[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 101 (Thursday, July 28, 1994)]
[Senate]
[Page S]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: July 28, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
                               WHITEWATER

  Mr. DOLE. Madam President, as the Whitewater hearings get underway, 
the American people should understand that what they will be watching 
is a limited and tightly scripted account of only a small piece of the 
entire Whitewater puzzle. It is like going to a movie theater, paying 
$6 for a ticket, and getting to see only one 60-second movie preview. 
That is what this Whitewater hearing is all about.
  Will the hearings examine the RTC's internal investigation into 
Madison Guaranty? No.
  Will the hearings cover the Justice Department's handling of the RTC 
criminal referrals? No.
  Will the hearings take a look at Paula Casey's delayed recusal from 
the Madison case and the David Hale prosecution? No.
  Will the hearings cover the diversion of SBA funds to the Whitewater 
partnership? No.
  Will the hearings examine why White House officials rifled through 
Vince Foster's office shortly after his death? No. Earlier this month, 
Mr. Fiske apparently changed his mind, telling Congress that his area 
of inquiry was off-limits, at least for now.
  Will the hearings explore the activities of the Arkansas Development 
and Finance Authority? No.
  Will the hearings take a look at whether any of Madison's federally-
insured funds were used to pay off campaign debts? No.
  And will the hearings examine the Whitewater transaction itself? You 
guessed it: The answer, of course, is ``no.''
  During the past several months, independent counsel Robert Fiske has 
been masterful in his role as congressional traffic cop. He has 
commanded Congress when to go and when to stop, insisting that hearings 
take a back-seat to his own investigation and exercising an almost 
complete veto over congressional oversight in the process. To our own 
discredit, both the Senate and the House have willingly gone along with 
this charade.
  In fact, when historians look back on the year 1994, they will see 
one of the few occasions in American history when one branch of 
Government, the Congress, willingly forfeited power to another branch, 
the executive. Mr. Fiske may be a fine person and a fine lawyer, but he 
is, without a doubt, one of the most powerful bureaucrats ever seen in 
American history.

  Earlier this week, White House Counsel Lloyd Cutler insisted that no 
administration official violated any ethical standard as a result of 
the nearly 30 behind-the-scenes contacts in which insider information 
about the RTC criminal referrals was shared. Mr. Cutler's ethical 
dispensation may or may not be justified, but what is beyond dispute is 
that no ordinary American would have received the same preferential 
treatment. No ordinary American, cited in an RTC criminal referral, 
would have received the same advance-warning ``head's-up'' from the 
very people charged with conducting the investigation--from the very 
people charged with conducting the investigation.
  And Madam President, if the contacts were on the up-and-up, as Mr. 
Cutler claims, what was their public purpose? What legitimate 
investigative goal were they designed to serve?
  Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that two editorials--one 
from the Wall Street Journal and one from today's New York Times--be 
printed in the Record immediately after my remarks.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  (See exhibit 1.)
  Mr. DOLE. Madam President, I particularly call the attention of some 
of my colleagues to the editorial in the New York Times called 
``Censorship, Gonzalez Style.'' If you watched, as I did, the House 
hearings on C-SPAN, it was a disgrace. It was a total disgrace. I hope 
when the Senate Banking Committee starts hearings tomorrow, we will 
have some serious look at some of the problems.
  We are not going to go away. We are going to continue to press for 
full hearings so the American people can make a judgment on the facts. 
The New York Times said maybe this is not a cover, maybe it is a 
question of which word you use. It is certainly an effort not to reveal 
anything. The majority in Congress is certainly responsible for it, and 
I think the American voters will know that between now and November.

                               Exhibit 1

                       Censorship, Gonzalez Style

       Henry B. Gonzalez, the Texas Democrat who heads the House 
     Banking Committee, never really wanted to hold Whitewater 
     hearings in the first place. Now that they are under way he 
     seems determined to make them as unenlightening and 
     unthreatening as possible.
       Bowing to Robert Fiske, the independent counsel, Congress 
     had already agreed to exclude the central matter in Mr. 
     Fiske's continuing investigation--whether money from Madison 
     Guaranty Trust, an Arkansas savings and loan, was improperly 
     funneled into the Whitewater land venture or President 
     Clinton's gubernatorial campaigns. That limited the committee 
     to one question: Did Administration officials try 
     inappropriately or unethically to rein in a Federal 
     investigation by the Resolution Trust Corporation into 
     Madison's collapse?
       Mr. Gonzalez's devotion to this agreement was demonstrated 
     Tuesday when a Republican asked if the Clintons had paid in 
     full for their share of Whitewater. Lloyd Cutler, the White 
     House counsel, appealed for protection from this important 
     question, and Mr. Gonzalez speedily ruled that he did not 
     have to answer. Mr. Gonzalez was within his rights to silence 
     questions on Whitewater's ``Arkansas phase.'' But the 
     irascible Texan has twisted the already stringent rules to 
     make it virtually impossible for members to develop a 
     continuous, productive line of inquiry into even the narrow 
     matter at hand.
       First, he has awarded each member only five minutes of 
     continuous questioning. Further, when a Republican finishes, 
     he must yield to a Democrat and vice versa. This format will 
     surely produce chaos when 10 White House officials appear 
     simultaneously this afternoon, including George 
     Stephanopoulos, Harold Ickes and Thomas McLarty. Republicans 
     will want to know whether they tried to meddle with the 
     R.T.C.'s supposedly independent investigations. But the 
     Republicans will be hard put to mount a sustained cross-
     examination.
       There are 51 committee members; it is therefore conceivable 
     that someone like Jim Leach, the Iowa Republican who has 
     spent the last eight months studying Whitewater, will have 
     just one five-minute shot at 10 people--or 30 seconds per 
     witness. Mr. Leach can ``borrow'' time from fellow 
     Republicans willing to yield it. But before he uses the extra 
     time, he must yield to a Democrat who could run the 
     questioning off in a different direction.
       Mr. Gonzalez is a partisan who believes that Whitewater is 
     simply a Republican political sideshow. His efforts to 
     protect the White House from sustained questioning place a 
     special burden on Donald Riegle, a Michigan Democrat, to open 
     up the Senate hearings that begin tomorrow. They also oblige 
     the Republicans to deploy themselves wisely in the future. 
     They squandered valuable time on Tuesday complaining about 
     Mr. Gonzalez's restrictions, rather than probing Mr. Cutler's 
     odd assertion that he should be regarded as an objective 
     investigator. On the first day, Mr. Cutler and especially Mr. 
     Gonzalez got by with far too many nonanswers and thwarted 
     questions.
                                  ____


                           The Fiske Hangout

       We don't recall offhand whether it was H.R. Haldeman or 
     John Erlichman who suggested dealing with Watergate by a 
     ``limited, modified hangout.'' But the wonderful phrase 
     captures the essence of the Whitewater hearings about to 
     begin today--an exercise intended to create the illusion of 
     openness while revealing as little as possible.
       Provided essential political cover by independent counsel 
     Robert Fiske's grandiose view of his own prerogatives, 
     Congressional Democrats have officially limited the hearings 
     to preclude such interesting areas of inquiry as Bill 
     Clinton's Arkansas slush fund for legislative initiatives, 
     Hillary Clinton's commodity trades, Dan Lasater's drug 
     convictions and whatever happened at Mena airport. Questions 
     will be allowed only on matters Mr. Fiske has already 
     certified as non-indictable. Rep. Jim Leach estimated this at 
     5% of Whitewater. He lowered the number to 2% to 3% when Mr. 
     Fiske declined to bless Congressional nosiness about the 
     handling of Vincent Foster's office papers after his suicide.
       The sliver of the case remaining, to be sure, is pregnant 
     with embarrassment for the Administration. It concerns 
     Washington contacts on the regulation of Madison Guaranty 
     Savings & Loan, and press leaks over the past week depict an 
     Administration with a progressive case of mutual 
     recrimination. Will Deputy Treasury Secretary Roger Altman 
     take the fall? Which of various high officials is lying? What 
     did the President know and when did he know it? Amid the 
     often contradictory denials by Washington officials, one 
     thing should be kept in mind.
       To wit, that investigators in the field clearly feel they 
     were sat upon to suppress the Madison investigation. A proper 
     investigation would start with RTC Kansas City attorney L. 
     Jean Lewis, and work its way back up the chain of command. It 
     would certainly include the handling of Madison by Paula 
     Casey, the Friend-of-Bill implant as U.S. Attorney in Little 
     Rock, and the circumstances of her appointment. Instead, the 
     hearings will start with denials at the top and work down, 
     maybe. As of yesterday, House Banking Chairman Henry Gonzalez 
     had formally scheduled only one witness: White House 130-day 
     counsel Lloyd Cutler.
       To get a sense of the coverup being conducted, consider 
     that Rep. Leach has felt it necessary to bring suit in 
     federal court in an attempt to get documents on Madison from 
     the Resolution Trust Corp. and Office of Thrift Supervision. 
     Such documents were routinely provided to the minority 
     banking staff in previous S&L scandals--Lincoln, Silverado, 
     Centrust, Columbia and others. But when it comes to Arkansas, 
     the supposedly independent regulatory agencies have gone into 
     a protective crouch.
       The ranking minority member of the House Banking Committee 
     is entitled only, John E. Ryan of the RTC wrote Mr. Leach, to 
     those documents ``otherwise available to the public pursuant 
     to the Freedom of Information Act.'' Mr. Ryan is the deputy 
     in charge of the RTC after Mr. Altman recused himself. 
     Jonathan Fiechter, longtime acting director of the OTS, took 
     the same position. When Mr. Leach requested the documents for 
     oversight hearings mandated by statute, Chairman Gonzalez 
     wrote the regulators instructing them not to comply. Mr. 
     Leach brought suit for the documents, and Judge Charles 
     Richey is to decide whether the agencies can ignore the law 
     if a chairman tells them to. Lawyers for the agencies now 
     urge the court not to interfere in a dispute within the 
     Congress.
       What you have here, it could scarcely be clearer, is a 
     Democratic Congressional majority protecting a scandal-ridden 
     Democratic executive branch, and bending banking regulators 
     to this purpose (assuming they need to be bent). The 
     Congressional majority has a monopoly on Congress's right to 
     learn the truth, lest the minority inform the voters. Judge 
     Richey plainly understands the danger of this doctrine, but 
     in oral arguments said he was troubled by an appellate 
     precedent, even though I thought it was dead wrong then. I'll 
     go to my grave thinking it's dead wrong.
       Judge Richey, also, wrote Glenn Simpson in the July 18 
     issue of Roll Call, ``denounced Whitewater independent 
     counsel Robert Fiske for his efforts to limit the scope of 
     the Whitewater hearings that will be held by the Banking 
     Committee later this month, saying Fiske was infringing on 
     constitutionally guaranteed Congressional rights and 
     obligations.'' The Judge said directly, ``I don't believe the 
     independent counsel has the power to tell Congress what they 
     have the power to look into, and when.''
       It is too much to hope, we suppose, that Judge Richey's 
     view is held by the panel actually overseeing the independent 
     prosecutor law--headed by Judge David B. Sentelle of the D.C. 
     Circuit and including Senior Judges John D. Butzner Jr. of 
     the Fourth Circuit and Joseph T. Sneed of the Ninth Circuit. 
     Interestingly, however, they have not acted on Attorney 
     General Reno's nomination of Mr. Fiske, forwarded July 1, a 
     day after the signing of the new Independent Counsel Act.
       That afternoon Senator Lauch Faircloth took the Senate 
     floor to urge ``a new, truly independent counsel,'' who might 
     of course retain Mr. Fiske in some capacity. Senator 
     Faircloth cited Mr. Fiske's involvement in defending Clark 
     Clifford and Robert Altman in the BCCI case, in collaboration 
     with Robert Bennett, the President's lawyer in the Paula 
     Jones case. Also Mr. Fiske's firm representation of 
     International Paper Co., which had land dealings with 
     Whitewater Development. And Mr. Fiske's role in the 
     appointment of Louis Freeh as FBI chief and his private legal 
     work with former White House counsel Bernard Nussbaum. This 
     is not a trivial list; in our own view no one with any role 
     in BCCI should be appointed to anything until we know the 
     full story.
       Yet Judge Sentelle's panel should think even harder about 
     whether it agrees with Judge Richey on the balance between 
     prosecutorial and Congressional prerogatives, or whether it 
     wants to endorse Mr. Fiske's view by reappointing him. Does 
     the Judicial Branch really want to take responsibility for 
     the farce about to unfold in Congressional hearing rooms and 
     the nation's TV screens?

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