakaly. I just
    couldn't understand how he had so much spare time on his hands.
    I also couldn't understand why he would send out such a message
    about the Attorney General's priorities. With all the criticism
    that the Justice Department's fundraising investigation has
    received, I question the judgment that would have Mr. Gershel
    get involved in a trial that involved one of former Independent
    Counsel Starr's staff.
        The Bakaly prosecution was one of the highest priorities of
    President Clinton's lawyers. To my way of thinking Mr.
    Gershel's decision to be a lead attorney in the Bakaly case
    sent the message that the Attorney General put a higher
    priority on doing something that the President and his lawyers
    wanted than on the investigation of the President and the Vice
    President.
        Today we'll ask Mr. Gershel questions about the Justice
    Department criminal investigation of the White House e-mail
    matter. We have provided Mr. Gershel some of the questions in
    advance so he should be prepared. We will stay away from asking
    substantive questions about the investigation. Instead, we will
    try to focus on the effort that's being put into the
    investigation.
        I'd also like to learn a little bit more about the White
    House e-mails produced to the committee last Friday. I'd like
    to know when they were produced to the Justice Department. Just
    over a month ago, the Attorney General rejected Robert
    Conrad's, the head of the task force, and she's rejected I
    think almost every head of the task force recommendations, but
    she rejected his task force recommendation to appoint a special
    counsel to investigate the Vice President for perjury. The
    Attorney General was very clear in her rejection, as she has
    been in other cases. She says, I have concluded there is no
    reasonable possibility that further investigation could develop
    evidence that would support the filing of charges for making a
    willful false statement. And yet, she hadn't even looked at
    these tapes.
        Did the Justice Department have these latest e-mails when
    she made that statement? These e-mails have been under subpoena
    for 3\1/2\ years, and they are just now being turned over us to
    by the White House, 3\1/2\ years late. That's disgraceful. Let
    me read just a couple of these.
        We have an e-mail from the Vice President's office from
    April 9, 1996, 20 days before he went to the Hsi Lai Temple
    event. The staffer for the Vice President says, ``We committed
    in San Jose and L.A. for fundraising events.'' Then the Vice
    President's itinerary is attached. There's exactly one event on
    the schedule for Los Angeles, the Hsi Lai Temple event, and the
    Vice President said he had no idea this was a fundraiser? Was
    he telling the truth? This e-mail has a bearing on that.
        We have an e-mail from April 23, 1996. Again, it's from the
    Vice President's office. The staffer says I do not remember
    asking, but I may have. These are FR copies, right? Now what
    does FR stand for? I don't think it stands for french roast
    coffees. Of course not. It means fundraising coffees, and the
    President and the Vice President said the coffees were not
    fundraisers. Were they telling the truth? This e-mail has a
    bearing on that.
        We have another e-mail directly to the Vice President from
    February 1996. Carter Eskew, the campaign ad man, wants to be
    able to send an e-mail to the Vice President, but they don't
    want it to be archived. They don't want it in the archives. It
    says, ``The only way not to have your e-mails backed up on
    government computers would be to get a Clinton Gore computer in
    your office and set it up for private e-mails.'' I'd like to
    know if that was done.
        So should the Justice Department. Why did they not want
    these things archived, these e-mails? Supposed to be, all of
    them supposed to be, but they specifically did not want it
    done. So should the Justice Department want to know this?
        These are just a few examples of why this e-mail
    investigation is so important. It really is a question of
    whether obstruction of justice was committed. And I want to
    bring attention to anyone who's interested back to the
    Watergate tapes. We had just a few minutes of missing tape and
    ended up being one of the main reasons that a President was
    brought down, and here we have hundreds of thousands of e-mails
    that have been kept from the public and every committee for 3
    years. They were subpoenaed a long time ago and the Justice
    Department apparently hasn't been doing anything to really
    force the issue.
        Mr. Gershel should be able to tell us when the Attorney
    General and her advisers got the information that we received
    on Friday. I think that's a very important question, and I'd
    like to have an answer.
        I now yield to Mr. Waxman for his statement.
        Mr. Waxman. Usually when Congress gets together to have a
    hearing, we try to get facts, and from those facts try to
    figure out what happened. What we have in this committee is an
    extensive statement of a theory by the chairman which
    invariably involves a conspiracy. Everybody is in this
    conspiracy who's a Democrat or who worked for the government or
    who might have some evidence that doesn't fit the theory that
    the chairman is proposing.
        What we have just heard from Mr. Burton was a bunch of
    sensational allegations. The reason he has to give an extensive
    statement of sensational allegations is because the facts don't
    fit those allegations. He simply puts them out there and hopes
    that maybe in stating a lot of sensational allegations,
    something may stick. Well that's not an oversight hearing.
    That's a--I guess in a campaign, a political effort to smear.
        Now when we got the memo about what this hearing was all
    about, we looked at it and it was so wrong in its allegations
    and misleading and false statements that we wrote a letter to
    the chairman, and I want to make my letter to the chairman part
    of the record, and I ask unanimous consent to do that.
        Mr. Burton. Without objection. We have a response which
    we'd also like to put in the record. Without objection.
        [The information referred to follows:]

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        Mr. Waxman. I have no problem with that. I wrote a letter
    to set the record straight, and it points out that contrary to
    Mr. Burton's claim that several credible Northrop Grumman
    employees testified there was no jail threat, that these
    Northrop Grumman employees testified they were never impeded in
    their effort to fix the e-mail problem and that Mr. Burton's
    sensational speculation about Northrop Grumman's attorney Earl
    Silbert is just that, speculation. He doesn't have any
    knowledge of what Mr. Silbert had to say in private
    conversations with anybody, but because he doesn't know what
    Mr. Silbert said and Mr. Silbert said in an interview that he
    couldn't remember certain things, Mr. Burton then jumps to the
    conclusion that Mr. Silbert is part of this conspiracy. In
    fact, what he's doing is challenging Mr. Silbert and saying Mr.
    Silbert must be dishonest because what he had to say didn't fit
    the Burton theory.
        It used to be that we were accountable, Members of
    Congress, for what we said and did. We would admit our mistakes
    if we made mistakes. We would certainly try to avoid making new
    ones. But that's not the case on this committee. One hallmark
    of this committee's approach is to search for the missing piece
    of evidence. It seems no matter how much information is
    provided to the committee, and we've received millions of pages
    of documents and interviewed hundreds of witnesses at a cost of
    over $8 million of taxpayers' money, there's always something
    missing to justify another wild goose chase.
        And I want people to know, in our letter we pointed this
    out, that the committee held 4 days of hearings on this topic
    and that we're holding another one today about. This is going
    to be the fifth. We've already received testimony from 16
    people, 3 of whom each testified twice. Committee staff
    interviewed 35 people in connection with the e-mail
    investigation, and the committee requested and received 9,224
    pages of documents.
        So given all that's gone on regarding this effort, I am
    bewildered by the factual inaccuracies and omissions contained
    in the statement by the chairman today and the memorandum he
    sent to members of this committee on September 21st, and I
    think it's just hard to set the record straight, because
    there's no record as far as what we hear and the allegations.
    There's no factual statements or records or evidence to justify
    the speculation, the sensational charges. The idea is just to
    make the charges and hope they stick.
        Well, this is not new as I mentioned, in this committee and
    I prepared a report that I'd like to bring to everyone's
    attention, and I would hope that we could make it a part of the
    record. This report talks about the committee's endless pursuit
    of scandal, and I think that this report ought to be read by
    people who want to evaluate some of these charges. And if you
    want a record of the kind of charges that have been made, in
    order to evaluate the chairman's claims about the missing e-
    mails, while we've had between 130,000 and 150,000 of the
    missing White House e-mails already reconstructed and reviewed,
    out of these 130,000 to 150,000 e-mails, only 55 had any
    relevance to this committee's investigation. Only 55 out of
    150,000. Out of those 55 e-mails, virtually none contained any
    new information. In fact, many had been provided in slightly
    different form to the committee or other investigators years
    ago.
        So I think that we ought to--generally it is a good idea to
    discount much of what Mr. Burton said in his statement. It is
    likely that the new allegations will be proven as groundless as
    the ones that have come before. If you are convinced that the
    Clinton administration is corrupt, as many of my Republican
    colleagues seem to be, our committee's endless pursuit of
    scandal may seem reasonable, but most Americans don't share
    this obsession.
        Their concerns are for providing a good education for their
    children, reducing the cost of prescription drugs for their
    parents, protecting the environment for their grandchildren, or
    paying down the national debt. To them we must seem incredibly
    out of touch, and they're absolutely right.
        I want people to know that in this document, which we are
    making part of the record, we just listed some of the
    incredible allegations that have been made over the last 4
    years by Republican leaders and Mr. Burton himself. Was Vince
    Foster murdered, for instance? Did the White House collect FBI
    files for dirty tricks? Did the Clinton administration sell
    secrets to the Chinese Government for campaign contributions?
    Did the White House engage in an abuse of power by using the
    IRS to retaliate against political enemies? Did John Huang
    really visit one of Mr. Burton's star witnesses, David Wang,
    and give him a paper bag filled with $10,000? Did they alter
    the video tapes to mislead Congress and the American people?
    Did the President create a national monument in Utah to help
    James Riady? Did Attorney General Janet Reno withhold Waco
    material from Congress? Did Webster Hubbell on a prison
    telephone actually say, ``The Riady is just not easy to do
    business with me while I am here?''
        These are only a sample of the wild allegations that have
    been made and more are in this report that my staff compiled,
    which I'm going to ask be made part of the record. These
    allegations have repeatedly been made and they have all been
    proved false by independent counsels, by the Senate, or at
    times, even this committee. When we did get actual information
    and evidence, these wild accusations turned out to be
    inaccurate, and I submit that the wild accusations serving as
    the basis for the committee hearing are also without any
    foundation in fact. They are simply wild speculations to make
    sensational allegations in hopes that somebody might believe
    them, and if anybody disagrees with them, it's not based on the
    facts, it must be they're also part of this conspiracy.
        So Mr. Chairman, I would ask unanimous consent that this
    report be made part of the record.
        Mr. Burton. Without objection.
        Mr. Waxman. I thank you for that and I guess we'll look
    forward to what Mr. Gershel has to say, but if he doesn't say
    what fits the theory, then I am sure that he must be subject to
    some harangue because what this committee wants, at least what
    the leader of this committee wants, is for witnesses to say
    what he wants them to say to fit his theories. I very much
    doubt we're going to get any more evidence today to
    substantiate the theories that have been advanced for which no
    other evidence has substantiated them.
        I yield back the balance of my time.
        Mr. Burton. Mr. Barr, did you have any comments? Any
    comments or----
        Mr. Ford. We can submit them to the record, right?
        Mr. Burton. Sure, without objection. Any comments?
        Mr. Horn.
        Mr. Horn. Thank you very much Mr. Chairman. I think you
    might have recalled the hearing on July 20th. That hearing we
    informed you that we had obtained the original videotape of the
    December 15, 1995 White House coffee. We explained that we
    believed that the tape contained a statement by the Vice
    President that, ``we oughta, we oughta, we oughta show Mr.
    Riady the tapes, some of the ad tapes,'' from the Vice
    President.
        Then someone says, ``I'll see if I can do that.''
        We explained the significance of that statement to the
    campaign finance investigation. We asked you if you wanted the
    original tape of that event. You refused to say whether you
    wanted it. We sent letters on July 18, 2000, and August 1,
    2000, and asking if you wanted to have the original videotape
    of the event, and we got no answer.
        Then yesterday, the day before this hearing, we got a
    letter from the Assistant Attorney General saying that the
    Justice Department wanted the tape. Why did it take so long for
    the Justice Department to ask for this tape?
        Let me round out some of this some more before you answer.
    As you will recall at the July 20, 2000 hearing, we pointed out
    the Justice Department's sources had told the press that they
    did not believe that the videotape of December 15, 1995, that
    coffee, contained this statement by the Vice President. We
    pointed out that the Justice Department didn't even have the
    original copy of the tape when the Department of Justice staff
    made those disparaging statements. That isn't new to us.
        Mr. Burton. Mr. Horn, we're making opening statements now.
    We haven't sworn the witness yet or started asking questions.
    Are you into the questions now?
        Mr. Horn. OK. Well, I will wait until everybodyis under
    oath.
        Mr. Burton. Well, I apologize. I thought everyone knew we
    were making opening statements, but if you have an opening
    statement you would like to make at this time, it's OK. Would
    you rather wait? OK. If there are no other opening statements,
    Mr. Gershel would you stand please.
        [Witness sworn.]
        Mr. Burton. Do you have a statement you'd like to make or
    just want to go to questions?

     STATEMENT OF ALAN GERSHEL, DEPUTY ASSISTANT ATTORNEY GENERAL,
                       U.S. DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE

        Mr. Gershel. Yes Mr. Chairman I have a brief statement if I
    might read, please.
        Mr. Burton. Proceed.
        Mr. Gershel. Good afternoon, Mr. Chairman and other members
    of the committee.
        I am Alan Gershel, a Deputy Assistant Attorney General in
    the Criminal Division, a position I have held since January
    2000. In that capacity, I have responsibility within the
    criminal division for supervising the Campaign Financing Task
    Force, the fraud section and the child exploitation and
    obscenity section.
        I am a career Federal prosecutor on detail from the U.S.
    attorney's office for the eastern District of Michigan where I
    serve as the First Assistant and Criminal Chief. In my 20 years
    as a Federal prosecutor, I have supervised or personally
    prosecuted hundreds of Federal criminal cases, including public
    corruption and white collar matters as well as a wide range of
    other Federal offenses.
        I am here today in response to the committee's subpoena. I
    understand from your recent letters, Mr. Chairman, that the
    committee has questions about matters relating to the Campaign
    Financing Task Force. I appreciate your identifying your
    questions in advance. I will do my best to address your
    concerns, but I am limited, as you know, by my ethical and
    professional responsibilities as a prosecutor in what I can say
    about pending criminal matters.
        With respect to task force staffing, you asked about the
    staffing levels on the Department's investigation of the White
    House e-mail matter. Although the Department has a longstanding
    policy of not disclosing staffing levels for particular pending
    criminal matters, I can assure you that the Attorney General
    regularly consults with Robert Conrad, the chief of the
    Campaign Financing Task Force, and I, to ensure that the task
    force has the resources it needs. Bob and I both believe that
    the task force currently has sufficient staff to handle the
    White House e-mail matter as well as its other
    responsibilities.
        I would also note that with respect to the White House e-
    mail matter the task force and the office of the independent
    counsel are working together in a coordinated investigation. So
    it is not just the task force's resources that are involved.
        With respect to the committee's offer to turn over custody
    of the original videotape of the December 15, 1995 White House
    coffee, the Department yesterday sent Chairman Burton a letter
    accepting the committee's offer. We are always happy to receive
    information or other material that the committee believes may
    be relevant to an ongoing investigation. It would be
    inappropriate, however, for me to comment on whether the
    Department may have previously obtained the original videotape
    prior to it coming into the committee's possession.
        With respect to the committee's recent practice of
    subpoenaing other government agencies or third parties for copy
    of the task force's grand jury subpoenas and other
    investigative requests for information, the Department has
    expressed its concern to the committee in writing about the use
    of congressional subpoena power to shadow the Department's
    ongoing investigations. We believe that this practice could
    undermine pending investigations by creating a substantial risk
    that sensitive and confidential investigative information will
    be disclosed to targets of investigations and to other persons
    who might use the information to thwart our law enforcement
    efforts.
        We have also asked that the committee respect the executive
    branch's well-established third agency consultation practice,
    whereby an agency that receives a congressional or other
    request for documents or information that originated with
    another government agency consults with the originating agency
    before producing such documents or information. The committee
    has subpoenaed document requests and other information from the
    State Department and the commerce Department, some of which may
    relate to pending criminal matters. The task force and the FBI
    have been reviewing responsive documents gathered by these
    departments and where appropriate, redacting information to
    ensure that pending criminal matters are not compromised.
        This has been the Department's traditional approach when
    another executive branch agency is requested to produce
    documents that potentially implicate law enforcement interests.
    Our letter yesterday enclosed a letter documenting an example
    of the same approach being taken by the Department during the
    Bush administration. I would ask that our letter to the
    committee along with the enclosure be made a part of the
    record.
        You asked about the status of the Charles Duncan matter
    which was referred to the Department by the committee in 1997.
    The matter was closed because the Senate legal counsel's office
    refused to allow the FBI to interview a Senate staffer who was
    the critical witness in the alleged perjury.
        Finally, in your letter yesterday, Mr. Chairman, you asked
    a series of questions about the production of e-mails by the
    White House. Because your questions relate to pending criminal
    investigations being conducted by both the Department and the
    Office of the Independent Counsel, it would be inappropriate
    for me to comment on the evidence gathering process associated
    with that investigation. Similarly, it would be inappropriate
    for me to discuss the Attorney General's recent decision not to
    appoint a special counsel to handle certain matters involving
    the Vice President since the underlying matters continue to be
    subject of pending criminal investigation.
        At this point, I would be happy to answer questions from
    the committee. Thank you.
        Mr. Burton. Thank you, Mr. Gershel.
        [The prepared statement of Mr. Gershel follows:]

        [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4496.230

        [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4496.254

        [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4496.231

        [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4496.232

        Mr. Burton. On September 18th of this year, I wrote to the
    Attorney General and asked for information regarding the
    staffing levels on the Justice Department's e-mail
    investigation. You declined to answer that question in your
    opening statement. So let me ask you one more time. How many
    attorneys have worked on the Justice Department's campaign task
    force e-mail matter since its inception, do you know?
        Mr. Gershel. Mr. Chairman, it's been the practice of the
    Department not to comment specifically on numbers of people
    assigned or involved with investigations. I can assure you,
    though, that there have been sufficient resources devoted to
    this investigation.
        Mr. Burton. And in a report in May of this year, the GAO
    reported extensively on the staffing levels in the task force
    investigation. Why would you share that information with the
    GAO and not this committee?
        Mr. Gershel. Mr. Chairman, I had no participation in the
    preparation of the GAO reports. I really can't speak to that
    issue.
        Mr. Burton. You're not familiar with that at all?
        Mr. Gershel. I'm familiar with the report. I was not
    interviewed. I was not part of that process.
        Mr. Burton. Do you think it was wrong for them----
        Mr. Gershel. I have no opinion on that.
        Mr. Burton. You say you can't give us that information but
    GAO got it?
        Mr. Gershel. Mr. Chairman, I am not sure exactly what
    information GAO got or didn't get.
        Mr. Burton. We have heard the task force was using just one
    part-time lawyer to work on this e-mail investigation, and she
    recently quit to spend more time with her family; is that true?
        Mr. Gershel. There was an attorney who was involved with
    this investigation who recently left the task force, that's
    true.
        Mr. Burton. She was a part-time attorney, was she not?
        Mr. Gershel. Yes.
        Mr. Burton. What's the largest number of attorneys who
    worked on the task force e-mail investigation at any one time?
        Mr. Gershel. Mr. Chairman, I can't answer that question.
    People come in and out of the investigation. Work on portions
    of the investigation, components of the investigation,
    contribute in different ways to an investigation. There's no
    one clear-cut answer to that question, and I could not provide
    you with specific numbers assigned to that case.
        Mr. Burton. Just give me a rough idea.
        Mr. Gershel. I can't do that, sir.
        Mr. Burton. How many of the task force lawyers are
    currently assigned to the e-mail investigation?
        Mr. Gershel. Again, Mr. Chairman, I believe I've answered
    the question that I cannot comment specifically on numbers
    assigned to the investigation.
        Mr. Burton. So if I ask you how many were assigned 2 weeks
    ago, you would give me the same answer?
        Mr. Gershel. Yes, sir, I would.
        Mr. Burton. Was the attorney that recently quit the only
    attorney that was working on the e-mail at that time?
        Mr. Gershel. Mr. Chairman, again, various people both at
    the Campaign Financing Task Force and the Office of Independent
    Counsel have been involved in this investigation from its
    inception.
        Mr. Burton. Can you give me a rough idea how much time you
    devote to the e-mail investigation?
        Mr. Gershel. I believe I devote sufficient time to the
    investigation. I participate in the investigation to the extent
    that I'm needed.
        Mr. Burton. Have you made yourself familiar with the basic
    facts of the investigation?
        Mr. Gershel. Yes, sir, I have.
        Mr. Burton. On March 30, 2000, this committee made a
    referral of Daniel Barry to the Justice Department for false
    statements that Barry made in the Filegate lawsuit. Are you
    familiar with the committee's referral?
        Mr. Gershel. Yes, sir, I am.
        Mr. Burton. The committee learned that on August 1, 2000,
    you informed Mr. Barry that he was not a target in the task
    force investigation. Why was that decision made?
        Mr. Gershel. Mr. Chairman, that goes right to a decision
    made in connection with a pending open investigation, and it
    would be inappropriate for me to comment on that.
        Mr. Burton. Did you participate at all in Mr. Barry's
    interview?
        Mr. Gershel. Mr. Chairman, it would be inappropriate to
    indicate who participated in the interview of Mr. Barry.
        Mr. Burton. Well, you signed the letter informing Mr. Barry
    he was not a target. Why did you sign that letter instead of
    Mr. Conrad, who is the head of the task force?
        Mr. Gershel. There was no specific reason why it was signed
    by me as opposed to someone else. I had participated in that
    investigation. I was part of the decisionmaking process, and it
    seemed appropriate under the circumstances for me to sign that
    letter.
        Mr. Burton. Well, there's an exhibit 10 that I want to
    show, because you say you have been intimately involved in this
    and following it from the beginning. There's a letter that you
    signed informing Mr. Barry that he's not the target. If you
    notice, his name isn't even spelled correctly, and it just
    boggles my mind that something of that significance sent to
    somebody wouldn't even--I mean, if you were really familiar
    with it, you would think that you would spell a target, a
    possible target's name correctly.
        [Exhibit 10 follows:]

        [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4496.255

        Mr. Gershel. I certainly apologize if I misspelled Mr.
    Barry's name, but without meaning any disrespect, sir,
    misspelling his name is not indication of my lack of
    familiarity with the investigation.
        Mr. Burton. Did you make the decision that Barry was not a
    target or was this a unilateral decision? Did you make it or
    did somebody else make it?
        Mr. Gershel. Mr. Chairman I am not going to comment upon
    the decisionmaking process as it concerns Mr. Barry's status.
    It is a pending matter.
        Mr. Burton. Yesterday you did ask for the tapes that we
    have, the original tapes of the White House meeting in
    December, I think it was 1995, was it not?
        Mr. Gershel. Yes, sir, it was.
        Mr. Burton. You asked for that yesterday. Can you just tell
    me, I wrote to you not once, not twice, but three or four times
    about would you like to look at that, have you looked at that
    and we received no response. Can you explain why you didn't
    look at that, didn't pay attention to our correspondence until
    you were subpoenaed, until yesterday? Do you have any idea?
        Mr. Gershel. Mr. Chairman, we always pay attention to your
    correspondence, I can assure you of that.
        Mr. Burton. I am sure of that.
        Mr. Gershel. But second, I think I would like to refer back
    to Mr. Robinson's comments when he testified back on July 20th
    when those questions were raised, and his answer then and my
    answer now would be that we're always happy and interested in
    receiving information from the committee that they believe to
    be relevant to an investigation, and that is why that content--
    --
        Mr. Burton. You're probably not going to be able to answer
    this question but it does kind of bother me a little bit. The
    Attorney General said she found no evidence that would involve
    the necessity of an investigation of Vice President Gore, and
    yet this particular issue, these tapes weren't even requested,
    even though we offered them several times to the committee to
    look at before she made that decision. I can't understand why
    that wasn't an integral part of the investigation before she
    made that decision. Do you have any idea why that happened?
        Mr. Gershel. Mr. Chairman, are you asking about which
    decision now?
        Mr. Burton. Well, the decision to say that they should not
    have a special investigator or prosecutor to look into the
    allegations that the Vice President knew about these campaign
    finance coffees and the Hsi Lai temple and other things,
    because this particular tape is relevant to whether or not he
    was aware of and involved with the campaign finance problem
    we're talking about. So why didn't they look at these tapes
    even though we offered them several times before that decision
    was made?
        Mr. Gershel. Again, Mr. Chairman, it's inappropriate for me
    to comment what was looked at and what was not looked at. I
    don't know precisely what the Attorney General looked at and
    what she considered in making her decision concerning the
    special counsel.
        Mr. Burton. She has made her decision. This is my last
    question. She has made her decision and now, finally they're
    going to look at the tapes, and my question is, what if they
    find something wrong? She has already made the decision they're
    not going to investigate. Does that mean they reopen this?
        Mr. Gershel. Mr. Chairman, the Attorney General, from my
    own personal experience in the 10 months I have been here,
    closely follows the investigations of the Campaign Financing
    Task Force. We have regular meetings with her. She is
    interested and involved and engaged in the process, and I have
    no doubt that if there was information that we believed or the
    task force believed was relevant to that decision, that we
    would be comfortable in bringing it to her attention and she
    would evaluate its significance.
        Mr. Burton. Well, I am glad you're looking at it finally.
        Mr. Waxman.
        Mr. Waxman. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I know you went over
    your time. I think you took around 9 minutes and I hope you
    will allow me extra time if I need it.
        Mr. Gershel, you're a career--are you a political
    appointee?
        Mr. Gershel. No, sir, I am not.
        Mr. Waxman. Are you a career person at Justice?
        Mr. Gershel. I am a career prosecutor. I have been an
    assistant U.S. attorney in the eastern District of Michigan
    since 1980.
        Mr. Waxman. So you have been there during Democratic and
    Republican administrations?
        Mr. Gershel. Both.
        Mr. Waxman. Mr. Burton used pretty blunt language in
    criticizing the Department's e-mail investigation. On March
    27th, the chairman wrote a strongly worded letter to Attorney
    General Reno in which he said that, ``because you and your
    staff are in charge, the proposed investigation is fatally
    flawed.'' And then on March 29th he wrote a letter to Judge
    Royce Lamberth in which he said that the Justice Department
    took no steps to determine whether reports about the e-mail
    problems were true.
        Now, I admit the fact that Chairman Burton's criticizing
    the Department of Justice investigation is not exactly
    newsworthy, but what is particularly unfair about these
    criticisms is that they omit a highly relevant fact: namely,
    that the Department's e-mail investigation has been carried out
    in coordination with the Office of Independent Counsel Robert
    Ray.
        Mr. Gershel, can you confirm for me that the Department's
    e-mail investigation has been carried out in coordination with
    Independent Counsel Ray?
        Mr. Gershel. Yes. We've had a cooperative investigation for
    a number of months now with the Office of Independent Counsel.
        Mr. Waxman. And has the Department impeded or limited the
    scope of Mr. Ray's e-mail investigation?
        Mr. Gershel. Not at all.
        Mr. Waxman. It seems to me that the chairman is being a
    little unfair here. If there are any problems with the criminal
    investigation into the e-mail matter, Independent Counsel Ray
    would seem to share the responsibility. Instead, Chairman
    Burton has chosen to single out the Attorney General without
    even mentioning Mr. Ray. He writes angry letters to the
    Attorney General accusing her of failing to interview so-called
    key witnesses in this e-mail matter, but he fails to mention
    that Independent Counsel Ray has apparently concurred with the
    Department's decisions about whom to interview, and he makes
    you sit in this hot seat here, Mr. Gershel, all by yourself
    without even inviting Mr. Ray to discuss his own e-mail
    investigation before our committee.
        To make things even stranger, Chairman Burton has also
    called repeatedly for the appointment of a special counsel to
    investigate the e-mail matter even though we already have an
    independent counsel looking into the matter.
        Mr. Gershel, can you think of any reason why we need a
    special counsel to investigate a matter that's already been
    investigated by an independent counsel?
        Mr. Gershel. No, sir I can't.
        Mr. Waxman. Now, it seems--a lot seems to be placed on the
    fact that maybe you didn't look at a tape, and as I understand,
    you wrote back saying you're happy to see whatever information
    the committee has. Does that mean--does that mean you didn't
    have the tape or you don't pay attention to the tape or that
    you don't attach the same significance to it, or what does that
    mean?
        Mr. Gershel. I think that what we meant by that letter and
    what we mean when we indicate that we will look at the tape
    means that we're happy to receive evidence from the committee.
    If the committee believes it's something we ought to be looking
    at, we're more than happy to look at it. With respect to what
    we have looked at, what videotapes we have reviewed of various
    coffees, sir, that would be inappropriate at this time for me
    to comment on that, but we will ask, if we haven't already done
    so, for the original videotape in the possession of this
    committee.
        Mr. Waxman. So you, a career prosecutor having been there
    for 20 years under both Republican and Democratic
    administrations, are here in the hot seat because you're not
    willing to tell this committee about the investigation you're
    conducting with the Independent Counsel, and where you are,
    whether you have reached the same conclusions. Or I guess
    basically you're here because you haven't said what the
    chairman wants you to say, and that, I suppose, is that the
    Democrats are bad guys, Gore's no good, everybody's corrupt,
    and that you're impeding an investigation because you don't
    want anybody to know about that.
        Mr. Gershel. This investigation has been ongoing. I have
    been involved in this investigation at different levels. It's
    been my impression, having been a prosecutor for a number of
    years, that this investigation has moved forward thoroughly,
    comprehensively, appropriately, and we have not been hindered
    or obstructed or prevented from looking where we think we need
    to look.
        Mr. Waxman. Do you think that Independent Counsel Ray has
    been pulling his punches in order to protect the Clinton
    administration?
        Mr. Gershel. I don't think so.
        Mr. Waxman. Because I would think that's the conclusion one
    would have to reach with the accusations that are being made
    against the Justice Department.
        Mr. Gershel. I certainly wouldn't want to comment on the
    intentions of the independent counsel, but I will tell you from
    my experience in working with him in his investigation, they
    have been very aggressive and very thorough, just as we have
    been, in the search for the truth.
        Mr. Waxman. Aside from misspelling a man's name, is there
    any other besmirch on your record of integrity and honesty and
    good spelling----
        Mr. Gershel. I would hope not.
        Mr. Waxman [continuing]. That this committee should know
    about?
        Mr. Gershel. I would hope not.
        Mr. Waxman. Thank you. Mr. Chairman, I don't know, the red
    light is on. I don't know how much more time I would have. I
    certainly have a lot of other questions but I don't want to
    abuse the time. Oh, I have 2 more minutes.
        Mr. Burton. Sure.
        Mr. Waxman. Well, Chairman Burton issued a series of
    subpoenas to the White House, the Commerce Department, State
    Department, the Democratic National Committee--isn't it great
    you can just issue subpoenas? You can issue them to everybody--
    and these subpoenas called for the production of all documents,
    requests, subpoenas and interview requests made by the Justice
    Department's Campaign Financing Task Force as a part of its
    criminal investigation. It is my understanding that the
    Department of Justice has expressed serious concern about the
    committee's use of its subpoena power to shadow its ongoing
    investigation.
        Mr. Gershel, I would like to ask you a few questions about
    the role of a Federal grand jury in criminal investigation and
    the reasons why activities and deliberations of a grand jury
    are kept secret. A grand jury doesn't do its business in open
    court, isn't that correct?
        Mr. Gershel. That's correct.
        Mr. Waxman. And in fact when prosecutors question a witness
    before a grand jury, the witness' attorney isn't even permitted
    in the room, isn't that correct?
        Mr. Gershel. That is correct.
        Mr. Waxman. The Supreme Court has explained a number of
    reasons why a Federal grand jury needs to conduct its business
    in private. One reason is to ensure that people who are accused
    but later exonerated by the grand jury will not be held up to
    public ridicule. Isn't that correct?
        Mr. Gershel. Yes, sir, it is.
        Mr. Waxman. Another reason grand juries operate in secret
    is to protect witnesses from retribution or improper
    inducements and to encourage witnesses to testify fully and
    frankly, correct?
        Mr. Gershel. That is correct.
        Mr. Waxman. Another reason is to allow the individual grand
    jurors to conduct their deliberations without improper
    interference, correct?
        Mr. Gershel. That is correct.
        Mr. Waxman. And another reason grand juries operate in
    secret is to prevent those who are about to be indicted from
    fleeing and escaping justice, isn't that correct?
        Mr. Gershel. Yes, sir, it is.
        Mr. Waxman. So there are many reasons for grand jury
    secrecy, but Chairman Burton, through a series of subpoenas
    issued to the White House and all the others, Justice
    Department and so on and so forth, has tried to look around the
    veil of secrecy surrounding Federal grand juries and use this
    information for his own partisan purposes. In the process I
    believe he's undermining the secrecy of the grand jury
    protections.
        And I see my time has expired. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
        Mr. Burton. Gentleman's time has expired.
        Mr. Horn.
        Mr. Horn. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I'm curious. Why can't
    the Department of Justice tell us about the staffing levels for
    the e-mail investigation? Under what authority do you have not
    to tell us about the staffing level?
        Mr. Gershel. Congressman, if you're asking me to give you
    legal authority for that, for my decision not to comment on
    that, I cannot give you that.
        Mr. Horn. Well, whose authority is it?
        Mr. Gershel. It has been my understanding that it has been
    the practice of the Department of Justice, not just with this
    administration but previous administrations, to not comment
    upon specific staffing levels. There are a number of reasons
    for that, including, for example, it may suggest an importance
    or lack of importance with respect to the investigation based
    simply on how many people are assigned to it.
        As I said at the outset, to the extent this committee is
    concerned that the investigation is not proceeding because it
    has inadequate resources, that's simply not the case. There are
    more than adequate resources assigned to this investigation,
    both from the Campaign Financing Task Force and the Office of
    the Independent Counsel.
        Mr. Horn. Does the Attorney General have a memorandum
    anywhere in any policy binder that--which says when you come
    before a congressional committee you're under oath, you're
    asked a question, that you can't sit there unless you're going
    to take the fifth, but it seems to me where is the authority of
    the Attorney General or anyone there to say we don't reveal
    levels of personnel. Does the AG have that? Have you ever read
    it? Have you ever seen it?
        Mr. Gershel. Congressman, I have not seen that but I am
    certainly willing to go back and talk to my superiors, and I'm
    more than happy to get back to you and the committee on that
    specific question.
        Mr. Horn. Well, the facts of life are in this town that if
    you don't have it in either a Presidential Executive order, a
    regulation issued by the Attorney General, you respond to the
    congressional inquiry when we ask a question.
        Mr. Gershel. What I'm trying to explain to you, sir, that
    even if I was comfortable in responding to a question of that
    nature, what makes the question difficult is the fact that at
    any given time the number of people assigned to the case is
    going to vary; moreover because another agency, the Office of
    Independent Counsel is involved, I am not familiar with their
    staffing level. I don't know how many people they assign to the
    case, and it would be pure speculation on my part as to guess
    to that part, but nevertheless they are a key component of this
    investigation.
        Mr. Horn. We were told months ago that one individual part
    time was on the campaign finance investigation. Is that true or
    false?
        Mr. Gershel. Mr. Horn, again--Congressman Horn, again my
    answer is that I cannot--I prefer not to comment. It is
    inappropriate for me to comment on specific numbers assigned to
    the investigation.
        Mr. Burton. Mr. Horn, would the gentleman yield just a
    moment? We think that the Justice Department doesn't have the
    right to refuse to answer this question, and we're prepared to
    hold this hearing open and have you come back under subpoena
    until you answer that question because that question is
    relevant, whether or not we're really getting into this e-mail
    investigation and whether or not the Justice Department is
    serious about it.
        Mr. Horn.
        Mr. Horn. Mr. Chairman, if I might, it seems to me they
    gave the levels to the General Accounting Office.
        Mr. Burton. That's correct.
        Mr. Horn. So I don't know why it can't be given to a body
    of the House of Representatives, and I assume in your
    preparation for this particular hearing that you looked at the
    staffing levels, knowing we would ask it, and then you also
    knew that you would say, oh, sorry, we can't tell you, and I
    think that's pretty bad of this operation but we have known
    that for several years. So why can't you give us the basic
    information?
        Mr. Gershel. Congressman, just so we're clear, it is my
    understanding that the information provided to the GAO was not
    broken down specifically by investigative matter. Rather, the
    GAO was given total and aggregate numbers of the task force
    attorneys assigned to total task force investigations, not
    specifically how many were assigned to the e-mail investigation
    or any other specific, discreet investigation.
        Mr. Horn. Well, I will go back then, Mr. Chairman, if I
    might, if I have time, on this particular videotape where the
    Vice President seems to say, ``We oughta, we oughta, we oughta
    show Mr. Riady the tape, some of the ad tapes,'' and he was
    enthusiastic about it. Then there's a voice that says, ``I'll
    see if I can do that,'' who was obviously a staff member
    following the Vice President around. Now, there have been an
    exchange of letters between this committee and the Department
    of Justice that was sent out by this group, and we explained
    the significance of that statement to the campaign finance
    investigation and we asked you if you wanted the original
    videotape of the event, which we just happened to have. You
    refused to say, you're Assistant Attorney General, you refused
    to say whether you wanted it. We sent letters July 18th, August
    1st, asking if you wanted the original videotape of the event.
    We got no answer. Then yesterday, the day before the hearing,
    and this is where it always happens here, we got a letter from
    the Assistant Attorney General saying that the Justice
    Department wanted the tape. Why did it take so long for the
    Justice Department to ask for this tape?
        Mr. Gershel. Sir, as I have indicated several times now,
    regarding the decision to seek or not seek that tape is not
    something I am prepared to address. I have indicated that we
    are interested and willing and happy and want to review
    evidence that the committee thinks is relevant. We have done
    that. We'll look at it.
        Mr. Burton. Gentleman's time has expired. We'll come back
    to you in just a few minutes.
        Mr. Horn. I am going to have to leave.
        Mr. Burton. Maybe we can yield you some time after Mr.
    Ford.
        Mr. Ford. I yield him 30 seconds.
        Mr. Burton. Without objection.
        Mr. Horn. What worries me, and what always does, is you
    have so many leads out of the White House, out of the Justice
    Department and of course they just downplayed this in terms of
    somebody that's talking down there, and they're the political
    spinners in order to get everybody off the trail or to
    denigrate the evidence and make flamboyant statements and say,
    oh, we did that a year ago, so that isn't for us to think about
    now.
        That's the typical game in this administration. I think it
    is reprehensible. It violates any feeling of ethics and the
    Assistant Attorney General said he thought the leaks at DOJ
    were harmful to the investigation, and, well, whatever happened
    in terms of the DOJ people that denigrated the evidence there
    of that videotape that seemed to be the Vice President of the
    United States? So whatever happened to the people that were
    squealing and trying to run this evidence down?
        Mr. Gershel. Sir, I am going to ask if you wouldn't mind, I
    apologize, but I am not sure I understand the specific question
    you're asking me.
        Mr. Horn. Well, I hope you think about it, and I hope you
    try to get some responses for this committee.
        Mr. Burton. I am sorry you have to leave, Mr. Horn. Thank
    you for your participation. Mr. Ford has graciously said you
    can go ahead, Mr. Gilman.
        Mr. Gilman. I want to thank Mr. Ford and I regret that I
    have another meeting on, but I would like to ask Mr. Gershel
    one question. I am looking at page E-8701, dated February 22,
    1996, 11:43 a.m., from Joel Velasco to Albert Gore, subject,
    Carter Eskew request. ``Carter wants to be able to e-mail you
    from his office. We have some options. Give Carter your special
    e-mail address that Michael Gill had set up earlier or give
    Carter my e-mail or Heather/Liz, and we would forward all e-
    mail from Carter to you. You would have to do the same to send
    him e-mail. Reminder, and this is what I would like to ask
    about, all Internet e-mails are recorded on the White House
    computers. According to Michael, the only way not to have your
    e-mails backed up on government computers would be to get a
    Clinton/Gore computer in your office and set it up for private
    e-mails. Question: How would you like to proceed on this?''
        Is this a usual method of avoiding the computer recording
    of these e-mails? I've never heard of this procedure. Have you?
        Mr. Gershel. Congressman Gilman, you're asking me--I'm
    sorry, I missed the citation to what----
        Mr. Gilman. E-8701, dated February 22, 1996, 11:43 a.m.
    What I'm asking about is the reminder that he puts in that e-
    mail, all Internet e-mails are recorded on the White House
    computers. According to Michael--I don't know who Michael is,
    Michael Gill, I guess--the only way not to have your e-mails
    backed up on the government computers would be to get a
    Clinton/Gore computer in your office and set it up for private
    e-mails.
        Is that something that's been happening in the White House?
        Mr. Gershel. Congressman, for me to answer the question
    would put me in the position of commenting upon----
        Mr. Gilman. I am just asking about procedure. I don't want
    you to comment. Is this a normal procedure?
        Mr. Gershel. Sir, the question would require me to comment
    regarding the scope and the nature of the investigation and--
    but it would be inappropriate for me to do that at this time.
        Mr. Gilman. Well, can you respond to the committee at a
    later date and tell us whether this is a procedure that is
    undertaken in normal events at the White House in order to
    avoid having a computer backup?
        Mr. Gershel. At a subsequent point in time, if it is
    appropriate to respond publicly to your question, we would
    certainly do that.
        Mr. Gilman. Well, Mr. Chairman, I hope that we can get a
    response at a later date. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I want to
    thank Mr. Ford.
        Mr. Burton. So do I, but don't hold your breath.
        Mr. Ford.
        Mr. Ford. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and, Mr. Gershel, very
    quickly can you tell me the number of attorneys at the
    Department of Justice that are currently working on
    investigations from police departments around the Nation
    regarding racial profiling? Can you give me the aggregate
    number of--the specific number that are working in the
    Philadelphia Police Department, the New York Police Department,
    the other departments that have been--some concerns have been
    raised about how they treated certain people in their
    communities?
        Mr. Gershel. Congressman Ford, frankly, I have no idea.
        Mr. Ford. OK. In July 2000, Chairman Burton said a
    videotape of a December 15, 1995 coffee at the White House
    indicates that Vice President Gore suggested that DNC
    advertisements be played for a particular Democratic donor. I
    think my friend Mr. Horn was trying to get at that. This
    Democratic donor has been the subject of campaign finance
    probes. According to Chairman Burton, Mr. Gershel, Vice
    President Gore apparently states, ``We oughta, we oughta, we
    oughta'' show this Democratic donor the tapes, ``some of the ad
    tapes.''
        Let me deal with the facts for one moment. I know Chairman
    Burton remembers this, that he played the videotape at a July
    20, 2000 hearing of this committee. However, it was not
    possible to determine what was said on the tape. Further, it
    was impossible to determine to whom the Vice President was
    speaking because he was not on camera during the alleged
    comment and that Reuters reporter describing the playing of the
    videotape at the hearing wrote, ``Gore's muffled words were not
    clear.''
        When Chairman Burton played the tape on Fox television's
    program, Hanity and Combs, the person whose job it is to
    transcribe the show, transcribed the tape excerpt as follows.
    ``we oughta, we oughta show that to,'' and it was
    unintelligible here, ``let,'' again unintelligible, ``tapes
    some of the ad tapes,'' again unintelligible, ``just to set the
    record straight.''
        I want to take a moment if I can, Mr. Chairman, and set the
    record straight regarding one Charles Duncan. In March 1999
    Chairman Burton sent a letter to the Department of Justice
    asking the Department to investigate whether Charles Duncan,
    then Associate Director of the Office of Presidential Personnel
    at the White House, made false statements under oath to this
    committee. This referral was part of an unfortunate pattern in
    this committee in which the majority asked the Justice
    Department to consider criminal charges against a witness who
    has provided testimony that is inconsistent with the majority's
    theory.
        In the case of Mr. Duncan, Chairman Burton alleged that Mr.
    Duncan may have made false statements in his answers to
    interrogatories in April 1998. The main basis for the
    chairman's claim is that Mr. Duncan's responses were,
    ``irreconcilable'' with notes Mr. Burton's staff took regarding
    unsworn statements purportedly made by another witness, Steve
    Clemons, during a December 1997 interview with the majority
    staff.
        There were serious flaws with the chairman's allegations.
    Mr. Clemons first was interviewed by two junior majority
    attorneys without representation of counsel, and minority staff
    was not invited. Unlike the statements of Mr. Duncan, Mr.
    Clemons' statements were not made under oath. Further,
    immediately after the majority released the majority's staff
    interview notes of the Clemons' interview in February 1998, Mr.
    Clemons issued a public statement noting that he had never seen
    the notes, he had not been given the opportunity to review them
    for accuracy and that, ``the notes have significant
    inaccuracies and misrepresentations'' about the important
    matters which were discussed.
        In addition, the chairman's letter referring Mr. Duncan to
    the Department of Justice failed to mention sworn testimony of
    several other witnesses that supported Mr. Duncan's statement.
        After Mr. Burton wrote the Department of Justice with the
    referral of Mr. Duncan, Mr. Waxman provided the Department of
    Justice with relevant evidence omitted by the chairman's
    letter. I would like to enter this letter into the record.
        [The information referred to follows:]

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        Mr. Ford. Mr. Waxman wrote to the Department of Justice on
    this matter because the chairman's allegations were tantamount
    to a smear on Mr. Duncan's representation. Mr. Duncan's public
    service has spanned several administrations and his reputation
    was untarnished until the chairman's letter. I believe the
    majority should be embarrassed about making a referral based on
    such flimsy evidence.
        Mr. Gershel, could you comment on the status, if you
    wouldn't mind, of the Justice Department's consideration of the
    chairman's referral on Mr. Duncan?
        Mr. Gershel. Congressman Ford, as I indicated at the
    outset, perhaps you weren't present at the time the--I did----
        Mr. Ford. Forgive me, I am sorry. Excuse me for not being
    here.
        Mr. Gershel. And I had to do some checking on that. It
    predated my coming down here to Washington, and I have learned
    that matter is a closed matter. Attempts to interview a crucial
    witness were unsuccessful and it was determined that the
    investigation would be closed.
        Mr. Ford. Thank you. There are just 2 weeks left in the
    106th Congress, Mr. Gershel, which you probably are aware of
    and I'm sure the people around this country are, and I deeply
    regret that we have so little time to help seniors afford their
    prescription drugs, pass the patient's bill of rights and hire
    more teachers, and rebuild schools or even raise the minimum
    wage.
        I would just call on my chairman, let's end the personal
    attacks, the partisan warfare, even the political witch hunts.
    Let's stop issuing and threatening to issue subpoenas and start
    writing laws. Let's end this partisan charade and get back to
    the work that our constituents sent us here to do. Even if we
    can't do that, let's at least end the partisan witch hunt and
    get out and campaign for the candidates we care deeply about
    and we believe ought to run this country.
        We could certainly spend our time a little better than
    we're doing here, Mr. Chairman, and I want to thank Mr. Gershel
    and apologize to him again on behalf of all of us on this
    committee. Even if the people on the other side don't have the
    will to say they apologize, I apologize for calling you up here
    today to have you answer the questions that you have answered.
        And if you could get back to me also on the number of
    people you have investigating some of this racial profiling.
    We've not held one hearing on that in this committee, I might
    add, although we've heard from around the country an outcry for
    some work on this. I would hope that my chairman would at some
    point be willing to hold a hearing to address these issues.
    Perhaps you can come back and comment on that as well.
        With that, I have no time to yield back. I thank the
    chairman for the time.
        Mr. Burton. We'll be very happy to receive that kind of
    information, and I have not yet received a request for a racial
    profiling hearing that I know of, but we will be happy to look
    into that. As a matter of fact, I think Mr. Cummings yesterday
    had a hearing on Monday on the problems with cancer not being
    properly tracked as far as minorities are concerned, and we
    acceded to his wishes to have the hearing on Monday. We'll be
    happy to do that for you, too.
        Let me just ask a few other questions. First of all, in
    response to Mr. Waxman, I think you know that an independent
    counsel-raised investigation is limited. A lot of the things
    that we're talking about in the e-mail investigation Mr. Ray
    does not have any jurisdiction over. Sometimes I wish he did
    but he doesn't, and so the limited part of the overall
    investigations that are taking place that Mr. Ray has
    jurisdiction over, you may be working with him on, I don't
    know, but I can tell you that a lot of things we've asked, in
    my opinion, in other parts of the campaign finance
    investigation scandal, the moneys have been returned, whether
    or not the President and the Vice President were involved, and
    so forth, we have not received the kind of cooperation that I
    think we need, and I think it needs to be put in the record
    that Mr. Ray, Independent Counsel Ray's jurisdiction is limited
    and you would agree with that, wouldn't you?
        Mr. Gershel. Yes.
        Mr. Burton. Thank you. Would you please look at exhibit No.
    1? That's a set of e-mails that were produced to the committee
    by the White House last Friday afternoon. In his cover letter
    accompanying the production the Senior Associate Counsel to the
    President stated that these e-mails were reconstructed from
    backup tapes by the FBI working in conjunction with the
    Campaign Financing Task Force and the Office of the Independent
    Counsel.
        Is that correct?
        Mr. Gershel. Can I just have one moment to sort of read
    this.
        Mr. Burton. Sure.
        Mr. Ford. Mr. Chairman, while he does that, it was a $52
    million limited investigation that you referred to Mr. Ray and
    Mr. Fisk, and I believe that in my district is a lot of money,
    but that was a $52 million limited investigation that taxpayers
    paid for without a single charge being brought against the
    President and the First Lady.
        Mr. Burton. I think you're probably correct. There were, I
    think, 14 people indicted and convicted, however, but you're
    right, there were some limitations on how far the investigation
    went.
        Anyhow, go ahead, Mr. Gershel. Did you have a chance to
    look at that?
        Mr. Gershel. Yes, sir, thank you.
        Mr. Burton. Did you get my question?
        Mr. Gershel. Sorry.
        Mr. Burton. Let me go through it again. That set of e-mails
    were produced to the committee by the White House last Friday.
    In his cover letter accompanying the production the Senior
    Associate Counsel to the President stated that these e-mails
    were reconstructed from backup tapes by the FBI working in
    conjunction with the Campaign Finance Task Force and the Office
    of Independent Counsel, is that correct?
        Mr. Gershel. Yes, that's correct.
        Mr. Burton. When did the White House provide the backup
    tapes for these e-mails to the FBI?
        Mr. Gershel. Sir, to answer that question, you would be
    asking me to comment on a pending matter that is before the
    grand jury at this time, and I cannot do that.
        Mr. Burton. You mean just knowing when they were produced,
    when the White House gave those backup tapes to the FBI, I
    mean, that's going to impinge on an investigation--a grand
    jury?
        Mr. Gershel. My response to that question would be
    commenting upon an open pending grand jury investigation and it
    would be inappropriate for me to answer that question.
        Mr. Burton. Well, I fail to see why that would be
    inappropriate because we're just asking the date that the FBI
    got those tapes from the White House. I mean, I don't know how
    that's relevant to a grand jury investigation, but we'll check
    and see if that's something that you should be required to
    answer, and we'll have you back up and ask you about that
    again.
        When did the FBI reconstruct the first e-mails, do you know
    that? And you can't comment on that either probably.
        Mr. Gershel. No. What I will answer for you, if it would be
    helpful to the committee, is to give you some general
    background on the process for the reconstruction, how this
    process came into being, and I'm happy to talk about that in a
    general sense. If that would be helpful to the committee's
    oversight functions, I'm willing to do that.
        Mr. Burton. That's fine and we appreciate that, but we need
    to have some timeframes, because we've been trying to get these
    e-mails for 3 years, as have the Justice Department and the
    independent counsels and our committee, and what we're trying
    to find out is when did the White House provide these backup
    tapes to the FBI, when did the FBI first reconstruct these e-
    mails, and we're trying to get a timeframe to see what the
    problem has been for 3 years.
        Mr. Gershel. Let me see if I can provide some helpful
    information to you, Mr. Chairman.
        Mr. Burton. All right.
        Mr. Gershel. The reconstruction process really is the
    result of a, for lack of a better description, a protocol that
    was entered into between the Justice Department, the White
    House and the Office of Independent Counsel. It was done as a
    way to try and expedite the investigation to look for ways to
    review and have access to unrecorded e-mails, which is really
    the focus of the campaign finance investigation. To that end,
    this protocol was entered into which allowed for the submission
    of the backup tapes. It then allowed the FBI through their
    technical experts to begin pulling e-mails off of those tapes.
    There is a process in place. This protocol was entered into in
    June of this year. The reconstruction effort began--first e-
    mails began being pulled off of the backup tapes in
    approximately August of this year.
        Mr. Burton. OK. That helps answers some of my questions. So
    it was in August of this year that they started pulling these
    tapes, the information off the backup tapes.
        Mr. Gershel. That's approximately correct, yes, sir.
        Mr. Burton. We were told--in February or March we were told
    that probably in 6 months we would start having a large number
    of these e-mails sent to the committee and the other relevant
    investigations. Now we're finding out that it was in August
    that we--that they started going through and getting
    information off the backup tapes and we've been told that we
    probably wouldn't get a great deal of e-mail information until
    after--until around Thanksgiving, which is well after the
    forthcoming election.
        Mr. Gershel. I'm just unclear as to who made those
    representations to you. As the committee may know, there have
    been technical issues associated with the reconstruction
    process that have been ongoing for some time now. It is through
    this protocol that we've been able, through the FBI expertise
    to actually begin pulling these e-mails off the backup tapes
    and reviewing them for relevancy to our investigation.
        Mr. Burton. Did the FBI use search terms, or teams, to
    search the backup tapes for relevant information?
        Mr. Gershel. Did the FBI use search terms?
        Mr. Burton. Teams--excuse me, I'm correct, did they use
    search terms? Oh, search terms, right, uh-huh.
        Mr. Gershel. Congressman, that would be a question that
    would be asking me to comment upon the scope and the nature and
    the specifics of this investigation, and I'm reluctant to do
    that.
        Mr. Burton. Were the backup tapes searched only for
    information relating to the campaign fundraising in the
    Lewinsky investigations or were they checked for other things?
        Mr. Gershel. That would be my same answer, asking me to
    comment upon an open matter.
        Mr. Burton. Were the tapes searched for information
    relating to the FALN, the terrorist organization, clemency that
    took place or the Babbitt investigation?
        Mr. Gershel. Congressman, same answer. I apologize. I'm not
    trying to be difficult with the chairman, but it is important
    to understand that I'm saying this because it is a grand jury
    matter. My ethical responsibilities prohibit me from commenting
    upon a pending matter, and it would just be wrong for me to do
    that.
        Mr. Burton. How does the Justice Department eliminate
    somebody from an investigation when there's an ongoing grand
    jury investigation taking place? I mean, anybody that is a
    potential suspect, until the grand jury investigation is
    completed and until all of the relevant information is given to
    them, how do they eliminate anybody as a possible suspect?
        Mr. Gershel. As a general proposition, I will try and
    answer the question.
        Mr. Burton. Yeah, as a general proposition.
        Mr. Gershel. There may be situations, for example, where
    there may be an ongoing grand jury investigation and there may
    be allegations that may involve only one small segment of that
    investigation. That may be a discreet, separate segment that
    will allow the investigators to review that part of the
    investigation, make some determinations, make some decisions,
    make some recommendations as to that part of the investigation
    without compromising the full investigation and allow us to
    make some decisions. For example, it is not unusual in my
    experience for that to happen, and individuals who may have
    begun in the investigation as perhaps a subject of an
    investigation, upon further investigation that may not be the
    case and they end up becoming cooperating witnesses to help us
    with the investigation.
        Mr. Burton. Let me just ask this question, and I will yield
    to my colleagues if they'd like because I don't think we're
    going to get answers to these, and you can maybe pursue some of
    these when you get to your questioning.
        We go back to the tape of this meeting in December 1995.
    Justice was asked by this committee to look at it several
    times. We've gone over this several times today. There is a
    question as to whether or not the Vice President made the
    statement that many believe he made about showing these tapes
    to Mr. Riady, who was a major contributor of illegal campaign
    contributions from Indonesia.
        How can the Justice Department excuse anybody when there's
    an ongoing grand jury investigation, when there's that kind of
    relevant evidence or possible evidence out there that you
    haven't looked at and our committee asked you several times to
    look at it and you did not even ask for it until yesterday? So
    all I'm saying is how can you eliminate someone who is a
    potential target of the investigation when that kind of
    information has not even been looked at by Justice?
        Mr. Gershel. Congressman, if you're asking me again why the
    letter that was sent, signed by me, as well as the letter
    signed by the Office of Independent Counsel to Mr. Barry's
    letter?
        Mr. Burton. I'm talking about the Vice President, and, Ms.
    Reno saying he wasn't going to be investigated.
        Mr. Gershel. Who wasn't going to be investigated?
        Mr. Burton. The Vice President, because that tape was not
    looked at by you. It was not analyzed by experts to see if that
    was exactly what was said, and if it was said, then it is
    important evidence that the grand jury ought to take a look at
    it and you have not looked at it even though we have requested
    you look at it three times.
        Mr. Gershel. Congressman, I believe we're looking at all
    relevant evidence, and again as I've indicated this afternoon,
    steps have been made, if they haven't already been done so, to
    request the tape from the committee. If you believe it is
    relevant evidence, it will be examined.
        Mr. Burton. Mr. Ford, we have votes on the floor. Do you
    want to recess while we go to the floor and vote or do you want
    to proceed now for another 5 minutes?
        Mr. Ford. I just want to set the record straight on the
    issue about the Vice President. You obviously cannot comment,
    Mr. Gershel, with regard to--and we appreciate you following
    the law, somebody in the room is--with regard to the Vice
    President. He still may be covered under some of the questions
    and some of the things that are going on with this grand jury.
    Ms. Reno has just indicated they're not going to appoint an
    independent counsel to look into matters.
        Is that--I think the American people, including this
    American, is lost in the train of questioning here. Again I
    think you have theories on the other side that for whatever
    reason the Justice Department has decided--after looking at the
    facts and the law decided not to pursue the course my friends
    on the other side would like you to pursue.
        So if you would just sort of clarify that for me because I
    think there's--the record is a little confused, and perhaps
    that's the purpose of this hearing, but if you wouldn't mind
    clarifying that for me and I think for the few Americans that
    may be watching this.
        Mr. Gershel. Congressman Ford, the Attorney General's
    decision with respect to the appointment of a special counsel
    is a matter of public record. She made public statements about
    that. As I've indicated, in the course of our investigation, if
    there's information that develops that we, the Campaign
    Financing Task Force or any other investigators, believe is
    relevant to that decision, I would not hesitate for a moment
    nor would anybody else feel any reluctance to speak with the
    Attorney General and advise her of that and make whatever
    decisions and recommendations are appropriate. We've never been
    prohibited from having that kind of access or having that kind
    of ability to share investigative information with the Attorney
    General, and I expect that to continue.
        Mr. Ford. Thank you, Mr. Gershel.
        Mr. Burton. Mr. Ford, if you would like, I don't know if
    you're going to come back after the vote, but we do have some
    more questions we want to ask. But the Chair will call a recess
    pending this vote and we'll be back as quickly as possible.
        [Recess.]
        Mr. Burton. We will reconvene. I apologize, Mr. Gershel,
    for being gone so long, but getting off that floor sometimes is
    very difficult. We will try to expedite on the rest of the
    hearing so you can get under way.
        Counsel is recognized.
        Mr. Wilson. It is almost goodnight, but good afternoon.
        Mr. Gershel. Good afternoon, Mr. Wilson.
        Mr. Wilson. Let me make sure I start my time so I don't go
    on for too many hours.
        Going back to the search term issue that we were talking
    about before, you were asked the question about what search
    terms were used that ultimately led to the production of
    documents to us last week. There is a little bit of a
    difficulty understanding why you can't provide to us the search
    terms that were used. For example, the committee has an
    interest in documents that were subpoenaed relating to pardon
    FALN terrorists. Unless we're sadly mistaken, we're not aware
    of a criminal investigation of the President's decision to
    pardon FALN terrorists. So there is no ongoing investigation.
    There is no grand jury process for that issue. So if you could
    try and explain to us so we can understand a little better why
    you can't provide any information about search terms.
        Mr. Gershel. I suppose the best way to answer the question
    would be to try to answer it in the abstract, if I might, and
    see if this is helpful to you. Without again indicating whether
    or not the e-mails that have been produced thus far pursuant to
    the protocol were done pursuant to a search term, I would
    indicate, though, that hypothetically if I were to provide you
    with search terms that were used as part of the reconstruction
    process, I think that it's a fair statement that the disclosure
    of search terms would, in fact, disclose the nature of the
    investigations. Search terms they use for a particular reason
    and a particular purpose, and the disclosure of those would, in
    fact, or could perhaps indicate the direction of the
    investigation.
        Mr. Wilson. And that's a fair point, but we know the
    searches have to be done. That's not a negotiatable aspect. The
    committee subpoenaed documents. There was a reservoir of
    documents that was never searched. At some point somebody
    somewhere is going to have to go back and search the documents
    for that which the committee asked for a year ago, 2 years ago,
    3 years ago. So what we're trying to do is get a sense of
    whether that process has started or not.
        Maybe it would be easy--maybe you could be in a position at
    some point to say it just hasn't started. Are you able to say
    that?
        Mr. Gershel. I'm not sure I follow the question. As you
    know, certainly the search of the backup tapes has obviously
    started by virtue of the fact that we now have, all of us, in
    front of us a package of e-mails. That's the fruits of the
    beginning of the process, which I indicated to the chairman
    began this summer. So that process is ongoing, and as we've
    indicated before, the focus of the Justice Department's
    investigation, our portion of the investigation, is to
    determine whether or not our previously issued subpoenas had
    been complied with, and whether or not there had been any
    obstruction of justice with respect to the nonproduction of any
    relevant e-mails. That's really been the focus of our
    investigation, and that's the process we've been going through.
        Mr. Wilson. Right. And maybe you misspoke there, but you
    said the focus of your investigation is to determine whether
    your subpoenas have been complied with. Now, we know one thing.
    You've referred a number of times to the Office of Independent
    Counsel. The Office of Independent Counsel has no jurisdiction
    over matters that we've looked into. So if the Office of
    Independent Counsel were to find a document that said we are
    purposefully obstructing the committee's investigation of the
    clemency issue, the Office of Independent Counsel is in no
    different position than anybody in this room. They can provide
    the information to somebody else, but they can't go out and
    take people before the grand jury and investigate that matter.
        Now, you just stated very clearly that your interest in the
    Campaign Financing Task Force investigation of the e-mail
    matter was determining whether your subpoenas were complied
    with. Who is trying to figure out whether our subpoenas were
    complied with?
        Mr. Gershel. Let me be clear. That is certainly a principal
    focus of our investigation, but in the course of the
    investigation, if it's determined that e-mails that were
    relevant to previously issued congressional subpoenas were not
    complied with and is evidence of potential criminality, those
    issues would be looked at. We understand as the Justice
    Department it may be our responsibility at the end of the day
    to look into that and be responsible for investigation and
    prosecution of those matters if that were to occur.
        Mr. Wilson. It doesn't sound like you started doing that.
    Now, we can't say that for a fact because you won't answer the
    question, but we've got two issues here. One, we don't know
    what search terms you're using, so for all we know, you'll
    ignore the congressional interest, and it's not just this
    committee, it's a number of committees. That's the first point.
        And the second point, we brought up a very legitimate
    question about manpower. This is not a small undertaking. We've
    had a number of staff working for 6 months trying to determine
    certain things, and it's our understanding--you can say that
    people come in and out of the investigation, but continuity is
    important, and full-time employees are important. We're under
    the understanding that one part-time person was working full
    time on the criminal e-mail investigation, and that person has
    left. And you are sitting here today not answering with any
    clarity that question, or maybe I should phrase it you're not
    putting that concern to rest. And----
        Mr. Gershel. All I can say, and I would hope that this
    would satisfy the concerns that you and the committee have, is
    that please don't assume because one attorney may have left the
    task force, who happened to have been a part-time attorney, who
    may have been assigned to the investigation, that because of
    that individual's departure, the investigation is not being
    worked thoroughly and aggressively and appropriately. It is
    simply not the case.
        Mr. Wilson. We understand that. We understand what you say,
    but then again those same words gloss over the fact that the
    Campaign Financing Task Force failed to ask the President a
    single question about foreign money for 3 years. The Campaign
    Financing Task Force failed to ask the Vice President questions
    about Hsi Lai Temple for a number of years.
        So it's all very well for you to sit here and say, we're
    doing our best job, and we're working to get something done on
    this issue, but what we're trying to figure out is if that's
    true or not.
        Now, who made the decision--we gave you the question in
    advance--who made the decision not to answer our question about
    how many employees are working full time on the e-mail matter?
        Mr. Gershel. Who made the decision?
        Mr. Wilson. Who made the decision not to answer this
    committee's question? Is it just you?
        Mr. Gershel. I wouldn't say it was a decision by one
    person. When the information, the letters, came in, it was
    evaluated. I was advised those issues that I could respond to,
    those which may be issues that we would not respond to. For
    example, the second letter has a host of questions that concern
    specifics of the e-mail investigation. That's an open matter.
        Mr. Wilson. Very well. We understand that, but this is very
    clear. We've got this GAO report. It talks about staffing
    levels. You attempted to set up a distinction here, but it
    sounds like you were instructed not to answer this question.
    Who instructed you not to answer this question?
        Mr. Gershel. It wasn't a specific person that I can recall
    that said, Mr. Wilson, do not answer that question. I was
    advised in the course of preparing for my hearing, my
    testimony, this afternoon this has been the practice, the
    longstanding practice, of the Department. To the extent I can
    provide the committee with aggregate numbers, total numbers,
    and the task force currently assigned--that are in the task
    force working on campaign investigation, I can do that.
        Mr. Burton. Mr. Gershel, if you would let me just say that
    this is something we really want an answer to. And I don't want
    to impede your ability to do your job by dragging you up here
    under subpoena, but we intend to find out if there really is a
    concerted effort by the Justice Department to look into the e-
    mail matter. We have been after this now for 3 years. We were
    told early in the year we would see some of this expedited, and
    we can't even find how many attorneys you have working on this
    thing over there. We've been told that there was one part-time
    attorney working on the e-mail thing, which is totally
    insufficient.
        You also started talking about Mr. Ray and his independent
    investigation, and that may cover part of it, but we're talking
    about the campaign finance scandal, the FALN, the Babbitt
    matter, a whole host of things that may be relevant to what
    we've been investigating up here, and we need to know how many
    people were working on the investigation.
        We're going to keep after this until we find out. And I'm
    not talking about how many worked for Mr. Ray or other
    independent counsels. I'm talking about the Justice Department
    and the task force itself. How many people did they have
    working on this investigation?
        Mr. Gershel. Mr. Chairman, as I believe I indicated in
    response to this line of questioning from Congressman Horn,
    that I indicated that I would go back to the Department of
    Justice. I will attempt to discuss this issue and see whether
    or not the information can be provided to you. I will ask you
    to accept that at face value. I assure you that we would
    respond back to you, but I'm just not prepared to do that
    today.
        Mr. Burton. Let me just say that I don't know whether a
    contempt of Congress citation would do anything at the Justice
    Department. We have one that is pending before the Congress
    right now. We are probably going to issue that contempt
    citation and take it to the floor, and it is probably going to
    pass. And if you don't answer this question, and if the Justice
    Department--this does not bear on any grand jury
    investigation--I will not hesitate to move a contempt citation
    and take it to the floor here at the end, because I think this
    is very important. We need to know whether or not the Justice
    Department was serious in getting the e-mail information to the
    relevant committees and the other independent counsels. We
    don't believe they were, and we just want to know.
        So I just want you to know we expect an answer to that
    question, and we will give you some time to do it, but if we
    don't--you know, I want you to know the consequences. And if
    this Justice Department does not move on a contempt citation,
    rest assured if we keep the majority and I'm chairman next
    time, we will bring it up next year.
        Mr. Wilson. Just to add a real-world component to this
    discussion about how many people you have working on the
    issue----
        Mr. Barr. Would the counsel yield?
        Mr. Wilson. Yes.
        Mr. Barr. Mr. Gershel, what is the thinking behind or the
    rationale behind not wanting to disclose those figures? That's
    something new to me. It doesn't have to do with, as the
    chairman said, the specifics of a grand jury investigation or
    improperly disclosed prosecutorial strategy or tactics. Do you
    see any reason why that information should not be made
    available to the Congress as the stewards of public resources
    and as the appropriators for the funds that are used by the
    Department of Justice to handle all investigations?
        Mr. Gershel. Mr. Barr, I understand the question. It
    certainly, as a general proposition, probably does not
    implicate grand jury secrecy rules. I accept that as a
    proposition ordinarily. I think one of the concerns may be
    perhaps that assuming for the moment that the question can be
    answered precisely, and earlier on in my testimony I tried to
    explain why it is difficult to pin down a specific number at a
    specific point in time, but putting that aside, a suggestion of
    a total number of agents or prosecutors asigned to a case may
    suggest an importance or lack of importance that may be
    inappropriate.
        Mr. Barr [presiding]. That's sort of precisely the point.
    We want to know whether there is importance or lack of
    importance attached to this, and the only way--one of the
    indices that we have for that is what resources is the
    Department devoting to the investigation. I would presume we
    would agree that that is relevant information for Congress to
    have. Would you agree with that proposition?
        Mr. Gershel. I have heard the chairman's message loud and
    clear. I will take that information back. I will do what I can
    to try to respond to the committee's question. That's really
    the best I can do under the circumstances at this time, except
    to assure you that we will respond back to this committee.
        Mr. Barr. Do you see any reason why Congress should not
    have that information?
        Mr. Gershel. Mr. Barr, I don't know. I don't have a
    longstanding history down here in Washington. I have no
    experience, frankly, testifying about----
        Mr. Barr. How about just a history of how our
    representative form of government works? How about based on
    that do you see any reason why Congress should not have that
    information?
        Mr. Gershel. I can't think of reasons off the top of my
    head. I can't answer that question either way. I am doing the
    best that I can.
        Mr. Wilson. I will move on to another subject, but just
    before I do, I want to put this in a real-world context because
    it is not just some academic concern for us. We interview many
    people, and one of the questions we ask is, have you ever been
    talked to by the Department of Justice either Campaign
    Financing Task Force or Office of Independent Counsel. The
    answer is frequently no. It is disturbingly no in many
    situations.
        Let's really get into a real-world situation here. There
    were some problems with representations prepared for Tony Barry
    by Department of Justice lawyers. A couple of weeks ago an
    assistant to the President said they were false. We submitted
    many months ago a referral pointing out that Mr. Barry's
    representations were false. They were prepared by Department of
    Justice lawyers. There doesn't seem to be an awful lot of
    realistic doubt about that matter. And you wrote a letter to
    Tony Barry, and you basically let him off the hook. You said
    he's not a target of the investigation. Now, aside from the
    fact that you couldn't even spell his name correctly, you had
    not talked to Mark Lindsay, who is the guy, the assistant to
    the President, who said his statement was false. And it strikes
    us as a little bit odd that you may not have enough people on
    the case to do the interviews. That's the first thing.
        But the second thing is it is the same frustration we feel
    with failure to ask pertinent questions about major campaign
    finance issues. If you wait 2 or 3 or 4 years, that doesn't
    seem to be an appropriate investigative tactic to take. Now,
    everybody's got their own process to follow, but here we're
    just trying to understand what yours is. So we will hopefully
    hold this hearing open, and we can have you come back, and we
    can ask that question at a different time.
        Mr. Gershel. Can I just make a brief response to that
    comment, please, Mr. Wilson?
        Mr. Wilson. Absolutely.
        Mr. Gershel. I just want to say two things. First of all,
    again, so we're clear, the nontarget letter to Mr. Barry was
    issued both by of the Campaign Financing Task Force and Office
    of Independent Counsel, No. 1. No. 2, as you certainly well
    know, a nontarget letter is not a letter of immunity, is not a
    promise of nonprosecution, and that it is what it is. I mean,
    it does not promise that if the situation changes or other
    evidence develops, that that label might, in fact, not change
    at some point in time. I'm not saying that's the case here with
    Mr. Barry, but, please, I want to be clear that he's not an
    immunized witness, and that designation was a joint designation
    by both the campaign task force and the Office of Independent
    Counsel.
        Mr. Wilson. We understand that, but if I were Mr. Barry's
    legal counsel, I would rather have a nontarget letter than an
    aggressive approach indicating that you might prosecute their
    client. So it cuts both ways.
        But I want to get to another subject that hasn't been
    addressed at all and that's--it's a rather complex one, but
    it's the issue of subpoenas that we have issued to entities
    that the Department of Justice seems to be blocking. Now, I've
    read your testimony and I understand what you say. I have a few
    questions about that. Within the last several months the
    committee has issued subpoenas to a number of agencies and
    entities calling for document requests and subpoenas served on
    them by the task force. Now it's obvious what we're doing.
    We're trying to find out what questions you've asked them. The
    first two subpoenas were directed to the White House and the
    Commerce Department and they were honored. There was no
    interference whatsoever by the Department of Justice. Why has
    the Department of Justice treated the subpoenas that we issued
    to the Commerce Department and the White House different than
    ones that we sent to the DNC and the State Department? Why the
    disparate treatment?
        Mr. Gershel. Perhaps the best way to answer it would be to
    indicate to you that as to the State Department and the
    Commerce Department as sister agencies to the Department of
    Justice, given the longstanding practice, it seemed appropriate
    not to obstruct this committee's investigation, not to obstruct
    in compliance with their subpoenas, but to be sure that
    information that was being accumulated, that is, information
    that was originated with the Department of Justice and that may
    have contained sensitive information, was treated
    appropriately. It is true the Commerce Department has released
    information. Frankly, we would have preferred that we would
    have received a phone call and would have had a chance to
    review that information. Since then, there has been some
    contact with the Commerce Department on some followup, as I
    understand it.
        As to the DNC, it is my understanding that they're not
    viewed as a government agency per se, and the White House chose
    to respond directly to the committee. But as to the agencies
    involving the State Department and the Commerce Department, we
    are in contact with them.
        Mr. Wilson. Now, if you had concerns about the response to
    our subpoena somehow impeding or impinging upon your
    investigation, why did you not come to us with those specific
    concerns? Let me put that in the context of when we interviewed
    Johnny Chung over a year ago. There were some very real
    concerns at the Department of Justice that Mr. Chung would
    provide information that would touch upon ongoing aspects of
    the campaign finance investigation, and the Department of
    Justice came to us and said, please do not go into these
    matters, and we did not. And to this day, even though we asked
    4 or 5 months ago, I believe, for a list of what we can go into
    now, and that list has been not provided to us, we operated in
    good faith and we negotiated with the Department of Justice and
    we did exactly what you said.
        Why not treat these subpoenas in precisely the same way?
    There are many, many, many issues that are asked about in the
    subpoenas that are not any product of an ongoing investigation
    or any part of an ongoing investigation.
        Mr. Gershel. I can't speak to the Johnny Chung matter. I
    have no knowledge of that. I'm not familiar with it. I was a
    nonparticipant in that, so I have no basis of comparison as to
    that matter. I can only speak to my understanding of the
    practices that concern subpoenas to third agencies; not to
    preclude, not to prevent, not to obstruct them from complying
    with those subpoenas by giving you, the committee, their own
    documents. The concern rests with documents that we may have
    provided to agencies as part of perhaps some request. That's
    the information that we're looking at. If you believe in future
    subpoenas that it would be helpful and productive for us to
    engage in this kind of dialog, I'm happy to do that, and I
    believe that others would be as well. I will take that back
    with me.
        Mr. Wilson. Well, what I believe is that we should have
    done that maybe 2 months ago instead of going through all of
    the process that we've gone through to get to a rather absurd
    response. The response that we've ultimately gotten to our
    subpoenas are pages that are completely blacked out, they're
    redacted, so we get nothing whatsoever, and I can't represent
    to you with certainty--well, I can represent to you with
    certainty on some of the issues there is nothing happening in
    the Department of Justice, as far as we can tell, that would
    impact an ongoing criminal investigation. In one case, you
    block out Liu Chaoying's name. In another case you don't redact
    Liu Chaoying's name.
        We don't understand, given that you allowed us to ask
    Johnny Chung questions, unrestricted questions about Liu
    Chaoying, how you can now take the position that if we know
    that you asked an agency about Liu Chaoying, that somehow
    impacts your ongoing investigation. Is there not a failure of
    intellectual consistency there?
        Mr. Gershel. The decision was made. The belief was that at
    least as to that matter, disclosing it would impact and would
    affect an ongoing investigation.
        Mr. Wilson. So it was OK for us to ask how about Liu
    Chaoying a year ago when we questioned Johnny Chung who
    actually had information about Liu Chaoying, but when we send a
    subpoena off to an agency that may not have any information
    about Liu Chaoying, we can't even know that the Department of
    Justice asked about Liu Chaoying. That is the position you're
    now taking.
        Mr. Gershel. No, Mr. Wilson, you're asking me to use as a
    benchmark an issue that I'm not familiar with, and that puts me
    in a difficult situation because I can't respond to your
    question in a way that's going to satisfy you. I don't know
    what happened a year ago. I'm trying to engage in this practice
    as honestly and as completely and as appropriately as I can
    under the circumstances. That's why this was done. I cannot
    take this situation and compare it a year ago to the Johnny
    Chung matter.
        Mr. Wilson. Fine, but I just told you what happened a year
    ago. A year ago, the Department of Justice allowed this
    committee unfettered questioning of one of the witnesses that
    you had used in the campaign finance investigation. They
    allowed us unfettered questioning of Johnny Chung. They allowed
    us to ask questions about Liu Chaoying. Now, all of the sudden,
    something's changed. Now, it would be one thing if somebody had
    come to us and said there is now new information and an ongoing
    investigation, but that doesn't appear to be the case. You just
    seem to want us to not have the information.
        Mr. Burton [presiding]. I think Representative Barr would
    like to ask a question.
        Mr. Barr. If I could, Mr. Chairman. This stack of e-mails,
    Mr. Gershel, are you familiar with them, the ones that came in
    to us I think on Friday?
        Mr. Gershel. Yes, sir.
        Mr. Barr. I had a couple of questions. I was just going
    through them here. There is one dated March 5, 1996 from Ron
    Klain, K-L-A-I-N. It's No. E-8762. Who is Mr. Ron Klain?
        Mr. Gershel. I don't recall at this time who he is,
    Congressman. I certainly know the name.
        Mr. Barr. Pardon?
        Mr. Gershel. I certainly know the name. I don't recall the
    specific position or title.
        Mr. Barr. Is he with the Office of the Vice President?
        Mr. Gershel. That may be correct but I'm not sure.
        Mr. Barr. Who is Elaine Kamarck, K-A-M-A-R-C-K?
        Mr. Gershel. I don't know.
        Mr. Barr. Pardon?
        Mr. Gershel. I don't know.
        Mr. Barr. Is she with the Office of the Vice President?
        Mr. Gershel. I don't know.
        Mr. Barr. Who is Mr. Glicken, G-L-I-C-K-E-N?
        Mr. Gershel. I recognize the name certainly, but I forget
    his exact position or relationship with--if any--with the Vice
    President's Office.
        Mr. Burton. Excuse me, would the gentleman yield? You don't
    know who Howard Glicken is, and you're conversant with the
    investigation into the e-mails of the task force and the
    campaign finance scandal and you don't know who Howard Glicken
    is?
        Mr. Gershel. I've indicated I recognize the name,
    Congressman, but I can't sit here and give you a description of
    him.
        Mr. Barr. Do you know him as a convicted felon?
        Mr. Gershel. I don't know that.
        Mr. Barr. Do you know him as somebody who pled guilty to
    Federal fundraising violations in July 1998?
        Mr. Gershel. I believe that's correct.
        Mr. Barr. Do you know him as somebody who facilitated a
    German national named Thomas Kramer in funneling some $20,000
    to the DNC?
        Mr. Gershel. I don't know that.
        Mr. Barr. Do you know why the Vice President, according to
    this e-mail, would be interested in what seems to be rigging an
    award for Mr. Glicken?
        Mr. Gershel. Congressman, I can't comment on that
    information. This is a pending matter.
        Mr. Barr. What aspect of this e-mail is pending?
        Mr. Gershel. These e-mails have been reconstructed as part
    of a process in the e-mail investigation. It's potential
    evidence in this case, and to comment on that would be
    inappropriate for me to do so.
        Mr. Barr. In other words, the subject matter of this e-mail
    is the subject of an ongoing criminal investigation.
        Mr. Gershel. I'm saying these e-mails are being evaluated
    and being reviewed, and to comment on those e-mails would be
    inappropriate.
        Mr. Barr. I would like to draw your attention to another e-
    mail, this one No. E-8862 dated April 23, 1996 from--at the top
    the name is Karen Skelton.
        Mr. Barr. Do you have that one?
        Mr. Gershel. Yes, sir, I do.
        Mr. Barr. Who is Karen Skelton?
        Mr. Gershel. Sir, again you're asking me to comment on
    names, people, their positions, perhaps their relationships.
    That would be inappropriate for me to do at this time.
        Mr. Barr. No, I'm not. This is ridiculous. Who is Karen
    Skelton? I'm not asking you to tell me whether or not she's
    under investigation. I'm not asking you to tell me the details
    of why she might be under investigation. I'm asking you who she
    is. If you don't know who she is, then just say so. Who is she?
        Mr. Gershel. I believe she's an individual associated in
    some capacity with the Office of the Vice President.
        Mr. Barr. That's my understanding as well. Who is Ellen
    Ochs, O-C-H-S?
        Mr. Gershel. I don't know.
        Mr. Barr. Is she associated with the Office of the Vice
    President as well?
        Mr. Gershel. I don't know.
        Mr. Barr. Would it surprise you to learn that she is?
        Mr. Gershel. I wouldn't be surprised either way.
        Mr. Barr. OK. This particular e-mail dated April 23, 1996
    poses the question to Ellen Ochs from Karen Skelton, who you
    have admitted is in the office or was in the Office of the Vice
    President, ``These are FR coffees, right?'' FR Stands for
    fundraisers, correct?
        Mr. Gershel. I don't know what it stands for.
        Mr. Barr. What do you think it stands for?
        Mr. Gershel. Sir, I don't know what it stands for.
        Mr. Barr. You have no idea what it stands for?
        Mr. Gershel. Perhaps it could stand for that, I don't know.
    It would be speculative on my part. And again now you're asking
    me to comment on information that is part of the investigation,
    and with all due respect I'm going to decline to do so.
        Mr. Barr. Has anybody, you or anybody else, made any
    determination as to what FR stands for in the context of these
    e-mails?
        Mr. Gershel. You're asking me a question again,
    Congressman, that is an open matter and I cannot comment on
    that.
        Mr. Barr. You won't even tell us whether you all have even
    conducted the most fundamental inquiries even to determine what
    the terms are that are referenced in the e-mails that you all
    have sent up to us, what those terms stand for or mean?
        Mr. Gershel. No, sir. I didn't say that. If I did, I think
    you misunderstood me. What I'm saying is it would be
    inappropriate for me to comment to you and try to suggest to
    you what the investigation may have learned the meaning of FR.
    You've asked me to speculate, and what I'm suggesting with all
    due respect is that to do that, you're asking me now
    substantive questions about the investigation.
        Mr. Barr. No. The first question I asked was--the second
    question, the specific one on the table before you right now
    is: Has anybody made any sort of inquiry or investigation in
    order to determine what FR means or what it refers to?
        Mr. Gershel. Sir, I'm not going to comment on that.
        Mr. Barr. Would it be as a general investigative matter, an
    important investigative tool, if presented with written
    evidence or electronic evidence that contains terms or
    acronyms, to determine what those terms or acronyms mean?
        Mr. Gershel. As a general rule, aside from this, if we
    receive documents in the course of the investigation that
    contain terms or abbreviations or acronyms or things that are
    not readily apparent, that certainly would be relevant, it
    would be important to ascertain from the appropriate people the
    meaning of those terms.
        Mr. Barr. Are you conducting an investigation of these e-
    mails?
        Mr. Gershel. Yes, sir, I have indicated there is an e-mail
    investigation.
        Mr. Barr. So it would be a logical conclusion on our part
    that you all are looking into what the terms mean.
        Mr. Gershel. Specifically, sir, again----
        Mr. Barr. I don't understand this, why you all are fighting
    this, unless you are trying to hide something.
        Mr. Gershel. Congressman, I am not trying to hide the ball
    from you. What I'm trying to do is I'm trying to balance the
    position I find myself in this afternoon, a position where
    there is frustration obviously on your part. I understand that,
    because you are not satisfied with the responses you've gotten
    perhaps from me or from others at the Justice Department.
        I'm also dealing with the tensions that I have and
    responsibilities I have ethically and professionally not to, as
    you know, certainly, to disclose information that may impact or
    disclose investigation, because it would be a violation of
    rules of ethics that I am bound by, that I'm bound by not only
    the statewide practice but under the McDade legislation passed
    by this Congress. I have to be very mindful of that also.
        Mr. Burton. Our time has expired on this side. We will come
    back for further questioning. You are recognized for 30
    minutes.
        Ms. Amerling. Thank you. I am Kristin Amerling, minority
    counsel. I would like to ask a few questions to clarify a
    couple of issues that have come up during today's hearing.
        First, Mr. Gershel, Chairman Burton has suggested
    repeatedly that the Campaign Finance Task Force never reviewed
    the videotape of the December 15 coffee. I may have misheard,
    but my understanding is that you simply said you can't comment
    on whether task force investigators have reviewed the tape. Mr.
    Gershel, would you care to clear this up for the record?
        Mr. Gershel. I guess what I would say, without specifically
    commenting upon whether or not we reviewed the tape, is to
    answer your question by saying, please don't assume by my
    answers earlier this afternoon and by previous answers by other
    officials from the Justice Department that the videotape has or
    has not been looked at.
        Ms. Amerling. I would like to turn to the issue of the
    scope of the Office of Independent Counsel's e-mails
    investigation. Earlier today, Chairman Burton appeared
    interested in trying to establish that the independent counsel
    is conducting a narrow investigation. I'd like to explore this
    issue a little further with you. I understand that the Office
    of Independent Counsel is focused on examining the e-mail
    glitches as they relate to productions to the independent
    counsel. Is that accurate?
        Mr. Gershel. That's correct.
        Ms. Amerling. If that is the case, it's hard to imagine
    that assuming the independent counsel is doing a thorough job,
    there are major issues concerning the e-mails' glitch that the
    independent counsel is not looking at. The main issues this
    committee has been examining are whether Northrop Grumman
    contract employees were threatened to keep quiet about the
    discovery of the e-mail glitches; whether White House counsel
    intentionally concealed e-mail glitches from investigators; and
    whether e-mails relevant to ongoing investigations, including
    e-mails relating to Monica Lewinsky, remain unreviewed. All of
    these issues would be relevant to the independent counsel's
    inquiry into events surrounding e-mail glitches that affected
    production of documents to the independent counsel. The
    independent counsel would have certainly requested e-mails
    relating to Monica Lewinsky. The independent counsel therefore,
    just like this committee, would be concerned about whether
    employees were inappropriately threatened if they didn't remain
    quiet about the glitches; whether White House counsel covered
    up the problems; and whether outstanding relevant documents
    remain unproduced. Mr. Gershel, would you agree with that?
        Mr. Gershel. Yes.
        Ms. Amerling. Thank you. I don't have any further
    questions.
        Mr. Burton. I know that you said that you neither admit to
    seeing the tape that we talked to you about, the December 15,
    1995 tape, but we know since 1997 that you haven't seen that
    tape because the FBI had it and we had it sent to us. So in the
    last 3 years we know you haven't reviewed it, and you just
    asked for it yesterday after we requested that you look at it
    three different times. So I think that needs to be in the
    record. I know you haven't looked at it, because you haven't
    had it.
        Ms. Amerling. I don't have further questions. Thank you.
        Mr. Burton. Do you have further questions?
        Mr. Wilson. I do.
        Mr. Burton. Without objection. He has a few more questions,
    so since there's no other Members, there's no objection, we
    will allow the counsel; and if you have more questions, we will
    give you some more time as well.
        Mr. Wilson. If I could, I wanted to followup on the last
    question because there was some misunderstanding as to what
    precisely you answered in response to counsel's question. Do
    you remember what her question was? Are you able to
    characterize it for us?
        Mr. Gershel. I believe the question had to do with the
    scope of the independent counsel's investigation.
        Mr. Wilson. I thought--I didn't hear all of it, but it
    sounded like the question was that the scope of the independent
    counsel's investigation covered all of the things that this
    committee is interested in in the e-mail investigation. Is that
    a fair characterization?
        Mr. Gershel. Mr. Wilson, again, no disrespect and not
    trying to be cute with you in my answer, the scope and the
    direction and the nature of the independent counsel's
    investigation is really best answered by the independent
    counsel, not by me. I'm not in the best position to evaluate
    what their investigation is. We're working a cooperative
    investigation. We tend to, as we've previously testified to,
    interview many of the same witnesses, look for the same kinds
    of documents. But the question regarding the scope of their
    investigation is really a question that they're better capable
    of answering than I am.
        Mr. Burton. Let me interrupt. There have been occasions
    when we've had an opportunity to talk to Mr. Starr, and
    subsequently to Mr. Ray. And the scope of their investigation
    has been brought up a couple of times during the discussions
    that we've had with them, because we've had an ongoing
    investigation. And it's pretty clear to me what the scope of
    his investigation is and it does not include the campaign
    finance scandal or things related to that. It pertains to the
    Whitewater and the Lewinsky matter. And I think he's pretty
    much stated that publicly and in conferences with Members of
    the Congress, without getting into the details.
        And so I think that needs to be clarified very clearly. The
    scope of his powers in investigation are limited to the
    Lewinsky and the Whitewater investigations. He has not gotten
    any authority that I know of from the Attorney General or the
    court to expand that investigation beyond that. And so what
    we're talking about is the campaign finance investigation, your
    task force, and whether or not the Justice Department is
    aggressively pursuing justice in this matter.
        Mr. Wilson. I just want to followup on that. You just
    stated you're not in the best position to discuss the scope of
    the Office of the Independent Counsel's jurisdiction. But when
    you were asked a direct question about that by minority
    counsel, you gave an opinion. It seemed like it was a
    misrepresentation of their scope. They have a statutory
    limitation in the scope. We know what it is.
        Mr. Gershel. I expressed an opinion. I believe that to be
    accurate. But again you're trying to have me answer with
    precision the scope of their investigation, the areas of
    inquiry. And I cannot do that. I'm uncomfortable doing that. I
    don't know the precise answer to that question. I believe the
    way the question was presented to me, I tried to answer to the
    best of my understanding, and I would answer it the same way
    again. But if there's some doubt about the accuracy of my
    answer, please, you should address those questions to the
    Office of Independent Counsel, Mr. Wilson.
        Mr. Wilson. Well, no. Actually we need to address these
    questions to you, because you're making representations that go
    out to people and try to communicate something to people, and
    they don't appear to be entirely accurate. What you're trying
    to do, it seems, is cloak the investigation. You're trying to
    use the Office of the Independent Counsel to confer some kind
    of legitimacy to the Justice Department investigation.
        Let me ask you a very specific question. Can the Office of
    Independent Counsel address any matters that pertain to the
    decision by Secretary Babbitt to deny a gaming permit to a
    Hudson, WI dog track?
        Mr. Gershel. I don't know the answer to your question. I'm
    not familiar with the jurisdiction of the independent counsel.
        Mr. Wilson. Fair enough. When this all started back in
    March, we made a very specific request for special counsel to
    be appointed. We pointed out that we thought it may not even be
    legally appropriate for there to be a joint investigation
    between the Department of Justice and the Office of Independent
    Counsel. The Department of Justice communicated to us that they
    thought it was because they had looked at the law and fully
    understood the jurisdictional issues here.
        Now, you are the main man in terms of this investigation,
    and you're coming here today and you're telling us you really
    don't have a clue as to what the jurisdictional issues are with
    DOJ and the Office of Independent Counsel. And it seems to us
    that you're probably the one person that should be able to
    clearly say, we can do certain things, they can do certain
    things, and they can't do what we can do, and we can't do what
    they can do. I mean, it seems like you should be the one person
    to explain that to us. Who from the Department of Justice would
    be able to do that?
        Mr. Gershel. I'm not sure. I would have to--I'd have to go
    back and determine that for you. I'm doing the best I can to
    answer your question regarding the jurisdiction of the
    independent counsel.
        Mr. Wilson. OK. Fair enough. Just one bit of followup on a
    line of questioning we were going down a moment ago. We were
    talking about the committee's subpoenas to obtain documents
    from the State Department, the Commerce Department, the White
    House.
        We also subpoenaed the DNC. We asked the DNC for subpoenas
    served upon it by the task force. Now, despite the fact that
    the subpoena was served over 6 weeks ago, the DNC has failed to
    comply because the Department of Justice has prevented it from
    doing so. This was communicated to us today. The DNC, however,
    is either a witness or a target of the Department in this
    investigation.
        Now I am going to read some words that your immediate
    superior, Assistant Attorney General Robinson, spoke at our
    last hearing. He testified under oath,

        Although a prosecutor may prefer that a witness not
    disclose information about a pending case, the government does
    not have any right to dictate who a witness can or cannot talk
    to. Witnesses do not belong to either side of a matter. As a
    matter of due process and prosecutorial ethics, the government
    cannot threaten or intimidate a witness for the purpose of
    preventing a witness from talking to a subject or a target of
    investigation or from exercising their first amendment rights.

        Now, isn't that what the Department of Justice is doing now
    in terms of preventing the DNC from complying with the
    congressional subpoena?
        Mr. Gershel. Absolutely not. The DNC has never been told
    not to comply with this committee's subpoena. To the contrary,
    it's not my understanding. I have not had contact with them.
    It's my understanding they were told to fully comply with the
    subpoena. Even as to our dialog in our discussions with the
    State Department, we have never said, do not comply with the
    subpoena. We simply asked for the courtesy of reviewing the
    information, our documentation, as accumulated before it's
    released.
        We have never suggested that anyone should not comply with
    subpoenas. I recognize the importance and the significance of
    subpoenas. I issue subpoenas. I would like them complied with.
    You issue subpoenas, you want them complied with. What I'm
    trying to explain here is the process by reaching that control.
    But the DNC has never been told not to comply with your
    subpoena, and I state that categorically right now.
        Mr. Wilson. OK. Well, there is confusion coming from them
    to us, and I understand that you have no knowledge of that
    necessarily. So obviously you've been about as unambiguous as
    you can possibly be. The DNC should comply with our subpoena.
    We will expect that. We will ask them to do that when we leave
    the hearing.
        Mr. Burton. Would you be willing, Mr. Gershel, to give us a
    letter to the effect that you urge compliance with our
    subpoenas by the DNC; that there's no objection from the
    Justice Department that there be a compliance. I'm not sure
    that should be necessary, but I want to make sure that they
    know over at the DNC, or the RNC for that matter, if we're
    asking for something, that the Justice Department fully expects
    them to comply with subpoenas that are lawfully issued by the
    Congress.
        Mr. Gershel. Chairman, may I have 1 minute to confer with
    my peers, please?
        Mr. Burton. Sure.
        Mr. Gershel. Thank you.
        [Discussion off the record.]
        Mr. Gershel. Mr. Chairman, I thank you. We've conferred and
    we will prepare a letter that I think will satisfy this
    committee.
        Mr. Burton. Thank you very much.
        Mr. Wilson. OK. At this time I will wrap it up. The last
    couple of questions. We got into this a little earlier. The
    Attorney General made a very clear statement on August 23rd.
    She said, ``I have concluded there is no reasonable possibility
    that the further investigation could develop evidence that
    would support the filing of charges for making a willful false
    statement.''
        On Friday we got a new stack of e-mails. Can you tell us
    one way or another whether the Attorney General had all the e-
    mails we got last week when she made her pronouncement on
    August 23?
        Mr. Gershel. Mr. Wilson, I can't comment specifically on
    what she had or didn't have in front of her. What I can tell
    you is what I believe I testified to earlier this afternoon;
    that in the course of this investigation as e-mails are
    reconstructed from the backup tapes, if there's information
    that we believe is relevant to a reevaluation or
    reconsideration of that decision, we would not be hesitant to
    bring that information to her information. But specifically
    what she had in front of her when that decision was made, I
    can't respond to that because I'm not in a position to know.
        Mr. Wilson. Fair enough. Let me provide some information to
    take to her attention. It appears that Karen Skelton, the
    author of some of the e-mails we got, the person who talks
    about the FR, the fundraisings, it appears that she was the
    Vice President's political director, one of his most senior
    staff.
        We got a letter from the White House today, and they say to
    the best of their knowledge Karen Skelton has never been
    interviewed. Now, we have also have a list of the 302s that the
    Department of Justice has compiled. Karen Skelton's name is not
    on that. It seems to me that if you were making a determination
    of the veracity or lack thereof of statements by an individual,
    you would talk to the person who was there, one of their senior
    political advisors and the author of documents that are of
    extraordinary probative importance to this matter. So I mean, I
    guess we can provide to you now the name of Karen Skelton. Can
    you tell us now, has Karen Skelton ever been interviewed by the
    task force?
        Mr. Gershel. I can't comment on that.
        Mr. Wilson. There was a fair indication earlier--we asked
    if you knew who she was, and you'd never heard of her.
        Mr. Gershel. It would be inappropriate for me to comment at
    this point in time whether or not she has been interviewed or
    will be interviewed. I appreciate the points you've made. I
    will take that under consideration with respect to the
    investigation, the importance of her.
        Mr. Wilson. I appreciate your points, but earlier you said
    you'd never even heard of her.
        Mr. Gershel. I didn't say that. If I did, I misspoke.
        Mr. Wilson. Well, Mr. Barr asked you if you knew who she
    was and you said no.
        Mr. Gershel. I don't believe that was my answer.
        Mr. Wilson. Those are all my questions.
        Mr. Burton. Does the minority have any further questions?
        I want to make sure we're clear on that for the record. Did
    you say that you knew that she did work for the Vice President,
    the lady in question?
        Mr. Gershel. Mr. Chairman, it's my recollection, I believe
    my answer was that I believe she worked for the Vice President,
    was associated with the Office of Vice President. I believe
    that was my answer.
        Mr. Burton. We'll check the record. But if the statement by
    majority counsel was not accurate on that, we will correct that
    for the record. But we will check the record and go back on
    that.
        Mr. Wilson. And if I did misspeak, I do apologize for that.
        Mr. Gershel. Thank you.
        Mr. Burton. Let's say I know, Mr. Gershel, we're winding
    this thing up now, I know you and the people at the Justice
    Department look at this committee, and probably the chairman in
    particular, with a great deal of consternation, and I
    understand that. I want you to know that we really just want to
    get the facts out to the American people and bring those people
    who break the law to justice.
        We have had the opinion, hopefully I'm wrong, but I've been
    of the opinion that the Justice Department has not been as
    diligent as they should be in pursuing some people because of
    their position in this government and bringing them to justice.
    I hope that I'm incorrect. But we'll continue to pursue this,
    and hopefully we can work together to reach some conclusions
    instead of being in an adversarial situation. I don't like that
    anymore than you guys do.
        Mr. Gershel. Mr. Chairman, I think our goals are probably
    one and the same: the achievement of justice. And I should
    indicate that I am a career prosecutor. I'm not a political
    appointee. I do the job the best way I can, as thoroughly as I
    can without regards to who it is that we're looking at. And I
    just needed to say that.
        Mr. Burton. OK. Thank you very much. We will be back in
    touch with you. We stand adjourned.
        [Whereupon, at 5:50 p.m., the committee was adjourned.]
        [The prepared statement of Hon. Helen Chenoweth-Hage and
    the information referred to follow:]

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