[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 30 (Thursday, March 17, 1994)]
[Senate]
[Page S]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: March 17, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
                           WHITEWATER-MADISON

  Mr. DOLE. Madam President, I am not going to send the amendment to 
the desk, because I have already discussed it with the majority leader, 
and we do not surprise each other. That is how the leaders are able to 
work together.
  But this amendment that I will offer at an appropriate time, unless 
there is some resolution of it, will address congressional hearings in 
the so-called Whitewater-Madison controversy.
  I think it is important that we understand that we do have a 
responsibility in Congress for oversight on a whole host of things. If 
we do not want that responsibility, we could offer an amendment to 
repeal all the oversight obligations Congress has, because certainly we 
have one here. In fact, there are about five different Senate 
committees, and I do not know how many House committees, which have 
jurisdiction over matters that have been alleged in the so-called 
Whitewater-Madison controversy. It is my hope that we can, at the 
appropriate time, address this concern.
  The American people, I believe, want the facts. I can speak not with 
any great authority, but I was the chairman of the Republican Party 
when Watergate started. I know how the White House viewed it as a 
little, third-rate burglary. You were not supposed to talk about it 
inside the White House. You were not supposed to say anything. You were 
not supposed to disagree with anybody. It was going to be a little 
story that was going to go away.
  Well, the story did not go away and Watergate caused great harm, not 
only to a lot of people who were directly involved, but a lot of people 
who had no involvement suffered from it, and I think many across the 
country suffered from it.
  I am not trying to make comparisons. I am just saying that I know 
what sort of a bunker mentality any White House will adopt if anybody 
says anything is going wrong or anybody suggests there ought to be 
hearings. But Congress is an institution itself and we do have some 
responsibility.
  It seems to me that what I am suggesting in my resolution is not that 
radical. I am suggesting that I get together with Senator Mitchell and 
that we structure, the two leaders structure, a forum and a way to have 
these hearings so we do not have four or five committees out here 
competing with one another.
  I am not suggesting a select committee. I think there are ways we can 
do it without that. But I do think it is important, and I know that we 
have to do this--we do not have to do it, but I know there is a desire 
to do it so as to not interfere with the investigation of Robert Fiske, 
the special counsel.
  But, having said that, he has his responsibility and we have our 
responsibility. I think our responsibility is probably greater than 
his, because we are the Congress of the United States.
  I wanted to display some charts here, if I could, to indicate that 
Congress has not been reluctant over the past 12 years to have 
hearings.
  The first chart I think would make that point. This happened between 
1981 and 1992, when we had Republican Presidents. Republicans occupied 
the White House and the Democrats controlled the Congress. Maybe that 
is the reason that we had so many hearings during those times. There 
were really more than this. I think we have listed about 23.
  We went into a lot of different things. As you can see from this 
list, a lot of people were involved and probably in nearly every case 
there should have been hearings. I am not suggesting there should not 
have been. But, in some cases there should not have been.
  But there were a lot of congressional investigations from 1981, 1982, 
all the way through 1992. Some of those were even done when the 
Republicans controlled the Senate. When we were in the majority, we had 
our own investigations of a Republican administration.
  Anybody who says, ``Well, this is just a partisan issue,'' that was 
not the case. We started an investigation in Iran-Contra. And, from 
1981 to 1986, we had three other investigations that were led by the 
GOP Senate, where we had a majority.
  So I want to put to rest any thought that, ``Well, it is just the 
Republicans out there calling for hearings; politics as usual.''
  At least we thought we were being responsible when we investigated 
some of these charges. And they were charges leveled by Democrats and 
by the media. We followed up on those charges. I think we carried out 
our responsibilities.
  And I would say to those who say, ``We can't do this now because we 
have a special counsel,'' we have had hearings and concurrent 
investigations. We had the EPA-Superfund and the Burford matter, 
Michael Deaver and Iran-Contra. We had independent counsels and the 
Congress working at the same time.
  We can hide behind Mr. Fiske. Anybody who wants to hide behind Mr. 
Fiske and say it is politics and say Republicans are trying to hold up 
the country here, we did not do anything. Maybe we did in the past. We 
did not do anything in this. We did not create anything. We did not 
borrow any money. We did not build anything. We did not do anything.
  I might say, if we had not had a congressional hearing in the Banking 
Committee and if the Senator from New York had not asked Mr. Altman the 
question about meetings, we would not know today how many secret 
meetings were held between Treasury officials and people in the White 
House.
  I also want to make the point when we passed the RTC law, the 
Democratic Congress insisted that we make it independent. They did not 
want the Treasury dominating the RTC. They did not want any Treasury 
influence in the Resolution Trust Corporation. So they made it very 
clear.
  I want to give you the facts on what happened in the legislation.
  And that is why I think it is strange that Roger Altman, who I know 
is a close friend of Al Hunt, who writes these crazy pieces in the Wall 
Street Journal from time to time--they both are sort of elitists, so 
they understand each other; both liberals, so they understand each 
other.
  But, he, in effect, has been the head of the RTC for the past 11 
months. He is finally going to recuse himself and the general counsel, 
who has also been working at the RTC. Even though Congress put up this 
firewall, the Democratic Congress insisted there be a firewall between 
any Treasury activity and the RTC.
  So, it just seems to me that there are a lot of reasons that Congress 
ought to get ready. We know we are not going to have a hearing this 
week or next week. Then there is the Easter recess for a couple weeks. 
But we ought to start putting it together now so when we come back from 
the Easter recess we would be in a position to start our hearings 
without interfering with Mr. Fiske.
  In fact, our legislation clearly states there will be no grants of 
immunity, so you cannot make the argument, ``Oh, we cannot do this, 
somebody might be granted immunity.'' We are not going to grant 
immunity. If they want to take the fifth amendment, they have that 
right. We are not going to grant it. At least that is what we suggest. 
If somebody has a different view, that is something else.
  So I just say I think this is an important issue. Sooner or later, as 
Congressman Lee Hamilton, a respected House Member, Democrat, chairman 
of the Foreign Relations Committee, said, there are going to be 
hearings. Sooner or later--I think the term is ``inevitable,'' I think 
used by the chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, Dan Rostenkowski, 
who just won a big primary out in the Chicago area, a Democrat--sooner 
or later it is going to happen. The American people, in a Newsweek poll 
this week, by a margin of 52 to 40, said we ought to have public 
hearings. That is going to grow. It is not going to be 52-40; it is 
going to be 60-30 and then continue to go up just as Watergate did. It 
started off as a third-rate burglary and ended up as--everybody knows 
how it ended up.
  But I want to go back to the independence between the RTC and 
Treasury. When it first submitted the thrift bailout legislation in 
1989, the Bush administration specifically proposed that the oversight 
board, chaired by the Secretary of the Treasury, would maintain the 
power to intervene in any action or determination by the RTC. That is 
what the Bush administration proposed, which would include any legal 
action taken by the RTC in specific cases. The oversight board was 
intended to be the White House administration mechanism for controlling 
the RTC. There is no doubt about it. That is the way it was drafted.
  The Democratic-controlled Congress changed the legislation by the 
time it was enacted in August 1989, to ensure that the RTC was free 
from interference from the administration oversight board with respect 
to case-specific matters involving individual failed thrifts, which 
obviously included lawsuits. I will put the rest of this information 
in, giving the citations and precisely what happened.
  I ask unanimous consent that a document be printed in the Record.
  There being no objection, the document was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

       1. When it first submitted the thrift bailout legislation 
     in 1989, the Bush Administration specifically proposed that 
     the Oversight Board, chaired by the Secretary of the 
     Treasury, would maintain the power to intervene in any action 
     or determination by the RTC--which would include any legal 
     action taken by the RTC in specific cases. See S. 413, 101st 
     Cong., pp. 141-42:
       ``(5) Duties.--The Oversight Board shall review and have 
     overall responsibility over the work, progress, management 
     and activities of the Resolution Trust Corporation and may 
     disapprove, in its discretion, any and all regulations, 
     policies, procedures, guidelines, statements, contracts, and 
     other actions of the Resolution Trust Corporation * * *.''
       See also H.R. 1278, 101st Cong., pp. 141-42 (the House 
     version of the Bush Administration bill, which was also 
     introduced by request); and testimony of Treasury Secretary 
     Brady, explaining the Administration's bill, at S. Hrg. 101-
     127, Pt. 2, pg. 23 (``An Oversight Board, consisting of the 
     Secretary of the Treasury, the Chairman of the Federal 
     Reserve Board, and the Attorney General, will monitor all RTC 
     activities to ensure the most effective use of both private 
     and public financial resources.'' (Emphasis added.) The 
     Oversight Board was intended to be the White House and 
     Administration mechanism for controlling the RTC.
       2. But the Democrat-controlled Congress changed the 
     legislation by the time it was enacted in August of 1989 to 
     ensure that the RTC was free from interference from the 
     Administration's Oversight Board with respect to case-
     specific matters involving individual failed thrifts--which 
     would obviously include individual lawsuits. See 101st Cong., 
     lst Sess., Rep. 101-222, Conf. Rep. to accompany H.R. 1278, 
     at pp. 194-96, Sec. 501(a), adding new section 21A(a) to the 
     Federal Home Loan Bank Act:
       ``(6) Oversight board duties and authorities.--The 
     Oversight Board shall have the following duties and 
     authorities with respect to the [RTC]: * * *
       ``(C) To review all rules, regulations, principles, 
     procedures, and guidelines that may be adopted or announced 
     by the [RTC] * * * [However, the] provisions of this 
     subparagraph shall not apply to * * * determinations or 
     actions described in paragraph (8) of this subsection. * * *
       ``(8) Limitation on authority.--
       ``(A) In general.--The [RTC] shall have the authority, 
     without any prior review, approval, or disapproval by the 
     Oversight Board, to make such determinations and take such 
     actions as it deems appropriate with respect to case specific 
     matters
       ``(i) involving individual case resolutions * * *.''
       See also id., pp. 409-10, ``Joint Explanatory Statement of 
     the Committee of Conference,'' which explains provisions in 
     the Conference Report: ``The Oversight Board will review and 
     have overall responsibility for the RTC's activities. The 
     Oversight Board will not, however, be involved in or 
     responsible for case specific matters involving individual 
     institutions * * * of the RTC.''

  Mr. DOLE. It was because of that this happened.

       The oversight board will not, however, be involved and 
     responsible for the case-specific matters involving 
     individual investigations of the RTC.

  So here we have it. It is supposed to be separate, supposed to be 
independent.
  It is not independent. It has not been separate. It has been operated 
by Roger Altman and Jean Hanson, I think the general counsel. Its 
members have been wielding great influence and also visiting with White 
House individuals. We do not know who else they have been visiting with 
in the past 12 months. And it seems to me some of those questions have 
to be answered. If Congress is too reluctant--I want to put that first 
chart back up here--to now have investigations, I can go back and quote 
various of my colleagues on the other side who were so eager to have 
investigations when Republicans were in the White House, who now think 
it would be a travesty to do anything like that. I assume they can find 
some quotes on the other side.
  I just suggest, if we cannot reach some agreement, then on every bill 
we are going to offer an amendment to have hearings. If it is tabled, 
if it is voted down, that is fine. That is the way the system works. 
But we are going to give our colleagues on both sides of the aisle--
this is where, in polls, you ask the American people to express 
themselves about whether or not there should be congressional hearings.
  We cannot continue--no one can continue to hide behind the special 
counsel, Mr. Fiske. As far as I know, Mr. Fiske has his 
responsibilities. As far as I know, we have ours. I said, when Mr. 
Fiske was appointed, there will be no second-guessing, no second-
guessing of Mr. Fiske. I note the Senator from Arkansas on the floor. I 
watched him on Larry King the other night indicating I had said, ``Oh, 
that is all we need is a special counsel.''
  Keep in mind, my Democratic colleagues did not want a special 
counsel. They did not want anything. ``It is not necessary, not 
necessary.'' It was only after about nine Democratic Senators said it 
was necessary that it became necessary.
  So we have to be a little consistent around this place. I know it is 
hard. But when they got enough pressure from Democrats, they could not 
say it was Democratic politics--it was Republican politics, but nine 
Democratic Senators said, ``Wait a minute. We need a special counsel. 
We need to investigate this.'' I said when Mr. Fiske was appointed 
there would be no second-guessing of Mr. Fiske, and I have not second-
guessed Mr. Fiske, even though the Wall Street Journal has, and other 
publications have second-guessed Mr. Fiske. But I have not second-
guessed Mr. Fiske. The point may come. Depending on what happens, that 
may happen.
  So we are not second-guessing Mr. Fiske. We are saying either 
Congress has some responsibility for oversight, and there are about 
five different committees involved here, or we do not have any 
responsibility for oversight. I know the Democrats have 56 votes and I 
know we have 44, so it does not take any rocket scientist--if it is 
politics, they will table our, I think, very reasonable amendment. I 
will not send it to the desk before I visit with the distinguished 
majority leader because I understand they may have a counterproposal 
which may be satisfactory.
  But it is time Congress either vote up or down, we are going to have 
hearings or we are not going to have hearings. The Senator from 
Arkansas said, ``Oh, they have made 29 speeches already this year on 
Whitewater.'' Is that not great, 29 speeches? We had 25 investigations, 
spent millions and millions of dollars when Republicans had the White 
House. I did not see anybody from Arkansas or anybody else saying, oh, 
we have to stop all this, we have to stop spending all this money. We 
even had one where they went after somebody who I think had gotten a 
wristwatch as a gift. They went after that person; thought it was 
improper and they should not have done it.
  We have had all kinds of hearings. I assume we will have some more. 
Or, in the alternative, as I suggest, we ought to repeal all the 
oversight laws so Congress does not have any oversight responsibility. 
Either do one or the other. And I have an amendment drafted to do that, 
too. If Congress does not have any responsibility, let us just repeal 
all the oversight laws we have and say, ``OK, we do not have any 
oversight responsibility. We will appoint special counsels for 
everything and Congress will just wait until something happens.''
  So it is not very complicated. Again, let me make certain people 
understand what the resolution says. It is not a mandate. Let me just 
read the first paragraph.

       Sense of the Senate resolution: That the Democratic and 
     Republican leadership of the Senate should promptly determine 
     the method, form, and timetable for hearings on allegations 
     concerning * * *

  Then I list the different things that have been raised publicly in 
the past several months. I raise those. And I say:

       The body or bodies conducting such hearings should so 
     specify authority for issuance of subpoenas to obtain 
     testimony and documents if it is * * * appropriate to the 
     pleadings referred to in paragraph 1. No witness called to 
     testify at such hearing shall be granted immunity.

  That has been one excuse, ``Oh, we may grant it immunity.'' So here 
we are saying, OK, do not grant immunity under section 6002 or 6005, 
title 18, United States Code, over the objection of independent 
counsel, Robert B. Fiske, Jr.
  I remember Mr. Walsh came up here when the Democrats controlled 
Congress and said, ``Do not grant immunity in Iran-Contra,'' but they 
granted immunity anyway. Now they are trying to use that as an excuse. 
We are saying we will not grant immunity over the objection. We are 
meeting that objection.
  I think, to the extent practical, such hearings should be structured 
and sequenced in such a manner as not to interfere with the ongoing 
investigation of independent counsel Robert B. Fiske, Jr.
  I think that is a fairly reasonable approach. It is not something 
that says by a certain date we have a hearing. It is something that 
says the Republican leader and the Democratic leader shall sit down and 
try to figure out a structure so we do not have four or five committees 
trying to do four or five different things. I must say, for others who 
are always out there looking under the rock, I think I was the first 
Senator who called for hearings in the Iran-Contra matter. In fact, I 
wanted hearings in 1986. I wanted a special session of the Senate so we 
could start hearings in 1986.
  So it seems to me it is time to fish or cut bait. We can look back 
over history. We can look at what happened during the Watergate years 
and how, at every turn, the White House would stonewall and say, ``We 
are giving you all the information. You have it all. You have it all. 
You have it all.'' I do not know what the information is. I do not have 
any idea what the information is. But I think Congress does have some 
responsibilities.
  So I hope, if we cannot agree to this resolution, we can agree to one 
that is very close to this resolution so we can go on with this bill, 
go on with the work of the Senate, go on with the work of the Congress, 
whether it is health care, welfare reform, crime, whatever it is.
  And I think, just to conclude at this point, for those who would like 
to play the partisan game, Republicans did not tell Roger Altman to go 
to the White House and give them a heads-up. I cannot find any 
Republican who suggested that. We cannot find any Republican who 
shredded documents. We did not tell the Rose law firm to examine the 
billing practices of its former partner Webster Hubbell. We did not 
force Robert Fiske to subpoena 10 White House and Treasury officials. 
We did not ask Bernie Nussbaum to interfere with the Park Police 
investigation.
  We have not been accused of muscling the Office of Thrift 
Supervision's Western Division to lay off Madison Guaranty, and we did 
not do anything with the U.S. attorney down in Little Rock. Of course, 
the Republicans, the last time I checked, do not control the New York 
Times or the Washington Post or the Los Angeles Times, or countless 
other newspapers, large and small, that have editorialized in support 
of congressional hearings.
  The other Democrat I was referring to was Charlie Stenholm. So we 
have Congressman Lee Hamilton, Congressman Dan Rostenkowski, and 
Congressman Stenholm, all well-known Democrats on the House side, 
saying that hearings are inevitable and that public disclosure is the 
best way to get this matter behind us.
  I just want to make a final point, and then I will yield the floor. I 
am not sending the amendment to the desk at this time because I have 
not discussed it with Senator Mitchell and I want to do so before I 
send the amendment to the desk.
  I want everybody to know, this is not some Republican plot. It seems 
to me what the White House did is look at what happened in Watergate 
and tried to replicate it: Stonewall; do not tell anybody anything. 
That is what happened in the Nixon White House. They certainly made a 
lot of mistakes, a lot of missteps, and a lot of omissions.
  We did not have a negotiated subpoena. That was the President's 
lawyer who negotiated subpoenas so the public would not know what was 
going on, as far as the documents were concerned.
  I want to close by saying, there was never any reticence around here 
to have hearings from 1981 to 1992. Even as I said, when Republicans 
controlled the Senate, we had four investigations of our own 
administration.
  So I hope we are not being viewed as some partisan group just because 
we are Republicans and there happens to be a Democrat in the White 
House. I know Mr. Fiske is a Republican. We did not name Mr. Fiske 
either. That was not a Republican effort. That was done by somebody--I 
do not know who suggested it, but the appointment was made by Janet 
Reno. I do not think she knew Mr. Fiske, but I know Mr. Nussbaum knew 
Mr. Fiske quite well.
  So we are prepared to either vote on, after not much more debate, 
because I know my colleagues on the Banking Committee want to finish 
this bill and I know the majority leader does, I will be prepared--if 
we cannot reach some agreement--for another 10, 15 minutes debate, and 
then I will offer the amendment on behalf of myself, Senator D'Amato, 
Senator Cohen, and Senator Murkowski.
  Mr. D'AMATO addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New York.
  Mr. D'AMATO. Madam President, I know my colleague from Arkansas is 
here and wants to make his comments. At this time, I serve notice that 
I will respond because I do have a comprehensive statement as it 
relates to this resolution and Whitewater in general.
  Let us be clear, as far as I can see--and I would like somebody to 
tell me different--is the only thing different as it relates to the 
calling for hearings, structured hearings--is we have a Democrat in the 
White House as opposed to a Republican.
  In good conscience, I would ask my colleagues, would they be making 
the same argument if the President were George Bush? I do not believe 
so. I do not believe so. But they have to answer to that.
  I also note that the special counsel is a weapon of justice. Special 
counsel is not a shield for congressional inaction. I do not believe we 
can sit on our hands until the special counsel has completed his work. 
That may take years.
  Now in the real world of politics, that is what some may want. Is 
this political? Of course it is. It is part of the political 
governmental process. Let us make no mistake about that.
  I have indicated that I would speak for a very short period of time 
because I have a more comprehensive statement and some more 
observations to make. At this time, I will yield the floor.
  Mr. MITCHELL addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The majority leader, the Senator from Maine.
  Mr. MITCHELL. Madam President, I was advised a short time ago that 
the distinguished Republican leader was, once again, addressing the 
issue of Whitewater on the floor and I, therefore, feel constrained to 
reply. I did not hear all of the remarks and, therefore, cannot at this 
moment reply to all of them, but I would like to make a few points on 
the subject, which I have previously made, and some additional points.
  First, everyone should understand that the Congress has an important 
oversight responsibility and the Congress will meet that 
responsibility. That is not in dispute. The only question is whether 
the Congress proceeds to engage in a political circus for the political 
benefit of our Republican colleagues or whether it conducts its 
oversight responsibilities in a serious manner and one which will not 
undermine the independent investigation of a special counsel who is now 
conducting what all concede to be a thorough, impartial investigation. 
That is the only issue.
  Any implication that Congress is not meeting its oversight 
responsibility just because it does not rush into a political circus 
right now is wrong. The way to meet our responsibilities and to permit 
the special counsel to meet his responsibilities is to have 
congressional oversight conducted in a serious and responsible way, not 
in a political circus.
  Madam President, let me review, if I might, the events which have led 
to this point.
  In January of this year, at the request of our Republican colleagues, 
and others, a special counsel was named and given full investigative 
and prosecutorial power and given complete independence to look into 
the entire Whitewater matter. That counsel is a Republican, a lifelong 
Republican with vast experience in prosecution. When he was appointed, 
our colleague, Senator D'Amato said:

       Bob Fiske is uniquely qualified for this position. He is a 
     man of uncompromising integrity. He will unearth the truth 
     for the American people. He is one of the most honorable and 
     most skilled lawyers anywhere.

  The words of our Republican colleague about the Republican who was 
appointed to conduct the investigation.
  On his own initiative, the special counsel wrote to the chairman and 
ranking member of the Banking Committee and asked that no hearings be 
held, his concern being that such hearings would undermine his 
investigation. And in his letter, he said--and I quote,

       * * * that such a process could jeopardize our 
     investigation in several respects, including the dangers of 
     congressional immunity, the premature disclosure of the 
     contents of documents or of witnesses' testimony to other 
     witnesses on the same subject creating the risk of tailored 
     testimony and of premature public disclosure of matters at 
     the core of the criminal investigation.

  That is the special counsel's request in writing on his own 
initiative; that special counsel who himself is a Republican, who has 
been praised for his integrity and independence by our Republican 
colleagues. And what they are requesting is that we not honor the 
special counsel's request; that we ignore the special counsel's request 
and now create a political circus solely for partisan political 
purposes.
  I have heard references on this floor to public opinion polls. Well, 
as one public opinion poll over the last few days shows, the American 
people are not fooled: 12 percent of those polled believe that our 
Republican colleagues are doing this because they are serious about the 
matter; 78 percent--78 percent--of those polled believe that our 
Republican colleagues are doing it for political gain.
  Make no mistake about it, this is pure partisan politics. That is 
what is going on here. This is an effort to embarrass the President, to 
make it more difficult to get the President's program passed.
  Why all of the attention on Whitewater? Well, I think to find that 
out you have to go back to last summer.
  Last summer, President Clinton presented the cornerstone of his 
program for change in America, an economic plan to revive the economy. 
And we debated that economic plan here in the Senate for weeks. And 
Republican after Republican Senator got up and spoke against the 
President's economic plan and said, ``If you pass that economic plan, 
the deficit will go up, interest rates will go up, unemployment will go 
up, economic growth will go down.''
  We passed the economic plan. Not a single Republican Senator voted 
for it. Every single one of them voted against it. And what happened 
after we passed the economic plan? In the months since then, the 
opposite of what they predicted has happened. The deficit has come way 
down, interest rates are down, unemployment is down, and economic 
growth is up.
  So they have nothing to talk about. The President's economic plan was 
passed over unanimous Republican opposition, and it is working. The 
economy is recovering. Economic growth is up. Job creation is up. More 
private-sector jobs were created in America in the first year of 
President Clinton's term than all of the previous 4 years put together. 
That is what matters to the American people.
  And so what we are seeing now is the politics of diversion. Not 
having an economic plan of their own, seeing the President's economic 
plan succeed, seeing the economy come back, seeing Americans once again 
having hope and optimism and promise for the future, our colleagues 
have nothing to fall back on, and so they are seeking, no pun intended, 
a political liferaft in the Whitewater affair--something, just 
something, to get at the President.
  Am I the only one who thinks this? Well, we have heard quotes here 
from other Democrats. Here is a quote from another Republican, Barry 
Goldwater, who served with great distinction in this Senate for many 
years and was the Republican candidate for President 30 years ago. I am 
advised that Barry Goldwater held a press conference in Phoenix to 
suggest that Republicans get off the President's back.

       I wish to urge my Republican friends in Washington and 
     those Democrats who are participating to get off his back and 
     let him be President.

  Well, of course, if they do that, we might pass health care reform. 
We might pass welfare reform. We might pass a crime bill. We might pass 
a record that will be good for America and good for this President, and 
that might lead the President to be reelected. And, my gosh, that is 
the one thing our colleagues are concerned about--how to prevent the 
President from being reelected.
  So, we cannot concentrate on the business at hand. No, no. We have to 
talk about Whitewater. We cannot talk about bills to promote economic 
growth and job creation; we have to talk about Whitewater, even though 
a special counsel, who is a Republican, has requested that we not hold 
hearings at this time.
  Now, Madam President, let me address the subject of Iran-Contra, with 
which I have some familiarity. In the first place, when we met to 
discuss the Iran-Contra investigation, our Republican colleagues 
suggested that the investigation have a time limit of 2 weeks--2 weeks. 
That was their request for the whole investigation. We wanted to have a 
longer period of time to get the job done, and after weeks of 
negotiations we ended up on a time limit of several months.
  Up to the Iran-Contra investigation, the problems inherent in a 
congressional investigation and a simultaneous independent criminal 
investigation by an appropriate prosecutorial authority were governed 
by the law laid down by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1972 in a case called 
Kastigar versus the United States. And in that case, the Supreme Court 
set a standard which a prosecutor would have to meet in order to 
successfully prosecute a person who had testified previously in a 
congressional investigation.
  It was a tough but a reasonable standard. It was one that could have 
been met in many cases.
  In the Iran-Contra matter, Oliver North testified before the 
congressional committee under immunity and was then indicted, tried, 
and convicted on three felony counts. He appealed those three 
convictions, and the U.S. Court of Appeals reversed the convictions in 
a decision rendered in 1990 which significantly changed the law from 
what it previously had been.
  The standard enunciated by the court of appeals in the North case is 
far more detailed, far more strict and, in my judgment as a former 
prosecutor and a Federal judge, it is a standard which cannot be met. 
That is to say, the state of the law now effectively precludes both 
immunized testimony in a congressional investigation and a successful 
later prosecution.
  I am not alone in reaching that conclusion. Judge Walsh, who was the 
special counsel in the Iran-Contra case, said, and I quote:

       I think the views of some of those in the congressional 
     committees that there was a possibility of concurrent 
     activity that the Congress could investigate on television 
     and that the criminal prosecution could also go on was just 
     proved to be wrong, and I think the lesson is very clear, as 
     we spelled out in the report. Congress has control. It's a 
     political decision as to which is more important, but it 
     can't have both. If it wants to proceed with a joint 
     committee or a special committee or have--to compel testimony 
     by granting immunity, it has to realize that the odds are 
     very strong that it's going to kill any resulting criminal 
     prosecution.

  So, Madam President, it is clear that the current state of the law, 
which has been the law only since 1990, since the decision by the court 
of appeals in the North case, which the Supreme Court did not review 
and therefore which now stands as the applicable law, since then a new, 
different, and far more formidable hurdle has been established into law 
to prosecutions for immunized testimony.
  Now, our colleagues say, after they initially wanted an investigation 
and hearings, in response to this they say, well, we will not ask to 
immunize witnesses.
  I have two responses to that. The first is that as Special Counsel 
Fiske made clear in his letter, the request for no hearings goes beyond 
the question of immunized testimony.
  He stated in his letter three separate independent bases for not 
requesting hearings. One of them was congressional immunity. A second 
was the premature disclosure of the contents of documents or of 
witnesses' testimony to other witnesses on the same subject creating 
the risk of tailored testimony. And a third was the premature public 
disclosure of matters at the core of the criminal investigation.
  So, as the special counsel himself has made clear, there are reasons 
not to conduct hearings that would impair or undermine his 
investigation that go beyond immunized testimony.
  A second reason is: If a matter is under criminal investigation and a 
congressional committee announces in advance that under no 
circumstances will it immunize testimony, it virtually assures that it 
will not get the testimony essential to full public disclosure, which 
we are told is the reason for doing so in the first place.
  Of course, we know what our colleagues want. They want a parade of 
administration witnesses who will refuse to testify for these very 
reasons. In effect, they want a political circus to score political 
points as opposed to getting at the heart of this matter.
  The heart of the matter is this: I do not think there is a single 
Member of this Senate who knows all of the facts on Whitewater. I do 
not know them. And I doubt very much that any of our other colleagues 
do. In order to get at the facts, in order to determine whether there 
has been any wrongdoing which should be subjected to punishment, we 
have set in motion an independent legal process with full power of 
subpoena, with full power of investigation and prosecution. A 
Republican, a skilled and experienced prosecutor, has been given that 
mandate. He is now doing it in a manner that seems universally agreed 
to, is thorough and in detail.
  What we should do is to let him do his job, let him do his job in a 
way that will produce the full truth, and a full accounting of what 
occurred. And then let the chips fall where they may. If anybody has 
done anything wrong, they should be prosecuted and punished. And I am 
confident that the special counsel will see to that. If they have not 
done anything wrong, he should say that, and I am confident that he 
will say that.
  The real question is whether we now for purely partisan, political 
purposes are going to take an action that will undermine or hinder the 
special counsel's investigation and make the likelihood of his getting 
the full truth and holding those responsible fully accountable less 
likely than would otherwise be the case.
  That is the real issue. The real issue is are we trying to get at the 
truth and trying to hold accountable those who are responsible for any 
possible wrongdoing, or are we trying to score political points for 
purely partisan purposes? That is the question that we will have. And 
of course, I welcome the opportunity for the Senate to debate it and to 
vote on it.
  Our colleague has indicated he has a resolution. We also have a 
resolution as he knows. We have discussed this before privately. We are 
trying to work it out to see if we can reach agreement on the 
resolution. I do not know whether that is possible. If we can, I think 
that will be desirable. If not, then we will have the competing 
resolutions, and we will debate them, and we will vote on them.
  What I want to say is that we welcome that debate, we welcome that 
vote, we welcome it as often as our colleagues choose to make it the 
issue. I think there is a risk that the 78 percent will reach 88 
percent. It is rare that the American people agree so overwhelmingly on 
a subject as they agree on this one.
  I hope that we can reach an agreement to conduct congressional 
oversight in a serious and responsible way, in a way that will meet our 
constitutional responsibility, and also in a way that will not 
undermine the special counsel's investigation, because I believe the 
worst possible result would be for the Congress to conduct a political 
circus that would not get the full truth, and to have what we do 
undermine the special counsel so that he then could not get the full 
truth.
  I remind my colleagues of this: We have heard a lot of talk about the 
Iran-Contra investigation. There was immunity granted there. And 
witnesses were compelled to testify, and even with that, we never got 
the full truth. An investigation that begins by announcing in advance 
that there will be no immunity granted to any witness under any 
circumstances guarantees that there will not be a full finding of what 
occurred and may result in the worst possible result--the worst 
possible result--neither inquiry succeeding, no one ever finding out 
what the real facts are, and no one held accountable for any potential 
wrongdoing.
  There is a special counsel in place. He is a responsible person. I 
think that is one of the few things on which there is no dispute here. 
He is conducting a thorough and detailed investigation. That is another 
thing on which I believe there is no disagreement here. We should let 
him do his job. We should be prepared at the appropriate time, under 
appropriate circumstances, in a way that will not undermine his 
investigation to fully and fairly and responsibly meet our 
constitutional oversight duties. We are prepared to do so. We look 
forward to that.
  Mr. DOLE addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Feingold). The Republican leader.
  Mr. DOLE. Mr. President, I have listened to the majority leader very 
carefully. I understand the concern he has, and I think some of them 
are just concerns. But there are a lot of things you can find out 
without the need for testimony. You get documents. You get the 
cooperation of the regulators. You might not need any testimony. There 
might not be any reason to grant immunity to anybody. But a lot of 
things you can learn. We do not have any power to do anything.
  Second, as far as I know, the Democrats still control this Congress. 
They would be in control of any hearings that took place. So I do not 
think there would have to be much concern. They are worried about 
somebody trying to embarrass the administration because they are in 
control in the Congress, and they control the committee.
  Therein lies the problem. When you have one-party Government, you 
have the White House and the Congress controlled by one party.
  If I should conclude that the majority leader is correct, then I 
could say that every one of these areas are politically inspired 
because we were trying to conspire a hearing--good politics. We have 
20-some here that the Democrats had that were politically inspired 
because we had four when the Republicans controlled the Senate when we 
investigated one administration. So maybe those were politically 
inspired. We also have at least three hearings where we had independent 
counsel and Congress working at the same time.
  Let us face it. There are a lot of polls out there. I do not know 
what the polls were during Watergate. I assume they were about the 
same. There are a lot of political charges: ``Third-rate burglary.''
  I remember going to the White House one time mentioning Watergate, 
and I was not invited back for 30 days because the White House did not 
want to hear the word ``Watergate,'' and said, ``It is going to go 
away. It is not a big story; a third-rate burglary.'' Then inside the 
White House they started compounding the problem with stonewalling, not 
giving the information, no public disclosure, and that is precisely 
what is happening today.
  But we can all--and I do not want to get in a contest with my friend, 
the majority leader. He can probably find quotes that I made. I have 
quotes that he made. I have quotes that Vice President Gore made. I 
have quotes Senator Pryor made. I have got all kinds of quotes about, 
``We want to have hearings on this `October surprise.''' In fact, the 
St. Louis Post Dispatch, I quote: ``Gore Also Accused Bush of Breaking 
the Law.'' That was the night before the election.
  So there are a lot of allegations out there. We do not know the 
facts. We may never know the facts. I am sorry to say we are going to 
have hearings. In fact, all my resolution says is that the two leaders 
ought to get together and figure out when to do that and what to cover 
so we will not have four or five different committees holding hearings.
  Under rule XXVI, any three Republican members--in this case minority 
members--could ask for the committee chairman to call a meeting of that 
committee for that purpose, and then it would take a majority vote to 
have a hearing in that committee. But at least you could do that in 
each of the committees. I assume that may be done by some of the 
ranking Republicans. I do not know that to be the case.
  But it seems to me that this is a serious matter. We do want to 
cooperate with Mr. Fiske who is a Republican. So was Lawrence Walsh, if 
that tells you anything. He has hung around here for 7 years and has 
spent between $50 million and $100 million of the taxpayers' money, 
and, as far as I know, did not do much of anything.
  So that is not all Republicans--and I do not have any quarrel with 
Mr. Nussbaum. I said I will not second-guess Mr. Fiske--not Nussbaum--
not second-guess Mr. Fiske. I do not know who appointed him, nor who 
knew him in the administration since Mr. Fiske and Mr. Nussbaum are 
very close friends. But in any event, he is the independent counsel. He 
has a big responsibility. And we should not try to interfere with it. 
But that does not mean we have to wait until he finishes everything 
before we can say anything. Because, if he says, well, as far as he 
knows, nothing serious happened--there were some things of this, and 
things of that, then the cry will be that there is no need for 
hearings, no need for congressional hearings, because the independent 
counsel has already taken everybody off of the hook. Maybe he will be 
correct. Maybe there will not be a need, if we have to sit around and 
wait and wait.

  Look, we had hearings here before you could drop your hat on some of 
these other matters. On Iran-Contra itself, this Senator was asking for 
hearings in December of 1986. In fact, we were negotiating at the time 
with the then-minority leader, Senator Byrd, to see if we could not 
start something before the next Congress, and the Democrats took over 
the Senate, and the Democrats wanted their way for obvious reasons when 
they controlled the Senate. For obvious reasons, we did not get our 
way. We did not have the hearings until 1987.
  So I think the record is fairly clear. I will put in the Record all 
the authority where Congress asks for oversight and has 
responsibilities. It is in the Constitution; it is in the power of the 
purse, in the power to organize the executive branch, the power to make 
all laws for carrying out executive execution. Article I enumerated the 
functions and the power of investigation, the power of impeachment and 
confirmation. Then we get to the principal statutory authority.
  I ask unanimous consent that all that be printed in the Record.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

                 Authority for the Conduct of Oversight

            (Prepared by the Congressional Research Service)


                          a. u.s. constitution

       The Constitution grants Congress extensive authority to 
     oversee and investigate executive branch activities. The 
     constitutional authority for Congress to conduct oversight 
     stems from such explicit and implicit provisions as:
       1. The power of the purse. The Constitution provides that 
     ``no money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in 
     consequence of appropriations made by law.'' Each year the 
     Committees on Appropriations of the House and Senate review 
     the financial practices and needs of Federal agencies. The 
     appropriations process allows the Congress to exercise 
     extensive control over the activities of executive agencies. 
     Congress can define the precise purposes for which money may 
     be spent, adjust funding levels, and prohibit expenditures 
     for certain purposes.
       2. The power to organize the executive branch. Congress has 
     the authority to create, abolish, reorganize, and fund 
     Federal departments and agencies. It has the authority to 
     assign or reassign functions to departments and agencies, and 
     grant new forms of authority and staff to administrators. 
     Congress, in short, exercises ultimate authority over 
     executive branch organization and policy.
       3. The power to make all laws for ``carrying into 
     Execution'' Congress' Article I enumerated functions. Article 
     I grants Congress a wide range of powers, such as the power 
     to tax and coin money; regulate foreign and interstate 
     commerce; declare war; provide for the creation and 
     maintenance of armed forces; and establish a post office. 
     Augmenting these specific powers is the so-called ``elastic 
     clause:'' ``To make all Laws which shall be necessary and 
     proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers, and 
     all other Powers vested by this Constitution in the 
     Government of the United States, or in any Department or 
     Office thereof.'' Clearly, Congress has broad authority to 
     regulate and oversee departmental activities.
       4. The power of impeachment and confirmation. Impeachment 
     offers Congress a powerful tool to investigate alleged 
     executive and judicial misbehavior, and to eliminate such 
     behavior through the conviction and removal from office of 
     the offending individuals. The confirmation process involves 
     not only the determination of a nominee's suitability for an 
     executive or judicial position, but also provides information 
     on the policies and programs the nominee intends to pursue.
       5. The power of investigation. A traditional method of 
     exercising the oversight function is through investigations 
     into executive branch operations. Legislators need to know 
     how effectively programs are working, how well agency 
     officials are responding to committee directives, and the 
     scope and intensity of public support for Government 
     programs. The investigatory method helps to ensure a more 
     responsible bureaucracy, while supplying Congress with 
     information needed to formulate new legislation.


                    b. principal statutory authority

       Five key laws assign oversight duties to committees. They 
     are the Legislative Reorganization Act of 1946, the 
     Intergovernmental Cooperation Act of 1968, the Legislative 
     Reorganization Act of 1970, the Federal Advisory Committee 
     Act of 1972, and the Congressional Budget and Impoundment 
     Control Act of 1974.

                            1. The 1946 LRA

       a. Required House and Senate committees to exercise 
     ``continuous watchfulness'' of the administration of laws and 
     programs under their jurisdiction.
       b. Authorized for the first time, in history, permanent 
     professional and clerical staff for committees.
       c. Authorized and directed the Comptroller General to make 
     administrative management analyses of each executive branch 
     agency.

              2. Intergovernmental Cooperation Act of 1968

       1. Required that House and Senate committees having 
     jurisdiction over grants-in-aid are to conduct studies of the 
     programs under which grants-in-aid are made to determine 
     whether (1) their purposes have been met; (2) their 
     objectives could be carried on without further assistance; 
     (3) they are adequate to meet needs; and (4) any changes in 
     programs or procedures should be made.

                            3. The 1970 LRA

       a. Revised and rephrased in more explicit language the 
     oversight function of standing committees.
       b. Required most House and Senate committees to issue 
     biennial oversight reports.
       c. Strengthened the program evaluation responsibilities of 
     the General Accounting Office and the policy analysis role of 
     the Congressional Research Service.
       d. Recommended that House and Senate committees ascertain 
     whether programs within their jurisdiction could be 
     appropriated for annually.
       e. Required most House and Senate committees to include in 
     their committee reports on legislation five-year cost 
     estimates for carrying out the proposed program.
       f. Increased by two each the number of permanent 
     professional and clerical staff available to House and Senate 
     committees.

               4. Federal Advisory Committee Act of 1972

       a. Directed House and Senate committees to make a 
     continuing review of the activities of each advisory 
     committee under its jurisdiction to determine whether (1) 
     such committee should be abolished or merged with any other 
     advisory committee; (2) its responsibility should be revised; 
     and (3) it performs a necessary function not already being 
     performed. Advisory committee charters and reports can 
     generally be obtained from the agency or government official 
     being advised.

                         5. The 1974 Budget Act

       a. Expanded House and Senate committee authority for 
     oversight. Permitted committees to evaluate programs 
     themselves ``or by contract, or (to) require a Government 
     agency to do so and furnish a report thereon to Congress.''
       b. Authorized GAO to establish an Office of Program 
     Analysis to develop and recommend to the Congress methods for 
     the review and evaluation of programs, and to assist 
     committees in program evaluation through such means as 
     ``developing a statement of legislative objectives and goals 
     and methods for assessing and reporting actual program 
     performance.''
       c. Strengthened GAO's role in acquiring fiscal, budgetary, 
     and program-related information.
       d. Required any House or Senate legislative committee 
     report on a public bill or resolution to include an analysis 
     (prepared by the Congressional Budget Office) providing an 
     estimate and comparison of costs which would be incurred in 
     carrying out the bill during the next and following four 
     fiscal years in which it would be effective.


             c. responsibilities in house and senate rules

                             1. House rules

       a. House rules grant the Committee on Government Operations 
     a unique role in coordinating oversight activities. First, 
     within 60 days after a new Congress convenes, the Committee 
     is to issue a report to the House on the oversight plans of 
     every committee and assist in coordinating oversight 
     activities of the House. Second, the pertinent review 
     findings and recommendations of the Committee on Government 
     Operations are to be considered by the authorizing 
     committees, if presented to them in a timely fashion. 
     Finally, the authorizing committees are to indicate on the 
     cover of their reports on public measures that they contain a 
     summary of the findings when that is the case.
       b. The Committee on Government Operations has the following 
     additional oversight duties:
       (1) review and study on a continuing basis, the operation 
     of government activities at all levels to determine their 
     economy and efficiency;
       (2) receive and examine reports of the Comptroller General 
     and submit recommendations thereon to the House;
       (3) evaluate the effects of laws enacted to reorganize the 
     legislative and executive branches of the government; and
       (4) study intergovernmental relationships between the 
     United States and states, municipalities, and international 
     organizations of which the United States is a member (House 
     Rule X).
       c. House rules require other oversight efforts by standing 
     committees.
       (1) Each standing committee (except Appropriations and 
     Budget) shall review and study on a continuing basis, the 
     application, administration, and execution of all laws within 
     its legislative jurisdiction (House Rule X).
       (2) Committees have the authority to review the impact of 
     tax expenditures on matters that fall within their 
     jurisdiction (House Rule X).
       (3) Each committee (except Appropriations and Budget) has a 
     responsibility for research on alternative futures and 
     forecasting (House Rule X).
       (4) Eight committees have a special oversight authority, 
     i.e., the right to conduct comprehensive reviews or specific 
     subject areas that are within the legislative jurisdiction of 
     other committees (House Rule X). Special oversight is akin to 
     the broad oversight authority granted the Committee on 
     Government Operations by the 1946 LRA, except that special 
     oversight is generally limited to named subjects, such as the 
     ``problem of all types of small business.''
       (5) Committees are authorized to create oversight 
     subcommittees or to require their subcommittees, if any, to 
     conduct oversight in their jurisdictional areas (House Rule 
     X).
       (6) Committee reports on measures are to include oversight 
     findings separately set out and clearly identified (House 
     Rule XI). See example in Appendix C.
       (7) Costs of stenographic services and transcripts for 
     oversight hearings are to be paid from the House contingent 
     fund rather than from committee budgets (House Rule XI).
       (8) Any House committee report on a public bill or 
     resolution shall contain a detailed analytical statement with 
     respect to the inflationary impact such a bill might have on 
     prices and costs in the national economy (House Rule XI).

                            2. Senate Rules

       a. Each standing committee (except for Appropriations and 
     Budget) shall review and study on a continuing basis, the 
     application administration, and execution of all laws within 
     its legislative jurisdiction (LRA, 1970).
       b. Senate Rule XXV grants ``comprehensive policy 
     oversight'' responsibilities to several standing committee. 
     This duty is akin to special oversight in the House. The 
     Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry, for 
     example, is authorized by Rule 25 to ``study and review, on a 
     comprehensive basis, matters relating to food, nutrition, and 
     hunger, both in the United States and in foreign countries, 
     and rural affairs, and report thereon from time to time.''
       c. Senate Rule XXVI requires all standing committees, 
     except Appropriations, to prepare regulatory impact 
     evaluations in their committee reports accompanying each 
     public bill or joint resolution. The evaluations are to 
     include:
       (1) an estimate of the numbers of individuals and 
     businesses to be affected;
       (2) a determination of the regulation's economic impact and 
     effect on personal privacy; and
       (3) a determination of the amount of additional paperwork 
     that will result.
       d. The Committee on Governmental Affairs has the following 
     additional oversight duties:
       (1) review and study on a continuing basis the operation of 
     governmental activities at all levels to determine their 
     economy and efficiency;
       (2) receive and examine reports of the Comptroller General 
     and submit recommendations thereon to the Senate;
       (3) evaluate the effects of laws enacted to reorganize the 
     legislative and executive branches of the government; and
       (4) study intergovernmental relationships between the 
     United States and states, municipalities, and international 
     organizations of which the United States is a member (Senate 
     Rule XXV).

  Mr. DOLE. I read in today's paper that the Government Operations 
Committee is going to have oversight hearings next week. Maybe counsel 
ought to go down there and say: Wait a minute, we do not need to do 
this. We will appoint a Republican lawyer, and we do not have to go 
through these oversight hearings. Maybe if we are not going to have 
oversight, we ought to repeal all these oversight laws in the books, 
some of which have been on the books as far back as 1946. Either we are 
going to have oversight or not. I think that is a judgment we can make 
later.
  I repeat that Mr. Fiske has his job to do. But he must understand 
that we have a job to do, too--one that I think we are legally and 
constitutionally obligated to perform.
  Mr. Fiske's job is prosecution. Our job is public disclosure. I think 
that the White House Treasury meetings are clearly a legitimate subject 
for congressional oversight. We would not have known about those today 
if not for the Republicans on the Banking Committee asking Mr. Altman, 
as sort of an aside, if he had any meetings. Then we learned he had 
more than one. What public purpose was served by allowing the Deputy 
Treasury Secretary and general counsel to brief White House officials? 
Was it ethical, and was preferential treatment given to their White 
House benefactors, so that the meetings compromised the independence of 
the RTC? These are judgments Congress has to make.
  Keep in mind that when the RTC law was written, the Democratic 
Congress overturned what President Bush requested and made certain 
there was going to be a wall separating RTC and Treasury, so Treasury 
would have no case-specific power when it came to RTC investigations 
and dispositions in RTC. That was in 1989, as part of the bailout law 
making the RTC more independent from both the White House and Treasury. 
It was a Congress controlled by Democrats that created the RTC 
Oversight Board, chaired by the Secretary of Treasury, that was 
intervening in case-specific matters such as civil or criminal 
investigations into specific institutions. We do not know how many 
conversations Mr. Altman has had, or the general counsel, or who he had 
conversations with, whether it was somebody outside Washington. And 
Representative Leach, on the House side, suggested that Washington 
officials may have gagged officials in the RTC's Kansas City regional 
office, and there was a story on that in yesterday's New York Times.
  I do not know that that is a fact. But again, it is a proper area for 
oversight hearings.
  I bet we would have had it back then. Hearings would be going on 
right now. We would not have waited this long back then--January, 
February and March--and we would not have special counsel. It was not 
because Republicans asked for special counsel that we had special 
counsel. Janet Reno told me in writing that we did not need a special 
counsel. After Democrats in the Senate and a number in the House said 
we better do something, they changed their minds. Now I think it is 
time that they change their minds again and do what we are legally and 
constitutionally obligated to do when it comes to congressional 
oversight. We may not be that far apart. We do not say anything. We do 
not say we have to start next week or next month. We say the leaders 
ought to get together.
  We have at least four or five committees that probably could have 
some jurisdiction, if they chose to do it. It seems to me that that 
would not be what the majority or minority leaders, or Members on 
either side, would want.
  I continue to make this point: If we are being partisan now, were the 
Democrats being partisan in all that is represented on this chart? Are 
we going to be judged by a double standard? We are partisan now, but 
they were statesmen then? We are nothing but petty politicians--
Republicans trying to embarrass the President--when in every one of 
these cases, the Democratic Congress, which had control of both Houses, 
were acting in a statesmanlike manner because they wanted only the 
facts. No way did they want to embarrass the administration, whether it 
be the Reagan or Bush administrations.
  That may be, but here are 20 examples. I have to believe that maybe 
in one of these cases, as pure as the Democrats are, there might have 
been a little politics involved. I do not know which one. Maybe it was 
regarding Ambassador Faith Whittlesey. Maybe it was Edwin Meese. 
Remember Ray Donovan? When he was cleared, he said, ``Maybe I will get 
my reputation back.'' We had a great time with Ray Donovan and our 
colleagues on the other side.
  The point is this: If we are all going to have a confession and say 
that it is all politics, we have made a lot of mistakes in the last 12 
years. We could say, OK, if you confess to making all those, maybe we 
will say we are making a mistake. I think Congress has oversight now, 
as it did back then. I believe that, in most cases, we had the hearings 
because we should have had the hearings. I am not suggesting that in 
every case it was political, or that I think we ought to suggest 
automatically that this is politics. If that line does not work, then 
we have to hide behind Robert Fiske. If that does not work, then we say 
we will do it later.
  There are a lot of polls out there, as the majority leader indicates. 
Some of the polls may say what he indicated, and I am sure they do if 
he said it. Other polls give different expressions. But I just think we 
ought to try to work this out, get it behind us, and have the hearings, 
and hope that nothing is wrong, and then move on to something else.
  Mr. MITCHELL. Mr. President, I want to reiterate a couple of points, 
so there can be no misunderstanding. Congress does have an important 
oversight responsibility and is meeting that responsibility. There 
should be no implication, no misunderstanding about that.
  I have asked each committee to provide me with a list of oversight 
hearings held in the 14 months since President Clinton took office. I 
have only gotten a report from one committee, but they have conducted 
20 hearings. I am going to place all of those into the Record so that 
we do not get what I believe to be a misleading comparison, which 
suggests that there have been no oversight hearings since President 
Clinton took office, and there were all these other oversight hearings 
during the years when Presidents Bush and Reagan were in office.
  That is the first point. The Congress is meeting its oversight 
responsibility. That is not the issue here.
  Second, I submit to my colleagues, that list is not relevant to this 
debate, because the question is not whether there should be hearings in 
connection with congressional oversight. The question is whether there 
should be hearings when a special counsel has been named, and when that 
counsel has explicitly asked that there not be hearings.
  Most of those cases did not involve cases where a special counsel had 
been named. So there was no request not to hold hearings and there was 
no competing consideration as exists in this case.
  Third, my colleague made mention of Ray Donovan. I do not recall the 
details, but it is my recollection, not a certain one, that he was 
nominated for a Cabinet position and that he was nominated for a 
Cabinet position by a Republican President at a time when Republicans 
controlled the Senate and that, in the normal course of meeting its 
confirmation duty, the Senate committee, controlled by Republicans, 
held a hearing on a President's Cabinet nominee.
  That is about as far removed from this, if my recollection is 
correct--I am speaking from memory and it has been a while, it has been 
a long time--but if my recollection is correct, that has nothing 
whatsoever to do with what is going on here. I never met Mr. Donovan, 
and I do not recall the circumstances of his case, whether he was 
fairly or unfairly treated.
  But surely no one is suggesting that when a President sends a Cabinet 
nominee to Congress that no hearings should be held in the Senate. That 
is not the issue here. So let us be clear. There is no question that 
Congress has important oversight responsibility.
  Second, there is no question that Congress must and will and is 
meeting its oversight responsibilities. Numerous hearings--I am certain 
it will be in the dozens if not the hundreds--have been held on 
oversight by the Democratic controlled Senate since President Clinton 
took office.
  The real issue, the only issue, is where, as here, a special counsel 
had been named, that special counsel is conducting an independent legal 
investigation, and that special counsel requests that no congressional 
hearings be held because they might undermine his investigation, 
whether we should still then go forward and hold a hearing. That is the 
only issue. The rest of these matters are not relevant to answering 
that question.
  I submit to my colleagues, in that circumstance, an independent legal 
investigation being conducted by a special counsel who is himself a 
Republican, named at the request of Republicans, praised by Republicans 
when he was appointed for his integrity and experience, and who is 
conducting what all agree to be a very thorough, aggressive and 
detailed investigation, then the question is, should we then hold 
hearings explicitly denying his request that hearings not be held. That 
is the question. All of the rest of this is really off the mark and not 
relevant to this discussion and debate.
  Mr. President, as I said, I am getting a list of oversight hearings 
conducted by committees since President Clinton took office, and I 
suppose I could get a nice big chart made like this here and present it 
on the Senate floor. I reserve my right to do that. But at the very 
least I am going to submit that for the Record when I receive it.
  I know my colleague from Arkansas has been waiting very patiently, 
and though he was present before I was in seeking recognition, he 
permitted me to go forward, so I will at this moment yield the floor to 
him.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Arkansas.
  Mr. PRYOR. Mr. President, I thank the Chair for recognizing me and I 
thank the distinguished majority leader for his very eloquent 
statements on the floor this afternoon.
  Mr. President, this is a milestone day in the Senate, and I should 
say another milestone day because today we have heard the 33d speech by 
Republican colleagues on the other side of the aisle since January 1 
relating to the Whitewater episode. On 33 occasions, our colleagues on 
the other side of the aisle have taken the floor of the U.S. Senate and 
either asked for congressional investigations or have in one way or 
another alluded to the Whitewater episode.
  Mr. President, I am very glad that the majority leader a few moments 
ago stated for the Record that our former colleague in the U.S. Senate, 
the Honorable Barry Goldwater of Arizona, of course a Republican, a 
one-time standard bearer for the Republican Party in 1964, as a 
candidate for President, one whose credentials, I think, as a 
Republican are impeccable, Senator Goldwater yesterday called the press 
in Arizona to his home, I believe that is in Paradise Valley, AZ. I see 
my colleague from Arizona, Senator DeConcini, who I think will 
elaborate on this particular and very unique meeting in Senator 
Goldwater's home where he called the press together.
  Basically, the headline of the Associated Press article, Mr. 
President, stated this. This was yesterday. ``Get Off President's 
Back.''
  Mr. President, I was very saddened to see that this very lengthy 
interview with Senator Goldwater, which was carried by the Associated 
Press, to the best of my knowledge, was not picked up by the Washington 
Post, it was not picked up by the New York Times, and it was not picked 
up by the Washington Times, to the very best of my knowledge. I stand 
to be corrected if that is not correct.
  Senator Goldwater said, Mr. President:

       ``I want to urge my Republican friends in Washington, and 
     those Democrats who are participating, to get off his back 
     and let him be President,'' the 1964 Republican Presidential 
     nominee told a news conference at his mountainside home above 
     Phoenix.

  Mr. President, I am going to read further from this Associated Press 
article of yesterday because the major media here, the print media at 
least, did not carry this story. It said in the story:

       Republicans led the call for the appointment of a special 
     prosecutor and have been demanding congressional hearings 
     into the Clintons' investment in the Whitewater Development 
     Corp. in Arkansas and its ties to a failed savings and loan. 
     A Federal grand jury is looking into the matter in Little 
     Rock, and 10 administration officials have been subpoenaed to 
     testify in Washington.
       Goldwater, who retired from the Senate in 1987, said he 
     called the news conference because ``it's something that has 
     been kind of bugging me for the last week.''
       ``The President needs our help more than he needs our 
     stonewalling him all the time,'' Goldwater said. ``My whole 
     concern is that if there's not more to it than what we've 
     heard, I want those people in Washington that are giving the 
     President a bad time to get off his back.''
       ``It's making it awful hard to be President,'' Goldwater 
     said. ``I don't think the country's too much in favor of 
     what's going on. I think they'd like to have it stopped.''

  Further in quotes:

       ``So far I haven't seen anything that convinces me that 
     it's all that big,'' he added.
       Asked whether he had discussed his opinion with Clinton, 
     Goldwater replied, ``I didn't call the White House. I don't 
     even have the number.''
       ``I just think it's time to let the President be President 
     and stop nitpicking on a thing called Whitewater or White 
     River. They tell me it's a good fishing place. That's about 
     the only thing good I've heard about it.''

  And a final quote, Mr. President. Senator Goldwater concluded his 
press conference by stating:

       ``In Watergate there was the matter of a President telling 
     lies. That hasn't happened to my knowledge yet,'' he said. 
     ``I haven't heard of anything done since he's been in office 
     that might be worthy of an investigation.''

  Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Associated Press 
article be printed in the Record.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

               [From the Associated Press, Mar. 16, 1994]

                  Goldwater: Get Off President's Back

                            (By Neil Bibler)

       Paradise Valley.--Washington should knock off the clamor 
     over Whitewater and let President Clinton do the job he was 
     elected to do, former Sen. Barry Goldwater said Wednesday.
       ``I want to urge my Republican friends in Washington, and 
     those Democrats who are participating, to get off his back 
     and let him be president,'' the 1964 Republican presidential 
     nominee told a news conference at his mountainside home above 
     Phoenix.
       Republicans led the call for appointment of a special 
     prosecutor and have been demanding congressional hearings 
     into the Clintons' investment in the Whitewater Development 
     Corp. in Arkansas and its ties to a failed savings and loan. 
     A federal grand jury is looking into the matter in Little 
     Rock, and 10 administration officials have been subpoenaed to 
     testify in Washington.
       Goldwater, who retired from the Senate in 1987, said he 
     called the news conference because ``it's something that has 
     been kind of bugging me for the last week.''
       ``The president needs our help more than he needs our 
     stonewalling him all the time,'' Goldwater said. ``My whole 
     concern is that if there's not more to it than what we've 
     heard, I want those people in Washington that are giving the 
     president a bad time to get off his back.
       ``It's making it awful hard to be president,'' Goldwater 
     said. ``I don't think the country's too much in favor of 
     what's going on. I think they'd like to have it stopped.
       ``So far I haven't seen anything that convinces me that 
     it's all that big,'' he added.
       Asked whether he had discussed his opinion with Clinton, 
     Goldwater replied, ``I didn't call the White House. I don't 
     even have the number.''
       ``I just think it's time to let the president be president 
     and stop nitpicking on a thing called Whitewater or White 
     River. They tell me it's a good fishing place. That's about 
     the only thing good I've heard about it,'' he added.
       Goldwater resisted questions comparing Whitewater with 
     Watergate, the scandal that began with an apparently minor 
     breakin but ultimately brought down President Nixon.
       ``In Watergate there was the matter of a president telling 
     lies. That hasn't happened to my knowledge yet,'' he said. 
     ``I haven't heard of any thing (Clinton's) done since he's 
     been in office that might be worthy of an investigation.''
       Asked whether the Whitewater affair was hampering Clinton's 
     health care reform program, Goldwater said that ``I think 
     he's going to have a tough time getting his health care bill 
     through. There will be some parts that will pass but not the 
     whole thing.''

                           *   *   *   *   *

       On another subject, Goldwater said he wouldn't endorse 
     Democratic U.S. Rep. Karan English a second time.
       Goldwater broke with his party's candidate and endorsed 
     English in the 1992 election in which she became the first 
     person to hold the new 6th Congressional District seat.
       Asked whether he's had second thoughts about endorsing her, 
     Goldwater replied, ``I sure as hell wouldn't do it again.''
       ``She hasn't voted right,'' he added, declining to 
     elaborate.

  Mr. PRYOR. Mr. President, I would also like to state where a lot of 
this information apparently is coming from. I would like to state at 
least what is happening on one small front that I think we need to look 
at.
  I would like for us to look at a tax-exempt organization--I repeat 
that--a tax-exempt organization which is known as Citizens United, and 
we would like to look at this organization for a moment this afternoon, 
Mr. President, to see what Citizens United is, why it has a tax-exempt 
status, what they are doing and the individual who runs Citizens 
United.
  Let me tell you, Mr. President, who that individual is who runs 
Citizens United. His name is Floyd Brown. Let me repeat it. Floyd 
Brown. We are going to be hearing a lot about Mr. Brown in the coming 
weeks ahead because Mr. Brown operates a factory in this area, Mr. 
President. It is a unique factory. It is a sleaze factory. And this 
particular sleaze factory which has been given tax-exempt status, is a 
factory which today is pouring out venom, hate, lies, and poison. Here 
we have an article in the Arkansas Democrat Gazette, dated yesterday.
  I ask unanimous consent that this particular article be printed in 
the Record.
  There being no objection, the article was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

               [From the Democrat-Gazette, Mar. 16, 1994]

              Conservative Hands Out Volumes on Whitewater

                          (By Jane Fullerton)

       Washington.--Do you need a copy of Bill and Hillary 
     Clinton's income tax returns for the past decade?
       Or perhaps you are looking for some obscure documents from 
     land transactions involved in the Whitewater Development 
     Corp. controversy.
       Or maybe you simply want to review some of the bond 
     activities of the Arkansas Development Finance Authority.
       To get any of these documents, just call Floyd Brown.
       He'll be happy to provide them at no cost, especially if 
     you're a journalist or a Republican member of Congress.
       Brown is the conservative activist best known for producing 
     the infamous ``Willie Horton ad'' that generated controversy 
     during the 1988 presidential campaign.
       Now, Brown has turned his attention to Whitewater.
       For months, Brown and his organization, Citizens United, 
     have been funneling information and documents to reporters 
     and Republican congressional aides researching the Whitewater 
     affair.
       His operatives have made several trips to Arkansas to 
     unearth the financial and legal documents surrounding the 
     Marion County land venture of the Clintons and James and 
     Susan McDougal.
       So Tuesday, Brown made it easier for reporters covering 
     Whitewater.
       He held a ``Whitewater press briefing'' at the National 
     Press Club in Washington and offered his opinions about what 
     angles reporters might examine.
       But the real attraction was the documents--huge stacks of 
     them.
       Brown and his associates gladly handed out reams of 
     documents as thick as the Little Rock telephone book to eager 
     reporters who grabbed them up like goodies.
       For reporters, what Brown provided was a treasure trove of 
     information--information they could not readily obtain 
     without great effort and expense.
       Here were the Clintons' tax summaries and tax returns from 
     1980-92.
       Here were ``Whitewater Related Documents'' that included 
     land deeds and canceled checks and loan agreements.
       Here were hundreds of sought-after documents that would 
     take weeks to accumulate, not to mention having to make a 
     trip to Arkansas.
       Brown even included a handy chronology of Whitewater-
     related events, a breakdown of all the potential criminal 
     violations that could be involved and suggested questions for 
     reporters to pursue.
       Reporters were skeptical about Brown's motivation, given 
     his partisan predisposition.
       ``This is not a personal campaign, at all,'' he insisted. 
     ``It's just a desire for the American people to have the 
     truth.''

  Mr. PRYOR. Mr. President, the headline of this article yesterday 
states ``Conservative Hands Out Volumes on Whitewater.'' It tells about 
Mr. Floyd Brown. It gives his past. And, I might say, Mr. President, it 
is a pretty interesting past.
  In fact, in a New York Times article about this particular 
organization and this individual, the Times wrote most recently that 
Mr. Brown briefed Republican aides on the House Judiciary Committee on 
Whitewater sometime in the first week of March 1994. That was in the 
Times.
  According to Time magazine, on May 10, 1993, Mr. President, ``Mr. 
Brown has used his syndicated talk show and Citizens United as a means 
of bashing Hillary Clinton,'' and I quote,

       The Republican consultant told a network newscaster that 
     his job was to make sure that Hillary Clinton is discredited 
     before the 1996 campaign. Each day anti-Hillary talking 
     points go out to talk show hosts. Many of the stories are 
     attributed to the Secret Service in an attempt to give the 
     tales credibility.

  Time magazine, Mr. President, May 10, 1993.
  Let us look at October 11, 1993. And I will quote from CNN's Inside 
Politics. Brown's organization, Citizens United--once again, Mr. 
President, tax exempt--``has been involved in trying to stop the 
Clinton health care reform plan by joining Citizens Against Rationing 
Health, a far-right organization opposed to health care reform. What 
the Clinton plan will do is basically set up a group of gatekeepers, 
kind of like Government-mandated Dr. Kevorkians, that will keep people 
from getting the health care that they really need.''
  That is from CNN's Inside Politics, October 11, 1993.
  Mr. President, Floyd Brown is currently president of a Virginia-
based, nonprofit, tax-exempt organization called Citizens United. We 
are going to hear a lot about this particular group in the next several 
days because they are part of the poison factory, spewing out the 
poison and hatred, the discontent that we see coming on too many 
occasions on the floor of the U.S. Senate.
  Mr. President, I hope that our colleagues, and I hope that our 
country, will realize exactly what is going on. I think that they will. 
I think that when the majority leader cites the CBS poll of some 10 
nights ago where 78 percent of the American people who were polled on 
that particular evening about this Whitewater episode, when 78 percent 
of those polled maintain that they believe that this was an attempt for 
the Republican Party to gain favor politically, I think, Mr. President, 
that pretty well says it all.
  But I would like our colleagues to know that for too long and for too 
many times we on this side of the aisle have allowed our colleagues on 
the Republican side of the aisle to make accusations, speeches, 
innuendos and halftruths about this matter. No longer will those 
statements go unattended or unchallenged or unmet.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  Several Senators addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Arizona.
  Mr. DeCONCINI. Mr. President, I thank the Chair.
  I thank my friend from Arkansas for pointing out a number of things.
  First of all, Mr. President, there is no question what is behind this 
proposed resolution. It is politics. Politics is a part of our game and 
part of our whole process here. But this is not the time to play 
politics.
  My former colleague, whom I had the pleasure of serving 10 years 
with, has been the subject of remarks by the Senator from Arkansas.
  Mr. D'AMATO. Mr. President, will my colleague yield to me for a 
moment, and then I will yield right back to him.
  Mr. DeCONCINI. Well, just a minute.
  Mr. D'AMATO. Well, OK. I will tell you and I will ask the 
Parliamentarian as it relates to recognition of a Senator on the floor, 
a ranking member managing of the bill should have been recognized after 
the Senator from Arkansas was recognized.
  Am I correct in making a parliamentary inquiry?
  Mr. DeCONCINI. Mr. President, who has the floor?
  Mr. D'AMATO. I am making a parliamentary inquiry.
  Mr. DeCONCINI. Who has the floor, Mr. President?
  Mr. D'AMATO. I have a right to make a parliamentary inquiry.
  Mr. DeCONCINI. Mr. President, this Senator has the floor, does he 
not?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Senators, withhold, please.
  The Senator from Arizona has the floor.
  If both Senators speak at the same time, the Senator who is managing 
the bill does have priority. I heard the Senator from Arizona first.
  Mr. DeCONCINI. I thank the Chair.
  Mr. D'AMATO. I would have yielded the floor, if I might, to the 
Senator from Arizona.
  But that is incorrect.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Arizona has the floor.
  Mr. DeCONCINI. I thank the Chair.
  Mr. President, I say to my good friend from New York--and he is my 
good friend--that I think this just shows the emotions that are created 
on Whitewater. People such as the Senator from New York, who is an 
astute politician and a distinguished Senator, gets so upset about this 
because of the politics. And that is what we are talking about here. We 
are talking about pure politics.
  I thank the Chair for recognizing me. The occupant of the chair was 
looking in this direction. He saw I was up waiting for the Senator from 
Arkansas to finish and he called on me. And that is no violation of any 
rule or precedent, and the Senator from New York, I am sure, will 
agree.

  Mr. President, what we are talking about here is the former senior 
Senator from Arizona, Senator Goldwater, and several statements that he 
made yesterday which were read into the Record. I am going to submit 
the full article that appeared in the Arizona Republic today--that is 
the morning newspaper--by John Sidener.
  The Senator from Arkansas has already read quotes from the article 
about getting off the President's back and letting him do his job.

       Goldwater said he summoned the media to his home because 
     the brouhaha over Whitewater has been ``bugging me for the 
     last week.''
       ``I haven't heard anything yet that says this is all that 
     big of a deal,'' he said. ``It's making it awful hard for him 
     to be president. I just wish they'd get off his back.''

  Senator Goldwater goes on and says things I think are worthwhile to 
read to all of my colleagues because we all hold Senator Goldwater in 
the highest esteem.

       The former senator said he made his comments of his own 
     volition. Clinton had not asked him for support, nor had he 
     spoken to the president, he said.
       ``I don't have their phone number, and they haven't called 
     me,'' he said of the Clintons.
       ``I haven't talked to them for months.''
       He said he does not believe that Hillary Rodham Clinton has 
     done anything unforgivable.
       The first lady once pointed out to Goldwater that, in the 
     formative years of her political career, she had worked as a 
     volunteer in his 1964 presidential campaign as a Goldwater 
     Girl.
       ``She's a good woman,'' Goldwater said. ``I think the 
     president is smart enough to listen to her.''
       Arizona's elder statesman said that Whitewater critics are 
     holding Clinton to an unrealistically high standard.
       ``Not many presidents could meet that standard,'' he said. 
     ``I know I couldn't.''
       Goldwater said that a time comes to set politics aside for 
     the country's best interest.

  ``This country is a''--blank, and you can figure out what that word 
is.

       ``This country is a (blank) sight more important than the 
     Republican Party or the Democratic Party,'' he said. ``It's 
     time to stop nitpicking this thing called Whitewater.''

  Mr. President, here is a spokesman of the Republican Party making it 
very, very clear what Whitewater is all about. Senator Goldwater was 
not afraid to stand up and tell his former Republican colleagues and 
former Democratic colleagues that they should resist the political 
expedience of what we see going on here day after day after day after 
day-- attacks against the President and the First Lady and this 
administration. He does not call it anything but what it is.
  And who could put it any better than the former Senator from Arizona? 
It is politics. And that is what it is and the American public needs to 
know that is what it is.
  If that is what they like, they are going to get plenty of it. But I 
daresay the American public is sick and tired of it. They are sick and 
tired of this constant bickering. They are sick and tired of this 
constant stonewalling, and I think it is being done because the 
Republicans do not have any program for jobs, any program to reduce the 
deficit, any program to turn this country toward an investment; any 
program to keep interest rates down, any program to do something about 
transportation, any program to do something about housing, any program 
to do something about creating capital.
  If that is where we are going, that is the way it will be. It will be 
at the hands of the Republicans, who decided: Let us make all the 
political hay we can.
  I am sending to the desk the particular article and I ask unanimous 
consent it be printed in the Record.
  There being no objection, the articles were ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

               [From the Arizona Republic, Mar. 17, 1994]

             Goldwater Tells GOP to Get Off Clinton's Back

                         (By Jonathan Sidener)

       Former Sen. Barry Goldwater has chastised his Republican 
     colleagues for fanning a controversy over the Whitewater 
     affair that has dogged the Clinton administration for weeks.
       ``The people elected Bill Clinton president, and I urge my 
     Republican friends in Washington and the Democrats who joined 
     them to get off his back and let him be president,'' 
     Goldwater said Wednesday morning at a news conference on his 
     Paradise Valley lawn.
       Goldwater said he summoned the media to his home because 
     the brouhaha over Whitewater has been ``bugging me for the 
     last week.''
       ``I haven't heard anything yet that says this is all that 
     big of a deal,'' he said. ``It's making it awful hard for him 
     to be president. I just wish they'd get off his back.''
       Goldwater has, in recent years, repeatedly strayed from the 
     party line when voicing his opinions. He supported Clinton's 
     policies on gays in the military, endorsed Rep. Karan 
     English, a Democrat, in the 1992 6th District congressional 
     race, and spoke out in favor of a Phoenix gay-rights 
     ordinance.
       The former senator said he made his comments of his own 
     volition. Clinton had not asked him for support, nor had he 
     spoken to the president, he said.
       ``I don't have their phone number, and they haven't called 
     me,'' he said of the Clintons.
       ``I haven't talked to them for months.''
       He said he does not believe that Hillary Rodham Clinton has 
     done anything unforgivable.
       The first lady once pointed out to Goldwater that, in the 
     formative years of her political career, she had worked as a 
     volunteer in his 1964 presidential campaign as a Goldwater 
     Girl.
       ``She's a good woman, Goldwater said. ``I think the 
     president is smart enough to listen to her.''
       Arizona's elder statesman said that Whitewater critics are 
     holding Clinton to an unrealistically high standard.
       ``Not many presidents could meet that standard,'' he said. 
     ``I know I couldn't.''
       Goldwater said that a time comes to set politics aside for 
     the country's best interest.
       ``This country is a damn sight more important than the 
     Republican Party or the Democratic Party,'' he said. ``It's 
     time to stop nitpicking this thing called Whitewater.''
       Goldwater said his views might put him at odds with Sen. 
     John McCain and other leaders of his own party.
       ``You know something? I don't give a damn,'' said the man 
     who once advised President Nixon to resign.
       ``I've been in the leadership of my own party, too. I think 
     it's time for some of the senior voices in the party to speak 
     up.''
       He did say that he would not endorse English again because 
     ``she hasn't voted the right way.''
       Goldwater said he has no plans to leave the GOP, even if 
     his views sometimes stray from the mainstream.
       ``Hell, no,'' he said. ``I've been a Republican all my 
     life, and I don't plan to change. I think this (the comment 
     on Whitewater) is a very conservative position.''
       Goldwater, 85, said his comments were directed at 
     politicians, not the media. The latter were beyond 
     redemption, he implied.
       ``Now, don't get me started on the media,'' he told the 
     lawnful of reporters.
       Goldwater emphatically limited his comments to Whitewater. 
     He was asked repeatedly about the recent appearance of his 
     grandson, Ty Ross, in the premiere issue of POZ, a national 
     magazine for people infected with the AIDS virus or who have 
     full-blown acquired immune deficiency syndrome.
       ``That's none of my damn business,'' Goldwater responded 
     each time he was asked.

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Arizona.
  Mr. DeCONCINI. I thank the Chair.
  (The remarks of Mr. DeConcini and Mr. Warner pertaining to the 
introduction of S. 1948 are located in today's Record under 
``Statements on Introduced Bills and Joint Resolutions.'')
  Several Senators addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Who yields time?
  Mr. D'AMATO. I think the Senator from Arizona should have had the 
floor.
  Mr. DeCONCINI. Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New York.
  Mr. D'AMATO. Mr. President, let me attempt in some way to answer some 
of this broad salvo, because it was a salvo we got. There was an ocean 
of attempts to obfuscate what we are concerned about and what we are 
doing.
  My colleagues would have you believe that if there was a Republican--
if it were George Bush in the White House, in the same circumstances, 
with a special prosecutor--they would not be calling for, or having, 
congressional hearings.
  Let me tell you something. You would have a half a dozen of them 
going. Does anyone here believe Chairman Gonzalez in the House of 
Representatives would not want to hold a hearing? You do not believe 
you would have hearings going on here, and you would vote unanimously 
on that side to have hearings? I say it is politics. You better believe 
it.
  It is politics. If you have a Republican in the White House, you call 
hearings at the drop of a hat--look at Silverado and Neil Bush. They 
had law enforcement investigations there: Bring him in; bring him in; 
load it up. But, ``Oh, no; oh, no; this is political if the Republicans 
say we want a hearing.''
  Let me tell you, this is a canard--that you cannot gain anything 
unless you immunize, unless you exercise the power to immunize. We say 
we will not grant immunity. Why will we not grant immunity? Because we 
have learned from Iran-Contra. We have agreed not to do that.
  When you say you will not learn anything, I say to you, without even 
swearing in a witness, without granting immunity, our Senate Banking 
Committee learned for the first time of the secret meetings that were 
going on--meetings that are improper on their face; improper. And the 
general counsel of the Treasury, she should be out. She did not have 
one meeting, or two meetings, but three meetings. I would like to know, 
and I say right here on the floor, how many regulators did she 
influence? Did she meet with the RTC people and tell them not to go 
forward? Or the OTS? Did she meet with the OTS people? I would like to 
know who, if anyone, steered them away from doing what they are 
supposed to be doing. That is what we have a right and a responsibility 
to find out.
  Not unlike Watergate. Not unlike when John Dean said that 
administration plan was to claim that we are cooperating. Now you are 
cooperating. What were they going to do? Turn down the special 
counsel's subpoena? That great cooperation. The White House circulated 
a memo, ``Do not burn anything.'' Oh, that is terrific. It is great PR. 
But the fact remains--they held secret meetings; the chief of staff's 
office arranged some of them. The White House counsel participated in 
all of them. Mrs. Clinton's chief of staff--what was she doing there? 
What was she doing there? The questions remain.
  About the President, my friend, Barry Goldwater, said: ``I do not 
know of wrongdoing.'' Well, maybe Barry Goldwater does not know the 
President said, regarding the fact that his name and Mrs. Clinton's 
name were mentioned in a criminal referral, that he does not remember 
who told him.
  I have to tell you something. Maybe the President would not remember 
that. I do not know how many people come up to the President casually 
and say, ``By the way, Mr. President, your name and Mrs. Clinton's are 
mentioned in a criminal referral.'' And he would not remember that? 
Someone just told him? Let us get serious about this. Who would 
approach the President with something like that? Do you mean to tell me 
if somebody came up to you and told you your name was mentioned in a 
criminal referral, you would not remember when they told you and who 
told you? You would not forget it.
  You want to talk about the truth? Come on, let us get real. Politics, 
the politics of saying ``no.'' Just say ``no, no, no.'' That is what 
the President said: ``No, no, no.''
  Now, look; who controls the committees here? You want to talk about 
getting the crime bill finished? Let us get it going.
  The Democrats control the House of Representatives and the Senate. 
Why do you not have a crime bill? Do not blame the fact that you do not 
have a crime bill on our asking some questions. We have not taken up 
that much time of this Congress. We have not. We are not stopping the 
crime bill.
  Welfare reform? I want welfare reform and I will be happy to work 
with any administration--as well as a good crime bill--any 
administration, Democrat or Republican, liberal or conservative. We 
want workfare, not welfare. We want to see to it we put the hoods in 
jail--not just ``three strikes and you're out,'' which on the Federal 
level would have affected 360 crimes in 1992.
  You have good sloganeering, but do not blame us because you do not 
have a crime bill. The Democrats control the White House; the Democrats 
control, the last I saw, the Congress, the House of Representatives; 
and the Democrats control the Senate. So do not blame us because you 
have not had any legislative action. It is your own inability, and do 
not blame us for gridlock.
  What about your health plan? Your health plan begins to fall because, 
why? People are asking about mandates, about costs: Reasonable people, 
reasonable questions. I have not seen Republicans obstructing the 
health care plan. Put it forward, put it on the floor. You control all 
the committees. You run them with an iron fist.
  The Democrats say, ``No, no, no.'' The Democrats say, ``No, we won't 
have any hearings.'' So do not complain about legislative inaction. You 
control both Houses. You have the White House. You do not have a health 
care plan because you cannot agree on one yourselves. And then we are 
supposed to, it is suggested, roll over.
  Let me tell you something, we hear reports of the President's private 
counsel, saying to some insiders, ``Oh, well, maybe there's a tax 
liability. They owe some taxes. That's all I can see.''
  Well, is that not interesting? The President has no problem raising 
taxes on middle-class families and others, but it seems he has some 
problems maybe paying his fair share. So we begin the process--call it 
political immunization. They get people ready for the fact they may owe 
taxes, just like that is a willy-nilly thing. Oh, yeah.
  Let us talk about immunity. John Dean was not granted immunity during 
Watergate and he testified. He was convicted and he brought about some 
other convictions. John Mitchell, John Erlichman, Bob Haldeman--all of 
these people who eventually went to jail precisely because they were 
not granted immunity. When the majority leader comes and says, ``Oh, 
no, unless you grant immunity, you are going to wreck this; you must 
have that ability,'' that is not the case.
  If somebody wants to invoke the fifth amendment, let them take the 
fifth. We want properly structured hearings. Let me tell you, Senator 
Cohen and I met with Bob Fiske. I said, ``Senator Dole, I would like my 
friend and colleague, Bill Cohen, to be there because he has had 
experience in these hearings, and Sheila Burke,'' and they were both 
there.
  He will speak to that meeting as he has observed it but I want you to 
know, Mr. Fiske said to us we minimized his concerns greatly. He 
thanked us for our cooperation because we said we would not grant 
immunity. That would be our recommendation to prospective witnesses. 
Second, we would structure them. He said he wanted the ability to call 
witnesses first before we did. We said absolutely. We saw no problems 
as it related to that. And he concluded by saying: ``As a prosecutor, I 
have to say that I'm not in favor of you going forward, but I 
understand that you have your responsibility and that we have ours.''
  That is absolutely the case.
  I could say a lot more, and I will at another time. But I will say 
this: While Mr. Fiske's primary responsibility is to see if there are 
any laws broken, criminal or civil--and he has the ability to pursue 
civil charges--we have an absolute oversight obligation. We have to see 
if there has been an abuse of power, and that is not necessarily 
covered in his charter.
  An abuse of power, although wrong and although something the people 
might decry, is not necessarily criminal. But people have a right to 
know. People have a right to know, and the special counsel may not get 
an answer for 2 or 3 years, if at all. That is something that they have 
a right to know as soon as possible, and that is why we have to have 
oversight.
  Yes, secret meetings, yes, people being told or steered away from 
pursuing an investigation. It may not come down to obstruction of 
justice--it may be mighty close--but it is something that just smells 
bad. Because when you may have a tilt of the justice system one way or 
the other because of political power of the executive, it is within 
Congress' responsibility to investigate, and the Supreme Court has said 
that on innumerable occasions.
  Let me recite an informative quote. And I quote:

       A central function of democracy is to allow a free people 
     to drag realities out into the sunlight and demand a full 
     accounting from those who are permitted to hold and exercise 
     power. Congress provides a forum for disclosing

  Congress provides a forum for disclosing.

     the hidden aspects of governmental conduct.

  That is a quote from ``Men of Zeal,'' a book written by my colleague, 
Senator Cohen, and the majority leader. It does not say that Congress 
has an obligation to do this only when there is a Republican in the 
White House. It does not say it has an obligation to do it only when 
there is a Democrat in the White House or whether it is a Republican 
Congress or a Democratic Congress. It says that Congress has that 
obligation to provide a forum for disclosing the ``hidden aspects of 
governmental conduct.''
  It was the conduct of the administration that has brought to the 
attention of the Members of the Congress the need, No. 1, for a special 
counsel. It was the conduct of the administration in learning of the 
secret meetings and other disturbing facts too numerous to enunciate, 
and that when the people begin to understand and see, you will see 
public opinion polls--and by the way, I did not know we were going to 
run Government by public opinion polls. I did not know that that was 
the way we decided whether we should conduct an investigation or 
whether one was valid. Because if you were to look at the opinion polls 
in the days of Iran-Contra and Watergate in the beginning, people said, 
``Listen, we have important things on the agenda,'' and I agree we have 
important things.
  Let us hold our oversight hearings and if we have a crime bill 
finished up, let us act on that. And if we have welfare reform ready to 
go, let us act on that. This need not conflict.
  Let us do the business of the people. Let us not throw out this 
nonsense that, oh, this is a political witch hunt, a political circus. 
It is a circus and it is being made and turned into a circus 
deliberately by opponents of hearings. As John Dean said back in the 
Watergate days, the White House had a formula. And that formula was to 
say ``cooperate'' and yet cry ``politics'' when the Congress begins to 
look into the situation.
  I suggest to you that that parallel today is rather startling. That 
is exactly what is taking place. We say we are cooperating, and yet 
they cry ``politics'' when people come forth and are ready to structure 
reasonable hearings and undertake the constitutional responsibilities 
that the Congress has.
  I yield the floor.
  Mr. COHEN addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Dorgan). The Chair recognizes the Senator 
from Maine, Senator Cohen.
  Mr. COHEN. Thank you, Mr. President.
  Mr. President, I take the floor this afternoon not only to offer my 
support for the resolution that has been offered by Senators Dole and 
D'Amato, but to respond as briefly as I can to the charge that was made 
last week and reiterated here again today that this is nothing but 
blatant partisan politics, an attempt on the part of Republicans to 
simply embarrass the President and the First Lady.
  I took that rather personally because I have tried over the last 21-
plus years never to engage in conduct that would be dismissed as 
partisan, or trying to undermine or embarrass a President.
  It was interesting what occurred last week. I was doing an interview 
in my office on another matter, and I was asked by a reporter for CNN 
what my advice would be to President Clinton. This was immediately 
following Mr. Nussbaum's resignation. I suggested to the reporter that 
the first thing I would do is call upon Lloyd Cutler, someone who would 
be the equivalent of a Howard Baker, whom President Reagan called upon 
when his administration came under attack. The situation in the Reagan 
White House was that things were in quite a bit of disarray. There was 
danger of his administration becoming paralyzed at that time, and he 
called upon an old friend, Howard Baker. I think Howard Baker lent an 
air of stability and responsibility to the White House at that time.

  I felt that was precisely what President Clinton needed at that 
moment in time. And I said that not as a partisan but as someone who 
wishes him well. I have worked, I think, fairly closely with President 
Clinton and Mrs. Clinton during the past year. I traveled with Mrs. 
Clinton once to Boston to a health care forum and I traveled again to 
Maine for another health care forum set up by my colleague, Senator 
Mitchell. I have been to the White House at least twice during the past 
year to try to work with the administration on a health care reform 
package, and I think we have made some real progress.
  Frankly, what I do not want is 3 years of my own work on health care 
reform to be derailed or go down the drain simply because of partisan 
bickering or backbiting, and I hope to be able to continue to work with 
President Clinton and Mrs. Clinton as they continue to push their 
health care reform package. We disagree on a couple of key and 
fundamental issues, but I certainly do not see my own efforts in this 
regard as in any way trying to embarrass them. I do not want to see 
that take place.
  I also heard our former colleague, Senator Goldwater, quoted today. 
What was not quoted was the fact that Congressman Lee Hamilton, someone 
who achieved considerable notoriety during the Iran-Contra 
investigation for his calm deliberation in searching for the facts and 
resisting the temptation to try to embarrass President Reagan which 
earned him quite a bit of respect not only from his colleagues but 
people around the country most recently acknowledged the need for 
hearings in this matter.
  I was asked recently on television, ``Isn't this just Republicans 
trying to pay back the Democrats?'' My answer is I am not trying to pay 
back the Democrats. I have a long list of things I could point to over 
the years that I found objectionable, but I have always resisted the 
temptation to try to engage in payback.
  I took time to point out that the New York Times, which the last time 
I checked was not in the hip pocket of the Republican Party, has called 
for inquiries into this matter. Indeed, the New York Times called 
editorially for hearings. The L.A. Times and a number of other 
mainstream publications, not conservative publications per se, are also 
calling for inquiries into this particular matter.
  I have not taken a role in this issue prior to the last week. I must 
say I was surprised about the events that surrounded Travelgate. I 
looked at that. I was not pleased with what I saw taking place with the 
firing of individuals in the White House for what appeared to be no 
apparent reason. I was not pleased with the State Department 
investigations. And I recall very vividly how, during the course of the 
campaign, someone was trying to investigate President Clinton's travel 
plans during his prior years, in an effort to embarrass him, and I 
objected strongly to that. There were hearings held on that issue.
  I must say I was also surprised about the handling of the Foster 
death, and yet I felt that was a matter that was beyond my area of 
expertise certainly and something that should be handled by the 
appropriate officials, even though I had doubts about the way in which 
that particular investigation was being conducted.
  I really did not become actively concerned about what was taking 
place until I saw the hearings that occurred in the Banking Committee 
recently where Senator D'Amato raised the issue about contacts between 
the Deputy Secretary of the Treasury and the White House. And that 
suddenly got my attention. I felt at a minimum Congress had a role to 
play in this matter; that there were questions being raised which 
needed to be addressed, and that they were not being adequately 
addressed at this time.
  I would like to go back and review my own role in Congress and also 
in the Senate because, once again, the charge is being made about 
partisan politics. I have been asked the question by several very 
prominent reporters, just this past day, why am I involved? Why did I 
attend a press conference with Senator D'Amato?
  First of all, let me say that Senator D'Amato spoke to Senator Dole 
and inquired whether it would be useful for me to attend a meeting with 
Mr. Fiske, and then Senator Dole contacted me. Senator D'Amato 
specifically asked me to attend, along with Sheila Burke, Senator 
Dole's chief of staff. I agreed, willingly, quite eagerly, as a matter 
of fact, to see whether or not there was a way that we could structure 
hearings without undermining Special Counsel Fiske's investigation.
  Let me just diverge here for a moment. In 1992, I stood on this 
floor, I suggest much to the chagrin of some of my colleagues on the 
Republican side, and I was very critical about the refusal to allow the 
reauthorization of the Independent Counsel Act. I remember standing in 
the well suggesting that Republicans would come to rue the day that we 
allowed the Independent Counsel Act to lapse because one day there 
might be a Democrat in the White House, one day there might be 
allegations raised against a Democrat administration and we would be 
just as interested in ferreting out any wrongdoing as if it were a 
Republican President sitting there.
  I mention that because, going back to the days of Watergate, I was 
serving on the House Impeachment Committee along with several of my 
colleagues who are not in the Chamber right now. There was tremendous 
pressure being directed my way saying, please, do not do anything to 
embarrass the President. Do not join with the Democrats or support 
their investigation. Do not vote with them on any issue that might in 
any way hamper the President or embarrass the President.
  I must tell you that as a freshman Congressman at that time those 
calls were, indeed, interesting, I guess is the best way I could 
characterize it. They were intensive. They were appealing, at least 
superficially. But ultimately I said that is not why I came here. I did 
not come here simply to abide by a party rule, to simply vote along 
party lines if I really did not believe it was the right thing to do. 
So I resisted the temptation then to simply line up with the party on 
an issue affecting the integrity of our Federal institutions.
  I was one of the first, if not the first, to join with the Democratic 
majority at that time to tell President Nixon that the edited 
transcripts were not sufficient. We asked for the tapes that had been 
disclosed. He handed us several large volumes of edited transcripts and 
said, ``This is all you are going to get.'' The Republicans at that 
time and the President's representatives asked me to support the 
President's actions, and I said no. We asked for the tapes. The tapes 
are more important than the transcripts because there is so much more 
you can hear and learn and understand when you hear the spoken word. 
Who is to say what ``expletive deleted'' really referred to? Who can 
understand what the inflection might be on a flat page? And when 
something is said in jest, it might come out as something quite 
different on paper as opposed to listening to it. So I felt there were 
a number of reasons why one could not accept the edited transcripts 
instead of the tapes themselves, and so I voted for the tapes.
  It was a serious issue at that time because it only prevailed by one 
vote. It was my vote.
  I mention this also in connection with Iran-Contra. When Iran-Contra 
occurred, the Select Committee on Intelligence, on which I was about to 
become the vice chairman, was called upon to conduct a preliminary 
inquiry into what occurred during Iran-Contra. President Reagan said, 
``I don't know what was going on''--on the part of some of my 
subordinates: Please conduct an inquiry and report back to me and to 
the public as quickly as possible.
  There was pressure to get something out quickly because the 
Presidency was being paralyzed. There were a lot of allegations: What 
did he know? When did he know it? Did he authorize the sale of weapons 
to Iran? Did he know about the diversion? Did he authorize it?
  All of these questions were surrounding the White House at that time 
and very little attention was being directed toward the policies that 
President Reagan wanted to carry out. So an appeal was made to get this 
report out quickly. And, frankly, I resisted that at the time. I 
resisted getting the report out quickly for the very reason that we had 
only transcribed, I think, 12 witnesses whose testimony was taken in 
secret when in fact there were at least 35 or 40, as I recall, 
witnesses whose testimony had yet to be transcribed. I said, ``We can't 
file a report when we haven't even read the testimony that was given to 
us in closed sessions. We better be much more careful and deliberate.'' 
And so I resisted the temptation to file a report. I worked with 
Senator Boren, who became chairman of the Intelligence Committee, and 
we produced about a 65-page report.
  It was about a month late as far as the White House was concerned. 
But, nonetheless, I think we spelled out the areas that would provide a 
basis for the Iran-Contra Committee to conduct its investigation.
  I mention all of this in addition to the fact that I helped write the 
Iran-Contra report that was very, very critical of the Reagan 
administration. I joined, as my colleague from New York has pointed 
out, with Senator Mitchell, who is a good friend of mine, in writing a 
book called ``Men of Zeal.''
  We pointed out the benefits of the hearings, the liabilities of the 
hearings, what we learned, and what we failed to learn. I did not 
hesitate to be critical in that particular book on issues I felt needed 
to be criticized.
  So I say this all by way of preface that I have not joined with 
Senator Dole and Senator D'Amato to come here and engage in any kind of 
a partisan attack on the President of the United States.
  I will say this to those who are listening and watching, I want 
President Clinton to succeed. I do not want to see his administration 
torn down. I disagree on a number of key issues with him. I hope to 
take the floor to debate those as they come about. But, I think the 
people of this country want him to succeed, as I do in his efforts to 
at least stimulate the debate, offer proposals, and let them be debated 
on the Senate and the House floors to see if we cannot pass legislation 
which is of interest to the people of this country.
  Senator D'Amato mentioned that Republicans are not holding up the 
crime bill. We are not holding up the health care bill. I have worked 
with Senator Chafee for 3\1/2\ years dealing with the issue of health 
care reform. Every single Thursday we meet to discuss legislation, to 
draft it, to consider it so we can have a viable alternative and work 
with the President of the United States who finds the Chafee proposal I 
think quite responsible and maybe a basis for arriving at an achievable 
health care plan. I do not want to see any of it derailed.
  But I do come back to the point, why these hearings? The issue of 
politics has been raised, and indeed there is something political about 
this. This goes to the heart of our political system; namely, the rule 
of law. We always say that a rule of law applies to all of man; that 
there should not be one rule for Presidents, another rule for paupers; 
there should not be one for those who govern, another rule for those 
who are governed; and there should not be a separate rule for 
Republicans and another one for Democrats. It is the rule of law that 
we all cherish.
  In this particular case I think the political process has been turned 
upside down, inverted. Last fall when there were calls for a 
congressional inquiry into allegations of impropriety or wrongdoing--
and I want to say here for the record that I do not believe I have 
heard any allegations directed toward the President or the First Lady 
that involve criminal wrongdoing--those calls for hearings were 
blunted. They were resisted. They were ``stonewalled.''
  The Republicans then said we have to have a hearing. How about a 
special prosecutor? Some of them were the very same Republicans, I 
might add, who were not in favor of an independent counsel law and the 
act was allowed to expire. But, nonetheless, they suggested a special 
counsel because there was no alternative opened to the minority at that 
time.
  Do I think this should be a matter of criminal investigation? I do 
not. I think this was initially--I still think it today--properly a 
matter for a congressional inquiry as to how our public institutions 
were being handled. Were they being used properly or abused? Was there 
any impropriety?
  This is something that I think could have been clarified rather 
quickly had the administration only come forward initially, and said, 
``Here is everything.'' I have always been of the opinion that, if you 
have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear. All you have to do is 
say, ``Ladies and gentleman, here are the papers. Here is what we know, 
and please conduct your inquiry.'' Yes, there may be some momentary 
embarrassment, and no one wants to see members of their administration 
be called before a committee to be interrogated by Members. And, yes, 
there is always the potential for some Members to become explosive or 
volatile. We all have different temperaments. Mine is not the same as 
my colleague and friend from New York or Michigan.
  But, nonetheless, the cameras are there to witness, to televise. 
People can judge whether or not you are taking unfair advantage of a 
process, whether you are trying to score political points, whether you 
are merely engaged in nasty partisan politics to embarrass somebody. 
The camera tells you that.
  So I think that what should have taken place was a congressional 
hearing into those allegations. Allow the minority to have its chance 
to question the administration officials, and be done with it. But that 
did not happen. As a result, what did happen is that we have documents 
being withheld, we have documents being shifted to Arkansas, and we 
have allegations now about shredding after the appointment of a special 
prosecutor.
  I say to what end? To what end has this been going on? Let me just 
submit to you, I do not know if anything is there. I rather doubt it. I 
think we may find conflicts of interest on inquiring into the events 
that took place here in Washington. I think there may have been some 
breaches of ethical rules. I think there may be an issue of back taxes.
  Nothing in my judgment that I have heard today would warrant a 
political beheading--nothing. But I do think the allegations are 
serious enough and have raised themselves to a level of concern that 
Congress ought to exercise its congressional oversight 
responsibilities.
  So now we come to the question that if it is not that big a deal, why 
are we conducting a criminal investigation? Why was there not a 
congressional inquiry into allegations of inappropriate conduct? 
Instead now we have a criminal investigation, and indeed this 
particular special counsel has both criminal and civil responsibility.
  I do not want to get too technical about it this afternoon, but that 
gets very complicated because we are about to reauthorize the 
independent counsel act. If we pass an independent counsel act, unless 
it is modified, Mr. Fiske will not be allowed to be appointed as 
independent counsel. If we do allow him to hold that position, he would 
have only criminal jurisdiction, not civil.
  So we have taken a process, and we have turned it upside down on its 
head. I am told that one of the strategies now is, once the criminal 
investigation has been completed, and they find no criminal liability 
attached to the President or the First Lady or top officials, that will 
be the end of it; no more need to deal with Congress; the issue has 
been settled.
  I do not think it is going to be a successful strategy to simply say 
let the process go forward until he completes his full investigation.
  I do not think that will be successful for a variety of reasons based 
upon my experience in dealing with Watergate and Iran-Contra.
  I have found that over the years when you have a situation when there 
appears to be stonewalling or a lack of cooperation, or a holding back 
of documents, you will have a trickle of allegations. The trickle will 
eventually build into a stream. The stream will then turn into a river. 
And you will see a river of allegations, many of which are completely 
irresponsible, many of which are completely unsubstantiated, and they 
will grab headlines that will cause the stock markets to rise and fall. 
That is going to continue in this case until you get the facts out.
  Those on the majority side say you cannot have a congressional 
inquiry now or in the near future because we want to make sure Mr. 
Fiske is allowed to continue his investigation unimpeded by Congress. 
That is precisely why I agreed to join with Senator D'Amato, and Ms. 
Burke on behalf of Senator Dole, to meet with Mr. Fiske, to explore 
whether there is a way in which Congress can meet its congressional 
responsibilities without interfering with yours?
  I must tell you that I came away with an entirely different 
interpretation than my colleague from Michigan [Mr. Riegle], has. I 
have the transcript here. He has a copy as well.
  Let me tell you what I came away with from that particular meeting. 
Mr. Fiske took the position that he would prefer no hearings 
whatsoever. That is to be expected. No prosecutor wants to have to deal 
with a Congress calling witnesses and, conceivably, compromising the 
integrity of his investigation. But what he said to Senator D'Amato, 
Miss Burke, and myself, was that he felt he could complete his 
investigation into this aspect of the allegations, namely, the misuse 
or abuse of Federal institutions within a few weeks. He said if he 
could deal with those issues initially, he thought he could complete 
his interrogation of witnesses and his investigation within a few 
weeks. If we waited a few weeks, and if we did not grant immunity and 
if we did not reveal the contents of the RTC criminal referral, he 
would not object to us holding a hearing for those limited purposes at 
that time.
  That, to me, was a very reasonable request. It was a very responsible 
request on his part, and I thought we responded in kind. I said, ``A 
few weeks? Why do you not take a month, or how about 2 months. We do 
not want to pressure you unduly.'' At the end of that 2 months, we 
should be prepared to hold an inquiry. We would not undermine his case. 
He said that he would have no objection under those circumstances. I 
will read it to you:

       I have told Senator Riegle, and I have told Senators 
     D'Amato and Cohen that when we are finished with the 
     investigation of the meetings between the Treasury officials 
     and the White House, which I am confident we can be finished 
     with faster than the underlying investigation, we would have 
     no objection to congressional investigations at that point so 
     long as something can be done to protect the contents of the 
     RTC.

  He repeated that later. Senator Riegle will quote from the document, 
and he comes to a different conclusion. What Mr. Fiske represented to 
me and Senator D'Amato and Miss Burke was that if we abided by those 
rules, he would have no objection--understanding that his preference 
would be no hearings at all. If you do not allow congressional hearings 
at all, we have to wait until he completes the entire investigation. 
When will that be? He cannot tell you. Will it be 6 months, a year, or 
2 years? He has no way of judging that, nor should we try to force him 
to say how long that will take. In any event, it will take a 
considerable period of time.
  In the meantime, these allegations will continue to surface and cause 
headlines, and there will be continuous demands on our side for 
hearings. That, I think, in the long run, will impede the ability of 
the President to focus on his agenda. So I have a different perspective 
on this. I think hearings will be helpful. A journalist asked me on 
television over the weekend, ``Then you are trying to help the 
President?'' I think it was asked in jest, but the answer to that is, 
yes, I am trying to help him, much as I publicly recommended the 
appointment of Lloyd Cutler. I felt that would be helpful to his 
administration.
  I think it would be helpful in this case to get the allegations out 
of the way in a very short timeframe. Then let Mr. Fiske come back with 
a decision as to whether or not the taxpayers have been defrauded out 
$50 million worth of tax dollars, or whether there has been any 
liability to be accounted for at a later time.
  I see this resolution in two parts: First, a preliminary inquiry, or 
at least an inquiry directed toward the allegations surrounding the use 
or misuse of Federal institutions now, not back in 1982 with what took 
place in Arkansas. Do it now and not wait until the end of Mr. Fiske's 
investigation. Second, let Mr. Fiske go ahead on his own on the 
allegations of what took place in Arkansas.
  It has also been suggested to me that there is a strategy at work 
here. If Mr. Fiske completes his investigation in a few weeks, or 
within a month or two, he would then file an interim report, completely 
absolving the White House of any ethical wrongdoing whatsoever and then 
that would take the entire issue away. One of the dangers in that is 
that life does not work that way. Any prosecutor who were to file an 
interim report based upon a few weeks of investigation and say: I find 
no wrongdoing whatsoever, or minimal wrongdoing, or whatever conclusion 
he might reach, will find that there will be other allegations that 
will surface. They are bound to surface. It will take weeks or months, 
but they will eventually surface, and it will call into question the 
professionalism of his investigation. I think the notion that an 
interim report is going to satisfy everybody is not going to work, and 
it would do damage to Mr. Fiske's own reputation. And I know he is the 
last person who would want that.
  I come back to the point, Mr. President, that I think the White House 
really has not handled this well. Some of it may be due to the fact 
that they have inexperienced individuals. In today's Washington Times, 
I notice a quote attributed to Chuck Manatt, former chairman of the 
Democratic National Committee, saying they need people down there who 
are a bit wiser, a bit older, who have been around, and who can perhaps 
introduce more stability to the White House. I think that is pretty 
good advice to follow, but that is a decision for the President to 
make.
  I reiterate today that my purpose in joining with Senator Dole, 
Senator D'Amato, and others, is not to embarrass President Clinton. 
That is the last thing I want to do. I want to see him continue on his 
program. When he takes the podium in Boston and accuses Republicans and 
says ``no, no, no,'' eight or nine times, to the great glee of those in 
the audience, that has a spillover effect in this Chamber, because then 
some of our colleagues--and we are all friends here, and we try to 
maintain a level of civility--start to personalize the attacks. They 
started to direct attacks against Senator D'Amato.
  If it were not for Senator D'Amato, I believe we would not have known 
about the improper contact between the Deputy Secretary of Treasury and 
White House officials. Whether or not they broke any laws remain to be 
seen. Were it not for his perseverance, that never would have been 
known. People point fingers and say, ``It is D'Amato, and therefore the 
whole thing is tainted.'' Then other colleagues say, ``Well, it is 
D'Amato and somebody else.'' The best way, they think, to discredit a 
responsible inquiry is to go after the person on an ad hominem basis, 
discredit them and forget about the issue.
  When you engage in this type of rhetoric, it has a catching effect; 
it spreads and becomes epidemic, and people on our side point to other 
individuals over there and say, ``Wait a minute, who is being 
sanctimonious here? What about the piety being expressed by ``Mr. X'' 
or ``Senator Y?'' Suddenly, what happens when you have that kind of 
exchange is you have a breakdown of civility. As I told one reporter, 
we are then into Bosnia. We are then emulating on a verbal level what 
is taking place on a physical basis elsewhere. We see each other as 
enemies, we ridicule and demean each other, and we have a breakdown of 
civility in this institution. That is entirely wrong.
  I think we can have a civil debate. I think it has been brought about 
because there is a recognition on the part of Members over here that 
there has been a double standard. I have tried to resist labeling it as 
such, but you cannot look at the record and see anything but that. I 
think the easiest way to resolve this, and the best advice I can give 
the Clintons--and I say this in the most sincere fashion that I can--is 
to get whatever information you have pertaining to events here in 
Washington--not in 1982 in Arkansas, but right here in Washington--
during the course of his administration, present them to the committee, 
call the witnesses, operate under the rules constructed by the special 
counsel, and then be done with it.
  My own view is that we will find something there to criticize, but 
probably nothing there to call for the resignation of high level 
officials, or call into question the ability of the President to 
continue to operate in office. I hope that is the case, and I believe 
that will be the result. But the best way to arrive at that particular 
conclusion is to have the hearing, let the evidence come out.
  As I quoted on the various programs we have been appearing on, ``If 
you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear. If there is 
something to hide, it is far better to get it out now and go to the 
American people and say `We made mistakes; this was inappropriate and 
should not have been done. We are asking you to allow us to continue 
without being dragged down any further.''' That is all that has to 
happen. That is what I believe is the basis of this resolution we have 
offered.
  I wish to again call my colleagues' attention to the charge that 
everybody over here is simply a hard-edged partisan trying to tear down 
President Clinton and his wife. That is not my view. That is not my 
aim. But rather it is to join with Senator D'Amato and Senator Dole to 
ask for the opportunity to call witnesses at an appropriate time. And 
according to the special counsel, that is only a matter of a few weeks. 
I hope that my colleagues will accept it.
  I yield the floor.
  Mr. RIEGLE. Mr. President, I have listened to all of the things said 
today on the subject just addressed by the Senator from Maine, my 
friend, Senator Cohen, and I agree with him that it is important that 
we keep this discussion within the bounds of civility, and there is 
every reason to do that. I strongly hold the view that only with a sort 
of reasoned discussion, and in absence of name calling in any 
direction, do we really serve the public interest and get to the truth 
here and move through this question in an orderly way.
  So I would like to review, in that spirit, some of the things, in the 
sequence in which events have happened here, that bring us to this 
point and to this discussion this afternoon.
  I want to establish one point of difference with the Senator from 
Maine, though, at the outset. And that is, if you go back before this 
special counsel, Mr. Fiske, and you go back to the efforts within the 
Justice Department to authorize a special investigative unit under the 
jurisdiction of the Justice Department, all of that refers and goes 
back initially to a criminal referral. There was a criminal referral 
which was the precipitating event made by the RTC, the Resolution Trust 
Corporation. They saw something in this situation that caused them to 
believe that criminal activity had occurred, and it was serious enough 
that it needed to be pursued. I am going to take the time to run 
through this, and I would just as soon not engage on that point right 
now because of the pressure of time. I will be happy to do that in the 
end.
  In any event, the RTC, we now know, sent a criminal referral over to 
the Justice Department, and in the period of time since then, the 
Justice Department has been trying to establish exactly what took place 
and whether there were criminal violations and, presumably, in the end, 
was there a basis not only to prosecute people but to affect financial 
recoveries?
  I think to understand this case one has to understand that back in 
the mid-1980's when this Madison Guaranty financial institution became 
insolvent there was a net loss of about $50 million and because the 
institution had lost all of its money and depositors had to be paid 
back, Federal taxpayers had to come in and fill in that $50 million.
  So, that money went somewhere. Wherever it ended up, if any of it can 
be retrieved and brought back, that first of all needs to be done; if 
anybody got any of that money through illegal activity, they need to be 
brought to justice. But the RTC obviously had reached the conclusion 
that there was the basis for them to send this case over to the Justice 
Department. That is what got this whole thing started in the first 
place.
  Then there was a sequence of events leading up finally to the 
decision by Janet Reno, and I think a proper decision. It is one that I 
encouraged her to take with a letter I sent to her as Banking Committee 
chairman. She was having this suggested to her by others, Republicans 
and Democrats, that she name an independent special counsel, someone 
whose reputation was above challenge, presumably someone who was a 
Republican, in the other party from the White House, who could come in 
and take over this investigation and take it all the way through to the 
end.
  In fact, there were some names suggested by some Republican 
colleagues of people who they thought would meet that standard of 
objectivity and impartiality that would give them confidence as a party 
that this investigation was thorough and complete.
  My recollection is that of this small list of names that various 
Republicans suggested to Janet Reno Mr. Fiske's name, in fact, was on 
that list. In a sense he was sort of prescreened and got the stamp of 
approval by certain numbers of Republicans as being someone that they 
felt would be impartial and competent to get to the bottom of this 
issue.
  So then when Mr. Fiske was named to be the independent counsel, he 
laid down some conditions. He said, yes, he was prepared to do it but 
only if he had absolutely complete authority to investigate in every 
area where there was public concern or where he saw the potential for a 
problem.
  He wanted no limitations on his ability to investigate, and he wanted 
an assurance that he would have all of the investigative resources that 
he would need to conduct that investigative effort.
  So, in conjunction with the Attorney General, they wrote out together 
a formal written legal charter which was published and printed in the 
Federal Register--I do not have it in front of me now; I will insert it 
in the Record at the end of my remarks--that laid out his actual legal 
authority, and it is a very sweeping grant of authority.
  So he is now functioning as the legal agent for the Government of the 
United States, and he is answerable to no one except the American 
people. He is free to investigate anything that he feels falls within 
the scope of what he has been asked to do here. When he sees a new line 
of inquiry he is free to pursue that and he has already demonstrated 
his intention to do that.
  In fact, there were witnesses today, former White House employees, 
current White House employees, who were taken before a Federal grand 
jury in Washington, DC, this very day by Mr. Fiske and were subjected 
to questioning in that setting.
  According to the news account I just saw on CNN Mr. Nussbaum, the 
former legal counsel of the White House, was apparently in this, 
undergoing questioning before the grand jury today for 4 hours, and it 
also said that he did not refuse to answer any questions and went in 
and answered fully and openly in that setting.
  But the point is the process is working, and Mr. Fiske has the power 
to do that, and he was, in effect, given the power to act in behalf, 
not just of the Justice Department and the executive branch of 
Government, but in behalf of our entire Government structure to be able 
to have the resources to go in and to track down these questions.
  Now, he has already brought into his investigative team, as I 
understand it, at least seven other seasoned prosecutors. Of course, he 
was a Republican prosecutor himself in the eastern district of New 
York, which is one of the very important jurisdictions for criminal 
justice in our country. So he has had front-line experience himself. 
But he brought in at least seven other seasoned prosecutors to help him 
go down every avenue of inquiry within the scope of this investigation.
  He then asked for and got designated to his work some 25 FBI agents, 
and these FBI agents now are working under his authority and at his 
direction to go out and go through facts, circumstances, evidence, 
documents, whatever may be needed. He has the ability to issue 
subpoenas to anybody he feels needs to be brought in for questioning 
before the grand jury.
  He has impaneled now two grand juries, a Federal grand jury down in 
Little Rock, AR, and also one here in Washington, DC, which, as I say, 
was busy today on this very case.
  So what do we have just in that area at this point? You have a 
seasoned, independent, fully empowered Republican prosecutor hard at 
work with an expert team of investigators, and he is proceeding on the 
basis of a criminal referral that was earlier made by the Resolution 
Trust Corporation up through the Justice Department which laid out and 
gave him a road map of violations of the criminal law that they felt 
had taken place in this situation.
  It is his job now to go out to find out exactly what the situation 
is, if prosecutions are warranted, to undertake those prosecutions, and 
importantly, not only to undertake criminal prosecutions, but if he 
finds that there is a basis to undertake what is called a civil suit--
that is different from a criminal suit--to take on a civil suit to 
accomplish a financial recovery to find someone who got money that they 
should not have and to take them by the ankles and shake them upside 
down and shake the money out and get it back and give it back to the 
Government. He has that authority as well.
  So he has criminal and civil authority. So it seems to me that what 
we now have in place is exactly what any of us would want who are 
interested in the truth, in people who are guilty, of being tracked 
down and held to account and people who are innocent being able to have 
their names cleared in the normal course of investigative activity and 
to have two citizen grand juries impaneled, one in Arkansas and one 
here in Washington, DC, sorting through this evidence and making these 
decisions.
  That is how our system works. And it is very well crafted to 
accomplish that end; namely, that guilty people will be identified and 
prosecuted and recoveries, perhaps, achieved and innocent people will 
also have an opportunity to have their names cleared. That is the way 
our system works.
  And, of course, we start with the presumption that people are 
innocent until there is proof of some wrongdoing. And that is also sort 
of a cornerstone of our system. So that is where we are today.
  As I say, Mr. Fiske is so active in this investigation that literally 
this very day, and probably, I might say to my friend from Wyoming, 
this very minute, he probably has somebody down before that grand jury 
right now, because I think there were 4 people under subpoena that were 
coming in today. And I suspect that is still going on. So he is doing 
his work. He is doing the work that he was asked to do. He is using the 
full authority of the Government and, in due course, we will have the 
answers that we ought to have.
  Now, as I have said before, I met with Mr. Fiske the other day. I 
only met him one time and it was a short meeting, but I was very 
impressed with him and with the seriousness of purpose and his 
professional background and demeanor.
  I am confident, when he finishes, that every card--if I can just the 
analogy of a deck of cards--that every card in this deck is going to be 
turned face up. There are not going to be any secrets. We are going to 
know exactly what happened, what the facts are, what the truth is, what 
took place. That is his job. I am confident he will get that done.
  Now, the only thing that might cause him not to get that done is if 
we are careless enough to interfere with his work. And that I am 
concerned about, because I have seen it happen before.
  I know there are some Members who feel very strongly that right now 
we ought to have full-blown congressional investigations. Mr. Fiske, 
for his part, feels so strongly that that is a bad idea and will injure 
his efforts and possibly destroy his efforts that he now has done two 
things, this Republican prosecutor who is on this case.
  The first thing he did was he wrote a letter to me and to my 
Republican colleague, Senator D'Amato, on March 7. Not a letter we 
asked for; he initiated this letter. In his letter he says:
       I am asking you, please, don't conduct congressional 
     hearings at this time, because I am on this case. It is an 
     important case. I do not want it disrupted or anything to 
     happen that will interfere with our ability to get it done 
     and get it done properly.
  And he makes it a very persuasive argument.
  Now people that may be watching this Senate session on television and 
others who are in the gallery and on the floor have heard references to 
excerpts of this letter from Mr. Fiske. I do not believe anybody has 
actually read the full text of Mr. Fiske's letter to me and to Senator 
D'Amato aloud, so you could really understand what he said.
  And it is important you know that, because if you are going to 
evaluate what my friend from Maine recently said, he has an 
interpretation of later comments of Mr. Fiske. I happen to disagree 
with his interpretation.
  But I think we have to start with what Mr. Fiske has said in terms of 
putting words on paper as a formal request to the Senate, a request, by 
the way, that he has not retracted. His request was made and stands as 
of this hour of this day.
  Here is what he said.
  Mr. COHEN. Will the Senator yield for a question?
  Mr. RIEGLE. Very briefly.
  Mr. COHEN. Was the letter sent prior to the meeting with Senator 
D'Amato and me and holding the press conference?
  Mr. RIEGLE. Yes; absolutely.
  And I might say, in addition, there has been no letter since. I have 
said publicly many times, if his view has changed it will not take him 
long to put his new view, if there is a new view, in a letter and send 
it to us.
  Mr. COHEN. You know that he is a very careful lawyer and he would not 
say something publicly which he did not subscribe to.
  Mr. RIEGLE. With all due respect to my friend, I have the text to 
that exchange and I think it lends itself to two different 
interpretations. You have drawn one and I have drawn the other. So who 
is to say?
  I think if he wants to make it clearer, it is a very simple matter to 
do so. His preference is not to have hearings, as you, yourself, have 
said here today. That is his preference. That is what he states here.
  Let me go ahead and read this letter into the Record now. This is not 
very long ago. This is dated March 7. This is what Mr. Fiske said. He 
felt so strongly about this that he wrote this letter and sent it to 
us.
  I am going to read it verbatim. He said the following:

       I am writing this letter to express my strong concern about 
     the impact of any hearings that your Committee might hold 
     into the underlying events concerning Madison Guaranty 
     Savings and Loan (``MGS&L''), Whitewater and Capital 
     Management Services (``CMS'') on the investigation that this 
     Office is conducting into these matters.
       As you know, I was appointed to the position of Independent 
     Counsel pursuant to CFR 603.1 on January 31, 1994. Since that 
     date we have obtained an Order from Chief Judge Stephen M. 
     Reasoner in the Eastern District of Arkansas authorizing the 
     empaneling of a grand jury which will be devoted exclusively 
     to the Whitewater/MGS&L/CMS investigation. In the meantime, 
     we have been using the regular grand jury for this District. 
     We have a team of eight experienced attorneys, six of whom 
     were current or former prosecutors when they joined the 
     staff. We are working in Little Rock with a team of more than 
     twenty FBI agents and financial analysts who are working full 
     time on this matter. We are doing everything possible to 
     conduct and conclude as expeditiously as possible a complete, 
     thorough and impartial investigation.

  Now listen to this. He continues.

       Inquiry into the underlying events surrounding MGS&L, 
     Whitewater and CMS by a Congressional Committee would pose a 
     severe risk to the integrity of our investigation. 
     Inevitably, any such inquiry would overlap substantially with 
     the grand jury's activities. Among other concerns, the 
     Committee certainly would seek to interview the same 
     witnesses or subjects who are central to the criminal 
     investigation. Such interviews could jeopardize our 
     investigation in several respects, including the dangers of 
     Congressional immunity, the premature disclosures of the 
     contents of documents or of witnesses' testimony to other 
     witnesses on the same subject (creating the risk of tailored 
     testimony) and of premature public disclosure of matters at 
     the core of the criminal investigation. This inherent 
     conflict would be greatly magnified by the fact that the 
     Committee would be covering essentially the same ground as 
     the grand jury.
       While we recognize the Committee's oversight 
     responsibilities pursuant to Section 501 of PL 101-73 
     (FIREAA), we have similar concerns with a Congressional 
     investigation into the recently-disclosed meetings between 
     White House and Treasury Department officials--particularly 
     because we believe these hearings will inevitably lead to the 
     disclosure of the contents of RTC referrals and other 
     information relating to the underlying grand jury 
     investigation.

  Now here is his summary. In his last full paragraph, he says this:

       For these reasons, we request that your Committee not 
     conduct any hearings in the areas covered by the grand jury's 
     ongoing investigation, both in order to avoid compromising 
     that investigation and in order to further the public 
     interest in preserving the fairness, thoroughness, and 
     confidentiality of the grand jury process.
       I will be glad to meet with you personally to explain our 
     position further if you feel that would be helpful.
           Respectfully yours,
                                             Robert B. Fiske, Jr.,
                                              Independent Counsel.

  I wrote him back a letter that very same day and I will read that 
into the Record. It is rather brief.
  It is addressed to Independent Counsel Fiske. It says as follows:

       Your letter to me of this date has arrived requesting that 
     the Banking Committee not conduct further hearings into the 
     matters within the scope of your investigation. The concerns 
     you outline in your letter--that a parallel Congressional 
     investigation would interfere with your inquiry--are 
     compelling and accurate.
       Recent experience has shown that Justice Department 
     prosecutions and convictions have been thwarted by untimely 
     Congressional inquiries into the same matters.
       It is my view that the Banking Committee should defer to 
     your investigation.
       When you have completed your investigative work--I will 
     direct the Committee's efforts to any items you might bring 
     to our attention--or which are otherwise brought into focus 
     by your inquiry.

  Now, what I said in that last paragraph is very important, because I 
said, look, Mr. Fiske, when you finish your work, if there is anything 
that you find that we need to pursue, we are going to pursue it in the 
Senate Banking Committee. We invite you to point anything out that you 
see of that sort.
  But I also said, if there is anything that we see that comes out of 
here that needs further examination, hearings, investigation, laws, 
whatever, we will pursue that as well.
  You should understand something else at this point. Let me leave 
aside Mr. Fiske's letter with this comment. He has only sent one 
letter, and here it is. You have just heard it read. He did come up and 
talk with me. He did come up and talk with Senator Cohen and Senator 
D'Amato. There are varying interpretations of what he said that day. 
There is even a transcript of a news conference, which I submit lends 
itself at least to two diametrically opposed conclusions in terms of 
his views.
  The way to make it crystal clear, if Mr. Fiske thinks it is all right 
for us to do an investigation--which in this letter he says we should 
not do and he specifically asks us not to do--then he can send us 
another letter and say, ``I have changed my thinking. I have modified 
my view. Here is what I think you can do without interfering with my 
investigation.''
  Interestingly, he has not sent that letter, because, frankly, I do 
not believe that is his position. If it is, then he probably ought to 
write a letter and say so. No such letter has arrived.
  So I think people who put that construction on it and want to almost 
invent a second letter from Mr. Fiske--there is no second letter from 
Mr. Fiske. There is none. There is only this one and this one, in my 
view, stands until we are told otherwise. We have not been told 
otherwise.
  Let me back up in time. I do not know what the events are that went 
on with respect to this financial institution, Madison Guaranty, back 
in the mid-1980's. It obviously got into trouble. It obviously folded. 
There were substantial losses which I have noted here. That happened in 
the 1985-86, roughly, time period.
  In 1989, several years later, we wrote a massive reform bill dealing 
with those kinds of financial institutions. It is called FIRREA. And in 
that bill, recommended by the new Bush administration--I worked very 
closely with them as chairman of the Banking Committee to get that 
legislation written and enacted; we got it done in record time--we went 
in and we put an end to every single practice that caused the failure 
of the Madison Guaranty institution and hundreds more like it. We 
completely rewrote those laws. So those laws have been corrected.
  After writing that new law, those reform laws, and putting them into 
place and stopping all those practices, we have been monitoring the 
effect of that law since. It has worked very effectively and that 
industry is now on an entirely different and strong footing, stronger 
than it was back at that much earlier time.
  So to some who say, look, if you do not go sort of pushing Fiske out 
of the way and grab his investigation away from him, you are not going 
to be able to know what really happened and what we ought to do in 
terms of changing the laws governing these kinds of institutions, that 
is a false issue. We have already taken care of that problem. We did 
that in 1989. So that is not really an issue that is on the table 
today.
  Whether there was wrongdoing in that institution, where efforts need 
to be made to reach back and do something about it, we have not only 
set in motion the special prosecutor, special counsel, to get that 
done, we have done something else. Just a matter of weeks ago we 
extended the statute of limitations on any violations that might have 
occurred in that time period so they are still within the reach of the 
law. We pushed the statute of limitations out into the future so that 
nobody is going to slip out a side door on this case. It is just not 
going to happen, especially with Fiske and his team of FBI agents and 
prosecutors moving down through every single part of this.
  Let me add one other element that has come into the picture since, 
and that is this. In that law that we passed in 1989 to fix all these 
abuses in the savings and loan system, we built into that law certain 
specific measurement standards so we could make sure the law was 
working properly. So we have had, now, over the years since 1989, a 
very long series of regular oversight hearings where we call in the 
officials responsible for implementing that law to find out exactly how 
it is working and if there is a need to change any particular part of 
it. Is it working the way it was designed to work? Have we corrected 
all the abuses?
  We were so concerned about that issue that, in fact, we built into 
that 1989 law a requirement that there has to be a hearing here in 
Congress every 6 months on how that cleanup effort is doing and how 
that law is being implemented.
  Within the text of that part of the law we went so far as to say that 
any institutions that failed in that time period, in the mid-1980's, 
that if any Senator on the committee wanted to come in and ask 
questions about that particular institution, that they had a right in 
law to do so. We did not foresee the Madison case at that time, but it 
applies precisely to the Madison case and every other case out of that 
time period. So the other day when the officials from the RTC came in 
to present their semiannual report, every member of the Senate Banking 
Committee had the legal right and authority to ask specific questions 
about any institution that had failed in that time period, and that 
included Madison Guaranty. And a number of members of the committee 
took the occasion to ask very probing questions on that issue to the 
people at the witness table, who included Mr. Altman, among others, and 
a variety of other witnesses who were there that day.
  Out of that questioning came some troubling disclosures, that there 
had been contacts between the Treasury Department and the White House 
relating to this case. After that was disclosed, a whole series of 
steps happened. First of all Mr. Altman, for one, recused himself in 
that case, indicated it had been an error in judgment. But, 
importantly, Mr. Fiske, the independent counsel, moved like greased 
lightning, and he sent one of his investigators to the White House 
within a matter of hours and collected, I believe, eight individuals 
who had been party to these contacts, served them all with subpoenas, 
told them to retain all of their documents and be prepared to appear 
before a grand jury. Some appeared last week before the grand jury. The 
rest, as I understand it, are appearing today. So that is what Fiske is 
doing because Fiske has the power to do that and he has the power to 
move immediately to compel testimony under oath and to get the facts 
and get the truth and get the whole truth, no ifs, ands, or buts. And 
he is doing that, as he should, because we need those answers, and he 
is getting them because he is empowered on behalf of all of us to do 
exactly that job.
  So that is happening. From that point on, I might say in that hearing 
that day in the Banking Committee, the members, particularly of the 
minority side of the aisle who wanted to pursue those questions, had 
every right to do so. And their rights were fully respected and 
protected by this chairman. And we did not adjourn that hearing that 
day until probably 3 in the afternoon and until there was not a single 
member left seeking recognition to ask questions because I wanted to 
make sure that everybody on the committee who had questions to ask had 
the opportunity to ask them and that there would be no arbitrary 
exercise of time, and there was none. So we did not adjourn that day 
until every single member had asked every question they wanted to ask 
regarding that subject on that particular day.

  But I then did something else, because sometimes you will have 
questions that you do not think about at the time; something will be 
said you did not anticipate; you will request a followup question and 
then you will leave and an hour later, you think, I should have asked 
thus and so. Or, based on that answer that the witness gave, I now need 
to know these five other things.
  So I then took another step. I said that we would not close the 
committee record--and we have not closed the committee record--to 
preserve the right of every member of the committee to ask additional 
questions in writing of any of the witnesses who appeared that day and 
to send those questions down, get the answers to those questions, bring 
them back, and we will put them in the record. And that, by the way, is 
a public record, and it will be printed and available not just for the 
Members but for anybody else who has an interest in both the questions 
and the answers.
  So we have had a means to raise these questions directly. It is part 
of the law; the law has been carried out and, in fact, that happened.
  Now, with the disclosures that were made that day, what happened with 
the disclosures that were made that day is that that created a line of 
inquiry where Mr. Fiske then moved to address a number of people in 
today's White House about the handling of this matter. That is where 
the subpoenas were served and where the documents were requested and 
where the grand jury hearings are now taking place. Some people say, 
``Well, if a hearing in the Banking Committee already accomplished 
that, why can't it accomplish something else?'' Perhaps it can.
  I think the significant thing here, looking back on that situation, 
is that in doing that, with those disclosures coming forward now, that 
opened up this issue which no one anticipated at the time before that 
hearing happened, that opened up the issue to bring the special counsel 
directly in to question various members of the White House operation at 
the present time.
  So he now has that authority and has taken that step. That is, in a 
sense, an accomplished fact.
  He has access to every single part of this problem. He does not just 
have access to the events going back into the 1980's; he has all of 
that, too. He has access to everything, everything that has gone on in 
the White House, and he has the ability to question anybody and do so 
under oath. He is in the process of doing exactly that.
  That is where we are.
  The question is, should he be allowed to do that work and get that 
job done? I think clearly the answer is yes. I do not know what he is 
going to find. But it is his job to find it and, as George Mitchell has 
said many times, let the chips fall where they may. That is the way our 
system works.
  When Mr. Fiske is done, I will make it plain, just as the words 
coming out of my mouth right now, when he has completed his work, as I 
said to him in my letter, if there is something that needs to be done 
that falls within the scope of our committee, we will do it. Let there 
be no doubt about that, we will do it. If there are any laws that need 
to be changed, we will change them. I will come right here to the floor 
with the changes. If there are hearings that need to be held to explore 
the other parts of the way the machinery, the RTC works, we will have 
those hearings as well, because I want these answers as much as 
anybody.
  So when he finishes his work, if there is work that we must do as a 
committee in terms of our normal oversight responsibilities, we will 
carry those out.
  I will just conclude now, because I am told I am needed over in the 
Budget Committee for a vote. I serve on that committee and have to be 
there because apparently my vote might be a deciding vote on a critical 
matter.
  I want to read one thing more from Mr. Walsh. Mr. Walsh was the 
special counsel that ran the Iran-Contra investigation. His 
investigation was interfered with by the Congress, it was damaged by 
the Congress, it was undercut by the Congress, and there was no excuse 
for it.
  There is an attempt by some now to paper over that, but that is what 
happened, and people guilty of crimes went free as a result of the 
interference of the Congress in that work. I am not just referring, by 
the way, to Oliver North and Mr. Poindexter. At the end of the Bush 
administration, Caspar Weinberger, the former Secretary of Defense, was 
under indictment and on his way to trial. But he got a pardon from 
President Bush, as President Bush was leaving the Oval Office after 
having been defeated in the election.
  How did that happen? It turned out, among other things, that Mr. 
Weinberger had sent a whole lot of confidential notes over to the 
Library of Congress, safely out of the line of the vision of the 
congressional inquiry. And, fortunately, very late in the game, the 
special counsel found out about those and got those notes out, and they 
put the whole situation in a different light, in such a different light 
that there was going to be a criminal prosecution until there was an 
intervention with a Presidential pardon.
  Some of the folks around here who were involved in that do not much 
want to talk about that part of it because the congressional inquiry in 
that case did interfere with Mr. Walsh. I think it ruined a substantial 
part of his work, and that also is his view.
  I might just say that Mr. Walsh, at the end of his work, said this, 
and I want to quote him because if we are not smart enough to learn 
from our past mistakes with respect to this kind of congressional 
interference when you have a special counsel at work, then we are just 
not thinking clearly. This is what he said in the final Iran-Contra 
report:

       I think the view of some of those in the congressional 
     committee that there was a possibility of concurrent 
     activity, that the Congress could investigate on television 
     and that the criminal prosecution could also go on, was just 
     proved to be wrong, and I think the lesson is very clear as 
     we spelled out in the report, Congress has control. It's a 
     political decision as to which is more important, but you 
     can't have both. If it wants to proceed with a joint 
     committee or a special committee or have to compel testimony 
     by granting immunity, that it has to realize the odds are 
     very strong that it's going to kill any resulting criminal 
     prosecution.

  That is exactly what happened in that case and, in my view, we never 
got the true story as a result of it, try as Mr. Walsh might, because 
there was that interference by the Congress as he was trying to get 
that job done.
  Now I hear some people saying, ``Well, let's have the Congress barge 
back in here and shoulder Fiske out of the way,'' even though Fiske is 
a Republican. Fiske has said, ``Leave me alone, let me get my job 
done.'' We ought to leave him alone.
  One of the reasons we ought to leave him alone is we ought to be 
smart enough to see what our interference in Iran-Contra cost in that 
instance. So these things are related in that sense.
  I know some of my colleagues on the other side have another view of 
it. But that is exactly where I think the situation is.
  So let us let him get his work done. I do not know what he is going 
to find. There has been, to my knowledge, no assertion of a violation 
of law by the President and the First Lady. I know of none. Senator 
Cohen just said a minute ago he knows of none. That is not all clear in 
some of the hysteria that surrounds this story. But none has been 
asserted. I am not aware of any. I am not aware of anybody else who has 
asserted there is any.
  But I think Mr. Fiske has to take the resources of this Government 
and track this question through and find out exactly what happened down 
every line of inquiry. He is doing it. I support his efforts. And when 
he writes to me and says, ``Look, let me get my job done''--he is 
working for the American people; he is absolutely impartial. He has no 
political ax to grind whatsoever. He is not doing his work in front of 
the television cameras. He is trying to get a thorough, complete, fair, 
impartial investigation done to find and convict the guilty and clear 
the names of the innocent.
  That is the way America is supposed to work. That is the way it ought 
to be allowed to work in this case.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Wellstone). The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I have listened today to a generous amount 
of discussion, sitting in the chair and sitting in the Chamber, about 
Whitewater. And I must say again I do not know the facts about 
Whitewater, but I do know the facts about politics.
  Is the discussion about Whitewater without merit? No, I do not think 
so. It is an issue. It is a political issue in our political system. 
Questions are raised and questions become debated. All of us understand 
that.
  But I think in this case the rhetoric has become overheated. The 
language has sometimes become careless. And the coverage becomes 
excessive.
  I was interested this weekend in something Walter Cronkite said about 
the coverage of this Whitewater issue.
  Walter Cronkite, the former CBS News anchor called the recent news 
coverage ``definitely overheated.'' ``The clear attempt in both the 
Watergate break-in and the coverup was to subvert the democratic 
workings of our Government. There is nothing nearly comparable to that 
in the Whitewater Affair,'' he said.
  So says Walter Cronkite.
  Marvin Kalb, distinguished former journalist, criticizes the coverage 
of this issue also.
  He says, ``Without any significant legal evidence linking the 
President to any criminal activity, everyone and his uncle in the press 
is on board this train and they are riding to a destination that is 
utterly unknown to them.''
  Marvin Kalb says: ``There is a rushing to judgment that is 
unprofessional and distasteful.''
  I do not say that those who raise this issue on the floor of the 
Senate or those who write about it do so improperly or without merit. I 
would just say that there are times when in our system we ratchet these 
things up way out of proportion to what the facts are and we ratchet 
them up to such a hysterical noise level that it is out of proportion 
to the issue before us.
  I know some say, ``Well, this isn't politics.'' Some who come to this 
Senate floor time after time after time say, ``This has nothing to do 
with politics.''
  Look, we all know better than that. Of course, it has to do with 
politics. This issue is a literal Thanksgiving political feast for some 
in this Chamber. We understand all of that. That is nothing new.
  The Academy Awards are coming up soon. I am almost tempted to suggest 
an Oscar for a special category or maybe even lifetime achievement 
award for some of the performances I have seen on the Senate floor when 
Senators rail on about Whitewater and then say, ``This isn't about 
politics.'' Of course, it is about politics.
  I heard my colleague in the Chamber not too long ago this afternoon 
say--I forget what the fact was, what the assertion was --that this 
certain fact was asserted in the press.
  ``Now, I do not know if it is a fact, but we ought to find out if it 
is a fact,'' the Senator said. But, of course, the assertion becomes 
the set of facts when Whitewater is discussed. Mark Twain I think said 
``A lie travels halfway around the world before the truth gets its 
shoes on.'' That certainly rings true on this issue.
  I would just say to all of my colleagues I have said publicly I think 
the White House has handled this matter very poorly. They have 
stumbled. They have I think made real mistakes in the way they have 
handled Whitewater. But at least from my observation the White House 
has now done something different; something that certainly the 
administration that was involved in Iran-Contra did not do; something 
certainly the previous administrations that were involved in Watergate 
did not do. This President has said now to all of those investigating, 
``Here is the information; take a look at it.'' He is not, in my 
judgment--at least I have not heard any examples of his claiming 
executive privilege--or trying to withhold information. At this point 
the President has said, ``Whatever there is, you have. Whatever 
information exists, you get.''
  Maybe it is a late start. Yes, they stumbled early on. But I think 
that is the way you finally get to the facts, and that is after all 
what all of us should want. Let us find out exactly what happened here 
and then move on.
  There are so many issues on our agenda that we should address and 
must address. We have talked about crime; we have talked about health 
care today, and others. All of those are the things that represent the 
public business, that people expect us to address. And I hope, no 
matter how all of this turns out, that in as expeditious a fashion as 
we can, we can have Mr. Fiske do his work, have anyone else who wants 
access to information to evaluate that information and make judgments 
about what the facts are and then move on to take care of this 
country's business.

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