[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 26 (Thursday, February 29, 1996)]
[Senate]
[Pages S1442-S1446]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
WHITEWATER
Mr. SARBANES. Mr. President, I listened with great interest while my
colleague, the distinguished Senator from New York, and his colleagues
went on for some length, and I do not intend to match that length at
this hour. I do not think that is really necessary, but there are some
matters that I think ought to be reviewed with respect to this
Whitewater matter.
First, a great deal is being made about these documents that appear,
as though it is a nefarious plot. I understand that people like to
attach sinister intentions, but the explanation for it may be far more
innocent than that. And I really want to include in the Record an
article that appeared a few weeks ago in the New York Times by Sidney
Herman, a former partner of Kenneth Starr. Let me quote from it:
Documents that are relevant to an investigation are found
in an unexpected place 6 months after they were first sought.
A shocking development? Absolutely not. In most major pieces
of litigation, files turn up late. One side or the other
always thinks of making something of the late appearance. But
these lawyers know the truth. It could just as easily happen
to them. Despite diligent searches, important papers in large
organizations are always turning up after the initial and
follow-up searches.
Later on he goes on to say:
My former partner, Kenneth Starr, knows all this. As
independent counsel in the Whitewater investigation, he will
take it into account. But the American people have no reason
to know that this is a normal occurrence. It is not part of
their every-day experience. Reporters really do not have any
reason to know this either, or they may know and simply
choose to ignore it.
Now, Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that article be printed
in the Record at the end of my remarks.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
(See exhibit 1.)
Mr. SARBANES. I place it in the Record simply to make the point, as
the article does, that the appearance of documents a considerable
period of time after they have been requested is, in fact, not a
shocking development. This goes on all the time, as anyone involved in
litigation or document requests well knows.
In each instance, of course, one has to judge the explanation for the
late-appearing documents with respect to their plausibility, but as I
indicated when we were discussing Mr. Gearan earlier, his explanation,
I thought, was very straightforward. He said by mistake these had been
packed into a box he took with him to the Peace Corps. He thought they
had remained at the White House where the White House counsel could go
through them and provide responsive matters to the committee. It was
only by chance that these documents, then, were later discovered in
that box that had been sent over to the Peace Corps and then were put
back into the loop so that they eventually came to the committee.
A great to-do is made of the fact that if you have a fixed date for
ending, you will not get the documents, and that to-do is made over
documents that we have gotten. I find it incredible--in other words,
these documents are furnished to us and then an argument is made if you
have a fixed date--as we did, the date of February 29--you will not get
the documents. I do not know how you square the two. We get the
documents. They are provided to us. Then the assertion is made if you
have a fixed date you will not get the documents. We have a fixed date.
We got the documents. The people provided them to us in response to the
request. I do not understand that argument. Obviously, logically, it
does not hold together.
Now, the issue here is essentially the difference between the request
of my colleague from New York, Chairman D'Amato, for an open-ended
extension of this inquiry, and the proposal put forth by Senator
Daschle for an extension until April 3 for hearings and until May 10 to
file the report.
When this resolution was first passed, it was passed on the premise
that there would be an ending date, February 29, and the rationale
advanced in part for that ending date was to keep this matter out of
the Presidential election year and therefore avoid the politicizing of
these hearings and the erosion of any public confidence in the hearings
because of a perception that they were being conducted for political
reasons.
I listened with some amazement earlier as the Washington Post
editorial was cited by my colleagues on the other side of the aisle in
support of their position for an unlimited extension. Now, that is the
position, and I recognize it, of the New York Times. I recognize that
the New York Times' posture is for an indefinite extension; but the
Washington Post, which was also cited in support, said today, very
clearly, ``The Senate should require the committee to complete its
work, produce a final report by a fixed date.''
Now, they question the dates that we put forward as perhaps being too
short a period. They said a limited extension makes sense but an
unreasonably short deadline does not. They said 5 weeks may not be
enough time. They suggested maybe there should be a little extra time,
running in the range of through April or early May. In other words, a
few more weeks beyond what the leader has proposed in the alternative,
which my distinguished friend from Nebraska has suggested was a
possible way of approaching this matter.
[[Page S1443]]
In any event, so that readers of the Record can judge for themselves,
I ask unanimous consent that this Washington Post editorial entitled
``Extend But With Limits,'' and which contains as I said the sentence,
``The Senate should require the committee to complete its work and
produce a final report by a fixed date,'' which editorial has been used
by some in support of an indefinite extension--for the life of me I
cannot understand how one can do that, can make that argument. I ask
unanimous consent that editorial be printed in the Record at the end of
my remarks.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
(See exhibit 2.)
Mr. SARBANES. Mr. President, I want to point out with respect to both
the Gearan and Ickes notes, because the point was raised that we have
these notes and we got them late in the day. The fact is the committee
held a full day of hearing with Mr. Gearan and a full day of hearing
with Mr. Ickes with respect to their notes. There was an opportunity to
examine their notes, see the contents of their notes, bring them in
before the committee, and have a hearing with respect to them.
The White House has, in effect, now responded to every request of the
committee. We have some e-mails to be obtained, but that is almost
completed. I outlined earlier the difficult problems that were
associated with the e-mails. First of all, the extraordinary and
onerous breadth of the committee's request and the fact that the Bush
administration had put in a procedure, a process at the White House
that made the recovery of those e-mails extremely difficult. The White
House finally had to bring in a consultant, and they are expending
hundreds of thousands of dollars in order to provide those e-mails. The
ones that have been provided thus far, the weeks covered, have not
produced anything. That is in a very real sense a fishing expedition.
It has not produced anything thus far.
Now, Mr. President, a lot has been made of citing the book by Senator
Mitchell and Senator Cohen with respect to having a firm deadline and
their feeling that the Iran-Contra inquiry would have worked better
without a firm deadline. Of course, as my colleague from Connecticut
pointed out earlier, there has been no inquiry conducted in the Senate
without a firm deadline. This is an entirely new and different
precedent that was going to be established.
Let me just quote from their book:
At the time, the setting of a deadline for the completion
of the committee's work seemed a reasonable and responsible
compromise between Democratic members in both the House of
Representatives and the Senate who wanted no time limitation
placed upon the committee, and Republican Members who wanted
the hearings completed within 2 or 3 months.
As an aside, I may note that probably the strongest advocate of a
time limitation for the committee's work was the then-minority leader,
Senator Dole. Time and time again he took the floor to argue that very
strenuously, did the same thing in the meetings that were being held
between the leadership to work out how that inquiry would be done, and
did, in fact, press for a timeframe at one point of only 2 or 3 months,
as this book indicates.
Now, the book then goes on to say, and I am now quoting it again:
``It escaped no one's attention that an investigation that spilled
into 1988 could only help keep Republicans on the defensive during an
election year. Both Inouye and Hamilton recommended rejecting'' and I
underscore that. ``rejecting the opportunity to prolong, and thereby
exploit President Reagan's difficulties, determining that 10 months
would provide enough time to uncover any wrongdoing.''
I want to underscore to this body that the Democratic leadership of
the Congress, as that book states, Chairman Hamilton from the House and
Chairman Inouye from the Senate, agreed to a defined timeframe as the
minority leader, Senator Dole, had pressed for very, very hard. And, of
course, the reason was to keep it out of the 1988 Presidential election
year and, therefore, not turn the inquiry into a political football.
That was the thinking here last year when we passed Senate Resolution
120 with an ending date of February 29, 1996, which is where we find
ourselves now. That was the thinking. And many of us have taken the
view, and I hold to it very strongly, that extending the inquiry deep
into a Presidential election year will seriously undermine the
credibility of this investigation and create a public perception that
this investigation is being conducted for political purposes. I think
that is clearly happening, and I think the effort to have the inquiry
continue on through the Presidential election year will contribute to
that.
I was very much interested in an editorial that appeared in U.S. News
& World Report on January 29, by its editor in chief, Mortimer
Zuckerman.
I ask unanimous consent that editorial be printed in the Record at
the end of my remarks.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
(See exhibit 3.)
Mr. SARBANES. In the course of it he says, and let me just quote it:
It would be foolish to expect a congressional investigation
to be above politics. But at what point, in a decent
democracy, does politics have to yield to objectivity? At
what point does rumor have to retreat before truth? In
Whitewater that point would seem to have been reached when we
have had an independent, exhaustive study of the case under
the supervision of a former Republican U.S. attorney, Jay
Stephens.
Of course, he is referring there to the study that was commissioned
by the RTC, from the Pillsbury, Madison, Sutro law firm.
He goes on a little later in that editorial to say:
That official report is in, but hardly anyone who has been
surfing the Whitewater headlines will know of it. It has been
ignored by both the Republicans and a media hungry for
scandal. The Stephens report provides a blow-by-blow account
of virtually every charge involved in the Whitewater saga.
Let us put the conclusions firmly on the record. The quotes
below are directly from the Stephens report.
And he then goes through questions that were raised about various
activities and the conclusions of the report. And then goes on to say:
The report concludes: On this record there is no basis to
charge the Clintons with any kind of primary liability for
fraud or intentional misconduct. This investigation has
revealed no evidence to support any such claims. Nor would
the record support any claim of secondary or derivative
liability for the possible misdeeds of others.
Stephens's firm--Pillsbury, Madison & Sutro--spent two
years and almost $4 million to reach its conclusions and
recommended that no further resources be expended on the
Whitewater part of this investigation.
Pillsbury, Madison actually asked for a tolling agreement from the
Rose Law Firm at the end of December, because of some new material that
had come out. And then subsequent to that we received the billing
records of Mrs. Clinton from the Rose firm. Other matters came of
public record, and they examined all of those before they submitted
their final report, which has just come in today. In that report they
conclude, as they had concluded earlier, that there was no basis on any
of the matters they investigated--and they went carefully through quite
a long litany of them--
. . . no basis on which to charge the Clintons with any
kind of primary liability for fraud or intentional conduct,
nor would the record support any claim of secondary or
derivative liability for the possible misdeeds of others.
This report needs, obviously, to be carefully examined by my
colleagues. It is a very important report; $4 million of public money
was expended on it. And it reached the conclusions which I have just
outlined.
Mr. President, I think the proposal that Senator Daschle has put
forward is an eminently reasonable proposal. It is argued, on the one
hand, we need even an indefinite time because we need to get more
material. The material has now all come--an extraordinary request for
material, some of it delayed, in my judgment, because of how far-
reaching and onerous the document requests were. Other items were
delayed because people misplaced them, did not find them. They have now
been provided to the committee.
The other argument that is made, which is an interesting argument
given the record of this committee, is that we now need to await the
trial in Arkansas. It was recognized in Senate Resolution 120 that the
independent counsel was already at work, and it was never anticipated
that the committee would defer its work to the independent counsel in
such a way as to go beyond the February 29 deadline.
[[Page S1444]]
In fact, when the independent counsel in September of last year
indicated to the committee to forbear until some unspecified time any
investigation and public hearings into many of the matters specified in
Senate Resolution 120, we rejected that in a joint letter which Senator
D'Amato and I sent to Mr. Starr. We stated:
We have now determined that the special committee should
not delay its investigation of the remaining matters
specified in Senate Resolution 120.
We went on to say:
We believe that the concerns expressed in your letter do
not outweigh the Senate's strong interest in concluding its
investigation and public hearings into the matters specified
in Senate Resolution 120 consistent with section 9 of the
resolution.
Section 9 is the provision of the resolution which called for the
February 29 concluding date for the work of this committee.
And we went on to say:
Accordingly, we have determined that the special committee
will begin its next round of public hearings in late October
of 1995. This round of hearings will focus primarily on the
matters specified in section (1)(b)(2) of Senate Resolution
120, and through the remainder of this year the special
committee will investigate the remaining matters specified in
Senate Resolution 120 with the intention of holding public
hearings thereon beginning in January 1996.
That was our position then. I thought it was a correct position. It
was not anticipated that the committee would defer its work until after
the independent counsel has pursued his trials. It is now said this
trial. But he has other trials in the offing as well, all of which, of
course, would serve to carry this inquiry on into infinity.
Just to underscore it with respect to Mr. Hale because we, the
minority, have pressed repeatedly throughout for bringing Mr. Hale in,
seeking through subpoena to obtain his documents--and that has
consistently been delayed--this issue was considered at a hearing on
the 28th of November, and Chairman D'Amato said the following. I now
quote:
I would like to bring him, Hale, in sooner rather than
later so that he can testify and so that he can be examined.
If we drag this, if this matter is dragged out into February
or later, I believe legitimate questions can be raised as to
why bringing him in so late and getting into next year and
the political season--and I think that is a very legitimate
concern of this committee--both Democrats and Republicans and
I would like to avoid that.
It certainly was a legitimate concern and the effort to press to move
on the Hale matter never was realized. The minority staff continually
sent memoranda to the majority about Hale and nothing was done about
it. We now find ourselves finding this being used as an argument to
defer the hearings to the other side of the trial. As I said, the trial
is not going to be in secret. So the matters developed at the trial
will be, I can assure you, on the public record and available to the
public.
Many of the witnesses sought have indicated they will take the fifth
amendment. And there is every reason to assume that they will continue
to do so. So then they are not going to become available to the
committee in any event. And the committee has to do its work and make
its report.
We have taken an extraordinary number of depositions. Much of what we
are now looking at, which involves matters that occurred in Arkansas 10
and 15 years ago, had been covered voluminously in the press. I am
really almost staggered by the fact that we hold a hearing and then it
is asserted, well, new revelations came out at this hearing. We held a
hearing with Ickes. And everyone said, ``My goodness, we have
discovered that a special team was set up in the White House to deal
with the Whitewater matter in January of 1994.'' A newspaper account in
early January of 1994 states that a special team under the direction of
Mr. Ickes was set up. So he comes in. We have these notes. He comes in
and testifies. We have the situation in the committee where the
establishment of this team and him as the head of it is considered as a
new discovery when there is a newspaper story from 2 years earlier
stating that such a team was being set up and that he would head it up.
Interestingly enough, the article that was written on the day after
the hearing paralleled the article that was written 2 years earlier.
The January 7th, 1994--not 1996, 1994--article in the Washington Post
stated, and I quote:
With the start of the new year, the White House launched a
major internal effort to fight back against mounting
criticism of the way it has handled inquiries into President
Clinton's Arkansas land investments. A high-powered damage
control squad was appointed under the direction of new Deputy
Chief of Staff, Harold Ickes, and daily strategy sessions
began.
That is in 1994. Then we get notes from Ickes about a meeting of the
special strategy session that he is heading up, and that is treated as
though we discovered something new. In fact, the article reporting on
the hearing paralleled the article written 2 years earlier.
That is what we have been going through; I mean a replowing of
material that has already been available generally in the press and out
to the public. In fact, the Atlanta Constitution in the editorial that
my colleague, Senator Pryor, cited of February 15 states:
The Senate's Watergate hearings of 1973 and 1974 were
momentous delving into White House abuses of power and
leading to the resignation of the disgraced President and the
imprisonment of many of his aides. They lasted 279 days. Next
week, Senator Alfonse D'Amato, Republican of New York and his
fellow Whitewater investigators, will surpass that mark.
Today is the 275th day, and they have nothing anywhere near
conclusive to show for their labors. To put matters in
context, all they have to ponder is a fairly obscure 1980's
real estate and banking scandal in Arkansas. With the
February 29th expiration date for the special panel staring
him in the face, Senator D'Amato has the effrontery to ask
the Senate for more time and money to continue drilling dry
investigative holes. Specifically, he wants open-ended
authority and another $600,000. That is on top of $950,000
his committee has spent so far plus $400,000 that was devoted
to a Senate Banking Committee inquiry into Whitewater in
1994. The partisan motives behind Senator D'Amato's request
could not be more obvious.
They then go on along this vein.
They also make the point in concluding that the independent counsel
will continue his investigation and, therefore, the legal and business
affairs of the President and Mrs. Clinton will be scrutinized by the
independent counsel.
This editorial actually called for ending on February 29 as the
resolution provided. The distinguished minority leader has in effect
come forward and said we will not press this immediate cutoff. We are
prepared for the hearings to go on for a limited further period of
time, and for a period of time after that in order to do the report. I
think that is a very forthcoming proposal, and I very strongly commend
it to my colleagues on the other side of the aisle.
Mr. President, I yield the floor.
Exhibit 1
[From the New York Times, Jan. 27, 1996]
Docudrama
(By Sidney N. Herman)
Documents that are relevant to an investigation are found
in an unexpected place six months after they were first
sought. A shocking development?
Absolutely not. In most major pieces of litigation, files
turn up late. One side or the other always thinks of making
something of the late appearance, but these lawyers know the
truth: it could just as easily happen to them.
Despite diligent searches, important papers in large
organizations are always turning up after the initial and
follow-up searches. How many times have you looked for
something on your desk and couldn't find it, only to have it
appear right under your nose later? Happens all the time.
Indeed, as every litigator knows, there is nothing worse
than having an important document show up late. You've only
highlighted its absence for your opponent. If you know where
it is, it is far better to include it in the initial delivery
of relevant papers, where it gets mixed in with the rest of
the morass. Why red-flag it by holding it back?
My former partner, Kenneth Starr, knows all this. As
independent counsel in the Whitewater investigation, he will
take it into account.
But the American people have no reason to know that this is
a normal occurrence; it is not part of their everyday
experience. Reporters really don't have any reason to know
this either. Or they may know, and simply choose to ignore
it.
Last summer, notes that were critical to the celebrated
libel suit brought by Jeffrey Masson against the writer Janet
Malcolm appeared in her private study, years after they were
first sought. I recall that discovery being treated as an
interesting happenstance, nothing more.
When documents show up belatedly, even in private quarters,
there is simply nothing unusual about it.
Exhibit 2
[From the Washington Post, Feb. 29, 1996]
Extend, But With Limits
We noted the other day that the White House--through its
tardiness in producing
[[Page S1445]]
long-sought subpoenaed documents--has helped Senate Banking Committee
Chairman Alfonse D'Amato make his case for extending the
Whitewater investigation beyond today's expiration date. If
one didn't know any better, one might conclude that the
administration's Whitewater strategy was being devised not by
a White House response team but by the high command of the
Republican National Committee.
However, despite the administration's many pratfalls since
Whitewater burst onstage, Sen. D'Amato and his Republican
colleagues have not provided compelling evidence to support
the entirely open ended mandate they are seeking from the
Senate. There are loose ends to be tied up and other
witnesses to be heard, as Republican Sen. Christopher Bond
said the other day. But dragging the proceedings out well
into the presidential campaign advances the GOP's political
agenda; it doesn't necessarily serve the ends of justice or
the need to learn what made the Madison Guaranty Savings &
Loan of Arkansas go off the tracks at such enormous cost to
American taxpayers. The Senate should allow the committee to
complete the investigative phase of its inquiry, including a
complete examination of the Clinton's involvement with the
defunct Whitewater Development Corp. and their business
relationships with other Arkansas figures involved in
financial wrongdoing. But the Senate should require the
committee to complete its work and produce a final report by
a fixed date.
Democrats want to keep the committee on a short leash by
extending hearings to April 3, with a final report to follow
by May 10. A limited extension makes sense, but an
unreasonably short deadline does not. Five weeks may not be
enough time for the committee to do a credible job. Instead,
the Senate should give the committee more running room but
aim for ending the entire proceedings before summer, when the
campaign season really heats up. That would argue for
permitting the probe to continue through April or early May.
What the Senate does not need is a Democrat-led filibuster.
Having already gone bail for the Clinton White House, often
to an embarrassing degree, Senate Democrats would do
themselves and the president little good by tying up the
Senate with a talkathon. Better that they let the probe
proceed. Give the public some credit for knowing a witch hunt
and a waste of their money if and when they see one. And
that, of course, is the risk Sen. D'Amato and his committee
are taking. The burden is also on them.
Exhibit 3
[From the U.S. News & World Report, Jan. 29, 1996]
The Real Whitewater Report
(By Mortimer B. Zuckerman)
Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you
left no sense of decency? Forty years ago, Joseph Welch, a
venerable Boston lawyer, thus rebuked Joe McCarthy in the
Army-McCarthy hearings and stopped his reckless persecution
of a naive but innocent young man. How one longs for a Joseph
Welch to emerge in the middle of the extraordinary affair now
known as Whitewater! The parallels between Sen. Alfonse
D'Amato's investigation of a land deal in Arkansas and
McCarthy's investigation of communism in the Army are hardly
exact, but there is an uncanny echo of 1954 in the fever of
political innuendo we are now experiencing and in the failure
of an excitable press to set it all in proper perspective.
Then, as now, the public found itself lost in a welter of
allegation, reduced to mumbling the old line about ``no smoke
without fire.''
It would be foolish to expect a congressional investigation
to be above politics. But at what point, in a decent
democracy, does politics have to yield to objectivity? At
what point does rumor have to retreat before truth? In
Whitewater that point would seem to have been reached when we
have had an independent, exhaustive study of the case under
the supervision of a former Republican U.S. attorney, Jay
Stephens, a man whose credibility is enhanced by the fact
that he was such a political adversary of the Clintons that
his appointment provoked Clinton aide George Stephanopoulos
to call for his removal. Yes? No. That official report is in,
but hardly anyone who has been surfing the Whitewater
headlines will know of it. It has been ignored by both the
Republicans and a media hungry for scandal. The Stephens
report provides a blow-by-blow account of virtually every
charge involved in the Whitewater saga. Let us put the
conclusions firmly on the record. The quotes below are
directly from the Stephens report.
Question 1: Were the Clintons involved in the illegal
diversion of any money from the failed Madison Guaranty
Savings & Loan, either to their own pockets or to Clinton's
1984 gubernatorial campaign? ``On this record, there is no
basis to assert that the Clintons knew anything of substance
about the McDougals' advances to Whitewater, the source of
the funds used to make those advances, or the source of
the funds used to make payments on bank debt. . . . For
the relevant period (ending in 1986), the evidence
suggests that the McDougals and not the Clintons managed
Whitewater.''
Question 2: What of money diverted to the campaign? No
evidence has been unearthed that any campaign worker for
Clinton knew of any wrongdoing pertaining to any funds that
might have come out of Madison into Clinton's campaign.
Question 3: Did taxpayers suffer from Whitewater through
Madison's losses on the investment? No. Whitewater did not
hurt Madison, the possible exceptions being a couple of
payments involving James and Susan McDougal. The report says
the Clintons knew nothing about the payments.
Question 4: Did the Clintons make any money? The report
says they did not; instead, they borrowed $40,000 to put into
Whitewater and lost it.
Question 5: What of the charge from David Hale, former
municipal judge and Little Rock businessman, that Bill
Clinton pressured him to make an improper Small Business
Administration loan of $300,000 to Susan McDougal? As to the
$300,000 loan to Mrs. McDougal, ``there is nothing except an
unsubstantiated press report that David Hale claims then-
Governor Clinton pressured him into making the loan to Susan
McDougal.'' The charge lacked credibility in any event. It
was made when Hale sought personal clemency in a criminal
charge of defrauding the SBA.
What's left? Nothing. The report concludes: ``On this
record there is no basis to charge the Clintons with any kind
of primary liability for fraud or intentional misconduct.
This investigation has revealed no evidence to support any
such claims. Nor would the record support any claim of
secondary or derivative liability for the possible misdeeds
of others.''
Stephen's firm--Pillsbury, Madison & Sutro--spent two years
and almost $4 million to reach its conclusions and
recommended ``that no further resources be expended on the
Whitewater part of this investigation.'' Amen.
So when you cut through all the smoke from D'Amato's
committee and almost hysterical press reports such as those
emanating from the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal,
what you have is smoke and no fire. No Whitewater wrongdoing
to cover up, no incriminating documents to be stolen, no
connection between the Clintons and any illegal activities
from the real-estate business failure and the web of
political and legal ties known as Whitewater.
But wait. What about the time sheets showing the amount of
legal work that Hillary Clinton performed for the failed S&L?
Surely we have some flames there? Again, no. Her role, says
the Stephens report, was minimal. Mrs. Clinton did perform
real-estate work in 1985 and 1986 pertaining to an option for
about 2 percent of the land, but as the report says, that was
at most related only tangentially to the acquisition itself.
Mrs. Clinton did not play a legal part in the original
acquisition of the land, known as castle Grande, although the
Rose Law Firm did. Both sides pointed out that the
principals, as opposed to the lawyers, put together the deal.
The lawyers did only the scrivener work, and if this
transaction was a sham, there is ``no substantial evidence
that the Rose Law Firm knowingly and substantially assisted
in its commission.''
As for the option, the report says there is no evidence
that Mrs. Clinton knew of any illegalities in this
transaction: ``The option did not assist in the closing of
the acquisition. It . . . was created many months after the
transaction closed. The option . . . does not prove any
awareness on the part of its author of Ward's [Madison's
partner] arrangements with Madison Financial. . . . While
Mrs. Clinton seems to have had some role in drafting the May
1, 1986, option, nothing proves that she did so knowing it to
be wrong, and the theories that tie this option to wrongdoing
or to the straw-man arrangements are strained at best.''
Rep. James Leach's spokesman asserts that Hillary Clinton's
minimal work on the option put her ``at the center of a
fraudulent deal,'' and D'Amato says that her billing records
show tremendous inconsistencies with her previous statements
on the time she spent on Whitewater. Fraud? The only fraud
lies in these congressional statements; they are a political
fraud on a credulous public. On the role of real-estate
lawyers, I must endorse the Stephens judgments here from my
personal business experience of thousands of real-estate
transactions. Never, not once, have my lawyers drawing up
legal documents determined the business terms or the
appropriateness of the price.
It is appalling that the smoke and smear game has been
played so long by the Republicans and the media that everyone
is tagged with some kind of presumption of guilt rather than
a presumption of innocence. The double standard of judgment
is well illustrated by the performance of those standard-
setting newspapers, the New York Times and the Washington
Post. The Times originally broke the Whitewater story on its
front page with a jump to a full inside page. What did it do
with Stephens's report? Ran it on Page 12, in a 12-inch
story. The Post's priorities were so distorted that it
mentioned the findings in only the 11th paragraph of a front-
page story devoted to a much less important Whitewater
subpoena battle. Most other major papers ran very short
stores on inside pages, and the networks virtually ignored
the report.
The press has slipped its moorings here. It seems to be
caught in a time warp from the Nixon-Watergate era. The two
questions then--what did the president know and when did he
know it?--were at the very heart of the matter. The two
questions now--what did the president's wife know and when
did she know it?--seem a childish irrelevance by comparison.
The time, money, and political energy spent barking up the
wrong tree are
[[Page S1446]]
quite amazing. The press gives the impression that it has invested so
much capital in the search for a scandal that it cannot drop
it when the scandal evaporates. The Republicans give the
impression that if one slander does not work, they will try
another. No wonder the nation holds Congress, the White House
and the media in such contempt; the people know that the
press seems to be acting like a baby--a huge appetite at one
end and no sense of responsibility at the other.
We have a topsy-turvy situation here. The Republicans win
the case on merit over balancing the budget but are losing it
politically on the basis of public perception. The Clintons
have the better case on Whitewater but are losing it
politically because of smear and slander, a situation
compounded by their defensive behavior. The media seem
unwilling to focus on the substance of either issue. So much
for a responsible press!
Mr. WARNER addressed the Chair.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Virginia is recognized.
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