[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 29 (Wednesday, March 6, 1996)]
[Senate]
[Pages S1552-S1567]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




  WHITEWATER DEVELOPMENT CORP. AND RELATED MATTERS--MOTION TO PROCEED

  Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate 
now proceed to the consideration of calendar No. 341, Senate Resolution 
227 regarding the Special Committee on Whitewater.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
  Mr. SARBANES. I object.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Objection is heard.
  Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, I now move to proceed to calendar 341, 
Senate Resolution 227.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The question is on the motion.
  Is there further debate?
  Mr. MACK addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Florida.
  Mr. MACK. Mr. President, we are here today primarily because the 
White House has not been dealing with the special committee in good 
faith. I know that there are those who would accuse this committee of 
conducting a political witch hunt in an election year. But I submit 
that there are legitimate and powerful reasons to be investigating 
Whitewater Development Corp. and all of the related matters.
  At the outset, it should be made clear that the main reason this 
committee needs additional time is the abject failure of this 
administration to cooperate. Contrary to all of their public 
statements, I believe the White House has been actively engaged in a 
coverup. They have repeatedly refused to turn over relevant evidence 
and have often failed to remember key facts under oath.
  To give just one example, Bruce Lindsey was asked on numerous 
occasions whether he had produced all relevant documents to the 
committee, and he insisted under oath that he had. In particular, the 
committee asked about any notes he might have taken during the November 
5, 1994, meeting of the Whitewater defense team. That is the same 
meeting where William Kennedy took notes, and we almost had to go to 
court to obtain them. Last Friday--that is the very date the special 
committee's funding was set to expire--he turned over his clearly 
marked notes of the November 5 Whitewater defense team meeting.
  The American people deserve better than that. Again, this is only one 
example--where Bruce Lindsey was asked over and over again whether he 
had taken notes during that November 5 meeting, and we were told over 
and over again that he had not. On the day this committee's funding 
expired, they turned over these notes of the meeting.
  In my opinion, the White House has done everything in its power to 
hide the truth. That is why we are here asking for additional funds to 
continue the committee's work.
  Mr. President, I suspect that over the next several hours we 
obviously will hear from both sides of the aisle on this. But on our 
side of the aisle, I expect that most of our Members who participated 
in these hearings will probably do as I have done; that is, to focus my 
attention on some specific areas where I focused my attention during 
the committee hearings. So my comments now will be somewhat focused on 
the behavior of the White House officials immediately after Vincent 
Foster's death.
  The death of White House Deputy Counsel Vincent W. Foster, Jr., on 
July 20, 1993, marked the first time since Secretary of Defense James 
Forrestal died in 1949 that such a high-ranking

[[Page S1553]]

U.S. official took his own life. Mr. Foster was a close friend of both 
the President and Mrs. Clinton, and provided legal counsel to them on a 
number of sensitive personal matters, including Whitewater. Given Mr. 
Foster's sensitive position within the administration and his close 
personal friendship with the Clinton's, there were legitimate questions 
to be asked about the way he died.
  The reason I raise this is because I have a feeling that those who 
may have just casually been observing or watching these hearings may 
have asked the question, What is all the concern about how the White 
House handled the review of documents in Vince Foster's office? I have 
already indicated that he was a personal friend of the Clintons, but 
there are questions that would be raised about any suicide of an 
individual in this kind of position.
  Questions, for example, could be: Was there blackmail involved? Was 
he a victim of a crime that had something to do with his position? 
Could he have been the subject of extortion? Was our national security 
compromised in any way? Officials would certainly be concerned with 
finding out the answers to these questions as soon as possible.
  In the days following his death, White House officials--in 
particular, members of the White House counsel's office--searched the 
contents of Mr. Foster's office and at the same time prevented law 
enforcement officials from conducting a similar search. In doing this 
and later covering it up, they have come to look like the guiltiest 
bunch of people I have ever seen.
  Section (1)(b)(1) of Senate Resolution 120 authorizes the committee 
to inquire ``whether improper conduct occurred regarding the way in 
which White House officials handled documents in the office of White 
House Deputy Counsel Vincent Foster following his death.''
  Pursuant to this directive, the committee conducted 69 depositions 
and held 17 days of public hearings to investigate the actions of White 
House officials in the week following Mr. Foster's death. The 
committee's investigation revealed, among other things, the following 
facts.
  Fact: Foster's office was never sealed the night of his death despite 
four separate official requests.
  Fact: High-ranking White House officials searched it without 
supervision.
  Fact: Maggie Williams was seen by an unbiased witness carrying a 
stack of documents out of Foster's office.
  Fact: Nussbaum made an agreement for Justice Department officials to 
conduct a search of Foster's office.
  Fact: Nussbaum told Stephen Neuwirth that the First Lady and Susan 
Thomases was concerned with the Justice officials having unfettered 
access to Foster's office.
  Fact: A flurry of phone calls occurred at critical times--17 separate 
contacts in a 48-hour period among Hillary Clinton, Maggie Williams, 
Susan Thomases, and Nussbaum.
  Fact: After those calls, Nussbaum reneged on the deal with the 
Department of Justice investigators. He insisted on searching the 
office himself.

  Fact: Once the investigators left the scene, a real search occurred 
with Maggie Williams' help, and afterwards she took documents to the 
residence.
  Mr. President, I am going to go back through those various facts that 
I have raised, and again I am focusing on a very, very small portion 
and limited area of this whole debate. The area that I will be focusing 
on again is the night of Foster's death and the few days following that 
death.
  Seven different persons recalled four separate requests to White 
House officials to seal Vincent Foster's office on the evening of his 
death. This was not done until the next morning. Hillary Rodham Clinton 
called Maggie Williams, her chief of staff, at 10:13 p.m. immediately 
upon hearing of Mr. Foster's death on July 20, 1993. Right after 
talking with Mrs. Clinton, Ms. Williams proceeded to the White House to 
Mr. Foster's office. White House Counsel Bernie Nussbaum and Deputy 
Director of the White House Office of Administration, Patsy Thomasson, 
met her there and conducted a late-night search of Mr. Foster's office 
without law enforcement supervision.
  Mrs. Clinton then called Susan Thomases, a close personal friend, in 
New York at 11:19 p.m. Secret Service officer Henry O'Neill testified 
that on the night of Mr. Foster's death, he saw Ms. Williams remove 
file folders 3 to 5 inches thick from the White House counsel's suite 
and place them in her office.
  Now, why would this Secret Service individual lie about that? This 
could constitute obstruction of justice, particularly if the billing 
records were in those files. If this is true, there could be two 
possible separate counts, the first against Maggie Williams for 
knowingly taking relevant documents out of Foster's office with the 
intent to hide them from investigators, and the second for turning them 
over to someone else, possibly the Clintons, who then intentionally 
withheld them from us in violation of numerous document requests and 
subpoenas.
  This is one of the central questions which the committee must 
resolve.
  After searching Mr. Foster's office on the night of his death, Ms. 
Williams called Mrs. Clinton in Little Rock at 12:56 a.m. on July 21, 
1993, and talked with her for 11 minutes. Again, this is 12:56 a.m., 
middle of the night. Once that call was concluded, only 3 minutes 
later, at 1:10 a.m., after her conversation with Mrs. Clinton, Ms. 
Williams called Ms. Thomases in New York and they talked for 20 
minutes.
  I wish to note here that when we first spoke to Ms. Williams, she 
categorically denied talking to Ms. Thomases that night. Imagine, that 
was a 20-minute conversation that took place at 1:10 in the morning and 
Ms. Williams categorically denied talking to Ms. Thomases. When the 
committee asked her for her phone records to prove her claim, she and 
her lawyer stated they were not available from the phone company. We 
asked the phone company for the records and, voila, 1 week later, we 
had them.
  Susan Thomases, a New York lawyer, is a close personal friend of 
President and Mrs. Clinton. She has known the President for 25 years 
and Mrs. Clinton for almost 20 years. She was an adviser to the Clinton 
1992 Presidential campaign and remained in the close circle of 
confidants to the Clintons after the election. One article referred to 
Ms. Thomases as the ``blunt force instrument'' of enforcement for the 
First Lady. She was the one who got things done in a crunch. As my 
colleague, Senator Bennett, described her during the hearings, she was 
the ``go-to'' guy on the Clinton team. If the First Lady wanted to make 
sure that her people got to Foster's files before outside law 
enforcement, Susan Thomases was just the person to get the job done.
  Department of Justice officials testified that they agreed with Mr. 
Nussbaum on July 21, 1993, that they would jointly review documents in 
Mr. Foster's office. Let me just say that again. There was an agreement 
between the Justice Department and Bernie Nussbaum as to how the 
documents in Mr. Foster's office would be reviewed.
  Then there is a flurry of phone calls that occurs at what I would 
call critical times. We then begin a period of time in which a 
multitude of calls took place involving Thomases, Williams, and the 
First Lady. I believe the purpose of these calls might have been to 
make sure that the agreement Bernie Nussbaum had made with the Justice 
Department concerning the search of Foster's office was not kept.
  Call No. 1. At 6:44 a.m.--fairly early in the morning. I am trying to 
think about how many phone calls I have actually placed at 6:44 a.m. 
Anyway, 6:44 a.m. Arkansas time on July 22, Maggie Williams called Mrs. 
Clinton--this is the day following--called Mrs. Clinton at her mother's 
house in Little Rock, and they talked for 7 minutes. Ms. Williams 
initially did not tell the special committee about her early-morning 
phone call to the Rodham residence.
  After obtaining her residential telephone records documenting the 
call, the special committee voted unanimously to call Ms. Williams back 
for further testimony. When presented with these records, Ms. Williams 
testified, ``If I was calling the residence, it is likely that I was 
trying to reach Mrs. Clinton. If it was 6:44 in Arkansas, there's a 
possibility that she was not up. I don't remember who I talked to, but 
I don't find it unusual that the chief of staff to the First Lady might 
want to call her early in the morning for a number of reasons.''
  Maggie Williams said, ``I don't recall'' or ``I don't remember'' so 
many

[[Page S1554]]

times I lost count. According to one New York paper, as of last month, 
all of the Whitewater witnesses combined said this a total of 797 times 
during the hearings alone.
  Call No. 2. This is a call that takes place now 6 minutes after the 
call that Maggie Williams forgot or just did not mention to the 
committee until we had records of the call. But 6 minutes after she 
apparently was willing to wake up the First Lady 6:44 Arkansas time, 6 
minutes later Mrs. Clinton called the Mansion on O Street, a small 
hotel where Susan Thomases stayed in Washington, DC. The call lasted 3 
minutes. Oddly enough, Ms. Thomases did not remember this call again 
until after the committee was provided with her phone records.
  Call No. 3. Upon ending her conversation with Mrs. Clinton, Susan 
Thomases immediately paged Bernie Nussbaum at the White House, leaving 
her number at the Mansion on O Street. When Mr. Nussbaum answered the 
page, they talked about the upcoming review of documents in Mr. 
Foster's office. Ms. Thomases actually told the committee that these 
two phone calls had nothing to do with one another. After obtaining 
records documenting that she talked with Mrs. Clinton for 3 minutes 
immediately prior to paging Mr. Nussbaum, the special committee voted 
unanimously to call Ms. Thomases back for further testimony.
  She maintained, however, that she called Nussbaum, because again, ``I 
was worried about my friend Bernie, and I was just about to go into a 
very, very busy day in my work, and I wanted to make sure that I got to 
talk to Bernie that day since I had not been lucky enough to speak with 
him the day before.''
  I will come back to the busy day she was having later. At this point 
I will say that she was busy all right, but not with her private law 
practice.
  Mr. Nussbaum has a different recollection of his conversations with 
Ms. Thomases. On July 22 he testified that Ms. Thomases initiated the 
discussion about the procedures that he intended to employ in reviewing 
documents in Mr. Foster's office.
  ``The conversation on the 22d''--this is a quote now-- ``The 
conversation on the 22d was that she asked me what was going on with 
respect to the examination of Mr. Foster's office.'' ``She said * * * 
people were concerned or disagreeing * * * whether a correct procedure 
was being followed, * * * whether it was proper to give people access 
to the office at all.''
  According to Mr. Nussbaum, Ms. Thomases did not specify who these 
``people'' were to whom she was referring, nor did Mr. Nussbaum 
understand who they were. Mr. Nussbaum testified he resisted Ms. 
Thomases' overture, but he said, ``Susan * * * I'm having discussions 
with various people,'' which, by the way, we determined those various 
people were Hillary Clinton, Bill Clinton and Maggie Williams. Again 
quoting--``Susan * * * I'm having discussions with various people. As 
far as the White House is concerned, I will make a decision as to how 
this is going to be conducted.''
  He did decide to renege on his deal with the Department of Justice, 
but only after more phone calls from Maggie Williams and Susan 
Thomases. We have independent corroboration from Steve Neuwirth. Steve 
Neuwirth, a member of the White House counsel staff, testified under 
oath that Bernie Nussbaum told him Susan Thomases and the First Lady 
were concerned about giving the officials from Justice ``unfettered 
access'' to Foster's office.
  While the Justice Department officials were kept waiting outside, 
Nussbaum continued his discussions, as more phone calls ensued, 
presumably about how to search the office.
  Call No. 4. We are back again to this series of phone calls I was 
describing a little earlier. This is the fourth phone call. This is 
8:25 in the morning of July 22. Thomases called the Rodham residence 
and spoke for 4 minutes.
  Call No. 5. At 9 a.m., Thomases called Maggie Williams and left the 
message ``call when you get in the office.''
  Call No. 6. 10:48 a.m., Thomases calls Chief of Staff McLarty's 
offices, spoke with someone for 3 minutes.
  A meeting involving numerous members of the White House staff was 
going on in McLarty's office at this time to decide how to handle the 
search of Foster's office. In the meantime, the officials from the 
Justice Department, Park Police, and other agencies were waiting around 
for the search to begin.
  Call No. 7. 11:04 a.m., Thomases called Maggie Williams, spoke for 6 
minutes.
  Call No. 8. This is occurring 1 minute after the conclusion of the 
previous call--Thomases calls Chief of Staff McLarty's office, spoke 
with someone for 3 minutes.
  Call No. 9, just a couple minutes later, Thomases calls Chief of 
Staff McLarty's office again; spoke with someone for 1 minute.
  Call No. 10. 11:37 a.m., Thomases called Maggie Williams, spoke for 
11 minutes. Three minutes after that call was completed, Thomases 
called Maggie Williams and spoke for 4 minutes. Do not forget, this is 
all taking place during the time that Ms. Thomases said she was going 
to be very, very busy on conference calls related to her private legal 
practice.
  When we asked Ms. Williams about all these calls to her office from 
Susan Thomases, she denied talking to her, and told us it could have 
been anybody else in her office, could have been an intern, a 
volunteer, or another staffer. Her refusal to take responsibility for 
the calls resulted in 32 different staffers having to be interviewed 
about who might have spoken to Susan Thomases that day, and all said 
they do not remember talking to her.

  By doing this, Maggie Williams asked the committee to believe that 
Susan Thomases regularly calls unpaid interns at the White House just 
to chat. Her testimony to the committee was frankly typical of her 
whole approach to the process. In my opinion, both Maggie Williams and 
Susan Thomases are openly contemptuous of the committee's work. Their 
attitude toward this inquiry has never been one of cooperation, but 
rather blatant hostility.
  Their behavior, coupled with the documentary evidence we have 
acquired, lead me to no other reasonable conclusion than that Maggie 
Williams and Susan Thomases were involved or influenced the decision to 
breach the agreement with the Department of Justice. Their behavior, 
and what I believe to be the reasons behind it, are frankly an insult, 
not just to us, but to the credibility and integrity of the Presidency.
  Call No. 12. At 12:47 p.m., Capricia, an individual who is Hillary 
Clinton's personal assistant, paged Maggie Williams from the Rodham 
residence.
  Call No. 13. 12:55 p.m., Maggie Williams called the Rodham residence 
and spoke for 1 minute. The pressure on Nussbaum must have been too 
great. He broke his agreement with the Justice Department and conducted 
the search essentially unsupervised. After learning of Nussbaum's 
reversal, David Margolis, one of the seasoned DOJ officials sent over 
for the search, told Nussbaum, that he was making a big mistake.
  Once he heard this news, Philip Heymann, the Deputy Attorney General, 
later asked, ``Bernie, are you hiding something?"
  Call No. 14. At 1:25 p.m., the White House phone call to Rodham 
residence. Conversation for 6 minutes. Was this to tell Mrs. Clinton 
the deal with the Justice Department had been reneged upon?
  Then we move to the search which takes place in Foster's office from 
approximately 1 p.m. to 3 p.m. The Department of Justice officials 
again are kept at bay.
  Call No. 15. 3:05 p.m., Bill Burton, McLarty's deputy, called Maggie 
Williams and left a message. He had been asked by Nussbaum, after the 
review of Foster's office, to locate Maggie Williams. This signals the 
attempt by Nussbaum, through his deputy, to get the real search of the 
office underway, but only with Ms. Williams' help.
  Call No. 16. 3:08 p.m., Thomases called Maggie Williams. Spoke for 10 
minutes.
  Call No. 17. 3:25 p.m., Steve Neuwirth called Ms. Williams and left a 
message. They are still trying to find Ms. Williams.
  Call No. 18. It occurred somewhere between 4 and 4:30 p.m. Bernie 
Nussbaum personally called Maggie Williams to summon her to Foster's 
office. They searched the office for about half an hour.
  Call No. 19. Somewhere between 4:30 and 5 p.m. Maggie Williams phoned 
Hillary Clinton.

[[Page S1555]]

  Call No. 20. 5:13 p.m., Thomases called Maggie Williams. Spoke for 9 
minutes, 30 seconds.
  Then Maggie Williams takes the documents to the residence. Although 
the public was initially told by the White House spokesperson that all 
the Clintons personal documents were immediately turned over to their 
lawyers after Foster's death, once again, we later learned this was 
simply untrue.
  Tom Castleton, a White House employee, spoke against his own interest 
and told us Maggie Williams asked him to take boxes of documents from 
Foster's office to the residence on July 22, 1993, so the First Lady 
and the President could review them.
  I want to go back to this point again. This is Maggie Williams who 
again says that this did not occur. We have got testimony under oath 
from Tom Castleton that when he and Maggie Williams were taking these 
documents to the third floor of the White House, that Maggie Williams 
told Tom Castleton that the reason they were doing this is so that the 
First Lady and the President could review them.
  What I see is a day that begins and ends with Maggie Williams, Susan 
Thomases and Hillary Clinton conversing. I think Maggie Williams 
started the day at 6:44 talking with the First Lady about the need to 
keep law enforcement out of Foster's office and to get certain 
documents into a safe place.
  She ended the day with a conversation with Thomases and a 
conversation with Hillary Clinton to let them know--mission 
accomplished. Bernie Nussbaum was able to control the document review. 
Nothing was divulged to the Department of Justice investigators. The 
sensitive documents of the First Lady were whisked away to the private 
quarters where months later Carolyn Huber discovered critical billing 
records which had Foster's handwriting all over them.
  Hubbell even told us he had last seen them in Foster's possession. I 
believe those records may have been among the files Maggie Williams 
took out of Foster's office.
  The first time we talked to Ms. Williams and Ms. Thomases, we only 
had a record of 12 of these phone calls. They denied talking to each 
other, except maybe once or twice, during this period. We received the 
phone records in three separate installments and, in the end, we see 
their testimony was nothing but deception.
  There were 17 separate contacts in a 48-hour period among Hillary 
Clinton, Maggie Williams, Susan Thomases and Bernie Nussbaum, which I 
believe were related to how to handle the documents in Foster's office. 
Thomases was on the phone to the White House for 28 out of 58 minutes 
when Nussbaum was trying to decide how to handle the search of Foster's 
office.
  Again, this was on the day that, in her own words, again I quote, ``I 
was just about to go into a very, very busy day in my own work.'' It 
now appears that her work was, in fact, the First Lady's work.
  But that is not all. There is more deception about the suicide note 
and the documents removed from Foster's office. I want to reiterate, I 
have picked out one small segment of the investigation of the testimony 
that we reviewed, and it certainly ought to become obvious to people, 
as they listen to this, the lack of cooperation that we received from 
the witnesses, the lack of cooperation that we received from the White 
House. As I said earlier, I believe that the White House was actively 
involved in trying to cover up.
  I am moving now to July 27, 1993. It is an important day. This is the 
day that the suicide note was turned over. Vince Foster's suicide note 
had been found the previous day. It was only turned over to the Park 
Police after a meeting with Janet Reno where she instructed the White 
House to do so. Attorney General Reno was very strong and decisive in 
her direction to the White House. I am paraphrasing, but basically the 
impression she left was, ``Why did you waste my time? Why did I have to 
come to the White House to tell you to turn these documents over?"
  I raise the question, Why were the documents not turned over the same 
day they were found? If you think about it for a moment, what possible 
reason could the White House have for keeping that note overnight, 30 
hours? Why?
  In retrospect, it is stunning that the White House did not turn it 
over to the Park Police right away. Obviously, as we can see by their 
handling of the note, they had no real intention of cooperating. Prior 
to the note being turned over to the Justice Department or Park Police, 
Hillary Clinton and a horde of other White House officials saw it. From 
what it sounded like, there were a large number of people--again, what 
I am referring to is from the testimony. The note was found, taken to 
Nussbaum's office, and people were coming in and reviewing this note. 
The people who, in fact, had seen the note were asked to testify about 
that note and who else was in the room, who else saw the note.
  Oddly enough, everyone who was later interviewed by the FBI about the 
circumstances of finding the note forgot about the First Lady having 
seen it. Only during our second round of hearings did we learn about 
this important fact.
  As for the documents that Tom Castleton and Maggie Williams took up 
to the residence on the 22d, they were turned over to Bob Barnett, the 
Clinton's personal attorney, on this day, on the 27th. Susan Thomases 
has testified she did not recall seeing Mrs. Clinton on July 27 and 
that she was not involved in Ms. Williams' transfer of Whitewater files 
from the White House residence to Clinton's personal lawyer, Mr. Bob 
Barnett, this despite records showing that Susan Thomases entered the 
residence at the same time as Mr. Barnett.
  Thomases spent 6 hours there, yet she does not remember anything 
about being in the White House that day. I mean, they are really asking 
us to stretch our willingness to understand how this could happen.
  I want to go over that point again because I find this really--6 
hours she was in the White House. It would be one thing if somehow or 
another she just happened to either bump into Maggie Williams or bump 
into Bob Barnett and forgot it, but to, in essence, have forgotten 
anything about the 6 hours at the White House, I just find that very, 
very, very hard to believe.
  As recently as January 9, 1996, we received another phone record of a 
message from Mrs. Clinton to Susan Thomases from July 27, 1993 at 1:30 
p.m., asking Thomases to please call Hillary. Ms. Thomases was in 
Washington, DC on that day when she would not normally have been in 
town, and she had received a message from Mrs. Clinton's scheduler the 
day before. This is also the first time Ms. Thomases saw the First Lady 
after Vince Foster committed suicide.
  So that is two personal requests by the First Lady to speak to her, 
but Thomases has no memory of the occasion. Ironically enough, she was 
able to tell the committee in some detail the specific reasons why she 
happened to be in Washington on Tuesday instead of on Wednesday but has 
absolutely no memory of a White House visit when there. This type of 
memory loss is, first, unbelievable and, second, I believe a purposeful 
attempt to avoid giving the committee information that it is entitled 
to.
  What I have gone over is just, again, one small portion of the body 
of evidence this committee has uncovered.
  Here are some other items which form my view of the situation and 
explain why I have arrived at the conclusion that this White House has 
engaged in an attempt to completely stonewall the committee and the 
American public.
  Unethical Treasury/White House contacts led to the resignation of 
Altman and Hanson and Steiner, saying he lied to his diary. You may 
recall that from earlier hearings we had. These contacts were a 
systematic effort to gain confidential information from Government 
sources and ultimately influence the criminal and civil investigations 
of Madison.
  The President's refusal to turn over vital notes under the guise of 
attorney-client privilege--this kind of coordination among White House 
staff and personal lawyers resulted in a multimember Clinton defense 
team at taxpayers' expense.
  Now we understand why they did not want to turn over those notes, 
because they contain phrases such as ``vacuum Rose law files.''

[[Page S1556]]

  The coverup has now reached the third floor of the White House 
residence. It is difficult to construct a scenario where whoever left 
billing records on that table is not guilty of a felony. It is the most 
secure room in the world. Are we supposed to believe, as my colleague 
from North Carolina indicated during the hearing, that the butler did 
it?
  Hillary Clinton has publicly floated the possibility that 
construction workers may have placed those billing records in the book 
room. After committee investigation, we now know that workers are under 
constant Secret Service supervision and they would be fired if they 
moved anything around.
  The White House has seriously delayed document production from key 
White House players in the Whitewater legal defense team: Gearan, Ickes 
and Waldman--and, as I said earlier, just last week, Lindsey.
  Even when documents were turned over, there were redactions which 
were just plain wrong. The notes Mr. Gearan produced to us of a series 
of meetings of the Whitewater legal defense team were so heavily 
redacted that the committee insisted on a review of the complete notes. 
As it turns out, the White House chose to redact highly relevant 
statements.
  For example, one redacted portion--and I guess maybe I ought to stop 
for a minute, because some people may not understand what ``redaction'' 
means. It would be, for example, if I were to take this page and make 
the determination that there were some things on here that were not 
relevant; I would just white them out and white out everything on the 
page I thought was irrelevant, leaving only, let us say, a note on here 
that says, ``Quality, not quantity of evidence'' that is important.
  So, for example, one of the redactions said that ``the First Lady was 
adamantly opposed to the appointment of a special counsel.'' What I am 
saying to you is, when we first got the document, a lot of information 
that we believed was relevant was whited out, redacted. We could not 
see it. It was only after we demanded to see it, after they said to us, 
``Do not worry, there is nothing else of any relevance on this document 
to what you are investigating.'' This one redacted portion said, ``The 
First Lady was adamantly opposed to the appointment of a special 
counsel.''
  I think that is relevant and it is another example of the White 
House's efforts to keep us from moving forward. I know that the White 
House, as well as Members on the other side of the aisle, keep 
hammering on the fact that over 40,000 pages of documents have been 
produced. But it is not the quantity of documents that matter. They 
could produce a million pages but deliberately withhold one key page. 
By telling us to be satisfied with what they have already given us, it 
is like telling us we can have everything but the 18-minute gap in the 
4,000 plus hours of Watergate tapes. Plain and simple, in my opinion, 
this amounts to contempt of the Senate and obstruction of justice.
  We in the Senate have a serious responsibility to investigate abuses 
of power in the executive branch. It is one of our constitutional 
obligations and is a responsibility which the people of Florida expect 
me to carry out.
  The obligation of the legislative branch to hold the executive branch 
accountable goes back to the beginning of our American heritage. The 
Founding Fathers had this very role in mind when they debated 
ratification of the Constitution. In Federalist Paper No. 51, James 
Madison explained the need for checks and balances among the branches 
of Government.

       If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal 
     controls on government would be necessary. In framing a 
     government which is to be administered by men over men, the 
     great difficulty lies in this: You must first enable the 
     government to control the governed; and in the next place 
     oblige it to control itself.

  The special committee's work is an attempt to ensure that we are 
controlling government in the way our Founding Fathers envisioned. We 
owe it to the American people. This is their Government, and we are 
accountable to them.
  Now, the failure of Madison Guaranty cost the taxpayers $60 million. 
I have attended hearings day after day and heard some amazing 
incidences of wrongdoing, only to turn around and hear administration 
apologists proclaim, ``So what.'' This is my reaction to the ``so 
what'' response. In other words, what they are saying is, ``You have 
not proved anybody guilty of anything. There is no smoking gun. So 
what.'' It is like saying that if somebody takes a gun and shoots at 
somebody and misses, no harm was done. I think, in fact, there is harm 
that has been done; and it has, in fact, been uncovered.
  To those who insist that nothing wrong was done, I suggest you look 
to the results obtained so far from the independent counsel's work: 
Nine guilty pleas and indictments against seven others. That tells me 
that the issues we are pursuing are important.
  In fact, in the most recent round of indictments, the President's 
1990 gubernatorial campaign is specifically mentioned as the direct 
beneficiary of criminal behavior.
  It is also interesting to note that the work of this committee has 
helped, not hindered or duplicated, the work of the independent 
counsel. The Albany Times Union observed that without the public demand 
in our hearings for the First Lady's billing records, the special 
prosecutor might still be waiting for them.
  The public has a right to know the truth about this administration. 
On February 25, the Washington Post ran an editorial favoring an 
extension of the special committee. The main reason stated for needing 
additional time was the failure of the White House to cooperate. This 
is what the Washington Post said: ``Clinton officials have done their 
share to extend the committee's life.''
  A January 25 editorial in the New York Times said, ``Given the White 
House's failure to address many unanswered questions, there is . . . a 
strong public interest in keeping the committee alive.''
  One Florida newspaper, the St. Petersburg Times said, ``Forget 
election year politics. The American people deserve to know whether the 
Clinton administration is guilty of misusing its power and 
orchestrating a coverup. For that reason--and that reason alone--the 
Senate Whitewater hearings should go on.''
  Further, they cited the most important and most democratic reason to 
continue these hearings was, ``Ordinary citizens need to learn what all 
this Whitewater talk is about. Americans deserve a President they can 
trust, someone who embraces questions about integrity instead of 
running from them. If the answers make Clinton's campaigning more 
difficult, so be it.''
  Wrongdoing should not go unpunished just because it was discovered 
during an election year. ``The search for answers cannot stop now.''
  I agree wholeheartedly with the St. Petersburg Times. This 
committee's work must continue in order to preserve the future 
integrity of the office of the President. The Presidency of the United 
States is an office which should be looked to as a beacon of trust. Our 
President should be honest and forthright, and so should his staff. Our 
duty is to ensure that the President upholds this basic standard, 
abides by the laws of the land, and avoids any abuse of his sacred 
office.
  Apologists for the administration's behavior have complained this 
investigation is costing taxpayers too much money. I agree with my 
colleague, again, from North Carolina, who said, ``You cannot put a 
price tag on the integrity of the Presidency.''
  For those of my colleagues who may still be deciding how to vote on 
this matter, I suggest they ask themselves a few basic questions. Have 
all the White House staffers been forthcoming, candid, helpful, and 
informative in their testimony and conduct? Did the career employees of 
key agencies who contradicted White House staff lie when they told us 
of White House interference? Has the President fulfilled his pledge to 
cooperate fully with the committee? If you answer one or more of these 
questions with a no, do as I will, and support the resolution so that 
we might finally learn the truth.
  Thank you, Mr. President. I yield the floor.
  Mr. SARBANES addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Ashcroft). The Senator from Maryland is 
recognized.
  Mr. SARBANES. Mr. President, the issue before us is a resolution that 
has

[[Page S1557]]

been reported from the Rules Committee, introduced by Senator D'Amato, 
the chairman of the Special Whitewater Committee, which would 
indefinitely extend the special committee and provide another $600,000 
over and above the almost million dollars that was provided last year 
for it to continue its work.
  The distinguished minority leader, Senator Daschle, has proposed that 
the committee's work continue until the 3rd of April with an additional 
$185,000. The question is really whether the life of this committee 
ought to be given an indefinite extension throughout the 1996 
Presidential election year.
  I am going to retrace the history of our inquiry with respect to this 
particular issue, because I am very frank to say that I think the 
indefinite extension of the work of this committee will only result in 
politicizing the committee. It will be increasingly perceived by the 
public as an investigation being conducted for political purposes.
  Now, that was recognized last year when the resolution establishing 
the committee was first passed. Last May--on May 17--the Senate adopted 
Senate Resolution 120, which provided for the establishment of the 
Special Committee To Investigate the Whitewater Development Corporation 
and Related Matters. That resolution, which provided $950,000--almost 
$1 million to carry out that investigation--provided that the funding 
would expire on February 29, 1996.

  The reason it provided that was that from the beginning the intent 
was to carry out this inquiry in a fair, thorough, and impartial 
manner, and complete it before the country enters into the Presidential 
campaign. Therefore, Resolution 120, by authorizing funding only 
through February 29, accomplished this objective. In fact, the 
resolution states that the purposes of the committee are ``to expedite 
the thorough conduct of this investigation, study and hearings'' and 
``to engender a high degree of confidence on the part of the public 
regarding the conduct of such investigation, study and hearings.''
  In fact, Chairman D'Amato, before the Rules Committee, stated when 
funding for the inquiry was being sought, ``We wanted to keep it out of 
that political arena, and that is why we decided to come forward with 
the one-year request.''
  So it is very important to understand that at the time the resolution 
was adopted there was a concern about this inquiry becoming a partisan 
political endeavor. It was very clear that to avoid that it was decided 
not to extend the inquiry well into the Presidential election year. In 
fact, the resolution provided that the committee should report to the 
Senate in mid-January, evaluating its progress and the status of the 
investigation. When that report was made, regrettably the majority took 
the position they needed an unlimited extension of the inquiry--
unlimited. In other words, it could go throughout 1996.
  The minority took the position--and this was back in mid-January--
that the committee should complete its investigation by the date 
contained in the resolution; namely, the 29th of February. We argued in 
that report, ``It is well within the ability of the committee to 
complete its investigation by the February 29th date provided for in 
the resolution. The committee should undertake a schedule for the next 
6 weeks that will enable it to meet that objective.''
  In fact, the Senate leadership had announced that the Senate would 
not be in regular voting sessions from the period of mid-January until 
near the end of February, and without any competing legislative 
business, it was our view that the committee could devote full 
attention of this investigation, hold an intense series of hearings and 
complete its inquiry on schedule--on schedule--and within budget as 
provided for in Senate Resolution 120 which this body adopted last May 
on a vote of 96-3.
  It was possible for the committee to have met 4 or 5 days a week, a 
pace the committee has on previous instances followed. This very same 
committee has followed that pace on other occasions. That would have 
given the committee the opportunity to do the Arkansas phase of the 
inquiry, part of which remained to be completed, the committee having 
largely completed the work on the Foster papers phase and the 
Washington phase.
  Now, between July and August of last year, between July 18 and August 
10, at a time when the Senate was in session and Members were handling 
extensive legislative business, this special committee held 13 days of 
public hearings and examined 34 witnesses. That is a period of 3 weeks 
last summer, this committee, working hard, held 13 days of public 
hearings and examined 34 witnesses. The Iran-Contra committee, which I 
will turn to in a bit to make some other contrasts, held 21 days of 
hearings back in 1987 between July 7 and August 6 in order to complete 
its work.
  Now, there is an important reason not to carry this matter well into 
a Presidential election year. By authorizing the funding only through 
February 29, Senate Resolution 120 stated that the purpose was to 
engender a high degree of confidence on the part of the public 
regarding the conduct of such investigation, study and hearings. 
Extending the life of the committee beyond that date, and in particular 
extending it for an indefinite period of time would undermine this 
objective. Inevitably, in my judgment, it would diminish public 
confidence in the impartiality of this inquiry.
  Now, regrettably, an intensification of the hearing schedule was not 
pursued through January and February. So we came to the end of February 
and the majority, now led by Chairman D'Amato, has proposed an 
unlimited extension of time to continue the Senate investigation. That 
proposal was reported out of both the Banking Committee and the Rules 
Committee on a straight partisan vote, in contrast to the vote on 
Senate Resolution 120 last May.
  The minority proposed an alternative. We took the position in mid-
January that this inquiry could be finished by the end of February, 
pursuant to Senate Resolution 120, but the kind of hearing schedule 
that would have been necessary to accomplish that was regrettably never 
adopted. In fact, we have a situation in which in the 2-month period, 
we saw opportunities to conduct hearings simply pass by. In January, we 
held one hearing this week, two hearings this week, two this week, two 
that week. So we held seven hearings in the entire month of January. 
January--seven hearings.
  I remind Senators that last summer this very same committee in the 
period between July 18 and August 10, a period of 3 weeks, held 13 days 
of public hearings, 13 days of public hearings. The Iran-Contra 
committee, in a month, held 21 days of public hearings. Mr. President, 
seven hearings in the month of January; the pace in February was the 
same. The month of February we held eight hearings. All of these 
opportunities to hold hearings on all these other days did not take 
place, and in the last 2 weeks we held 1 day of hearings out of nine 
possibilities. So we came to the end of February not having intensified 
the hearing schedule, and Chairman D'Amato and the majority now propose 
an indefinite extension of the hearing schedule.
  Additional funding, $600,000, which, of course, would bring Senate 
expenditures on the investigation of Whitewater matters to $2 million--
$400,000 in the previous Congress, $950,000 thus far by this committee, 
and an additional $600,000. Now, of course, that does not take into 
account the money spent by the independent counsel, which is now 
understood to be above $25 million, and increasing at about the rate of 
$1 million a month; or the money spent by the RTC on a civil 
investigation carried out by the Pillsbury Madison firm, which comes in 
at just under $4 million. We have no firm figure on the amount spent by 
House committees looking into the Whitewater matter, nor a figure for 
the money spent by Federal agencies assisting with or responding to 
these investigations. In any event, it is very clear that the amount 
spent in total, including all of these various sources, is over $30 
million.

  Senator Daschle wrote to Senator Dole on the 23d of January, at the 
time the report was filed, in which the minority argued very strongly 
that the committee should undertake an intensified hearing schedule in 
the final 6 weeks, to complete its investigation by the February 29 
date, and said in his letter, and I am quoting Senator Daschle now:


[[Page S1558]]


       It is well within the special committee's ability to 
     complete its inquiry by February 29. The committee can and 
     should adopt a hearing schedule over the next 6 weeks that 
     will enable it to meet the Senate's designated timetable.

  As I indicated, no serious effort to intensify the hearing schedule 
in order to meet the February 29th deadline occurred. In fact, in the 
last week no hearing whatever was held. In the week before, only one 
hearing was held. In other weeks, more hearings were held, two 
hearings, maybe three hearings, but often with witnesses who had little 
new to contribute to the investigation.
  Senator Daschle has put forth an alternative proposal in an effort, 
really, to demonstrate reasonableness, with respect to the work of the 
committee, and that is to provide an additional 5 weeks, until April 3, 
for the special committee to complete its hearing schedule, and until 
May 10 for the committee to complete its final report and to pay for 
this extra time by additional funding of $185,000.
  In my view, 5 weeks of additional hearings should be more than 
adequate to complete the so-called Arkansas phase of this 
investigation, a phase which concerns events that occurred in Arkansas 
some 10 years ago, events which have been widely reported on since the 
1992 Presidential campaign, about which much is already known.
  So, in an effort to reach an understanding, Senator Daschle said we 
felt that you could have completed your work by the deadline, by 
February 29, as was enacted by the Senate last May when they passed the 
resolution establishing the committee. That represented the judgment 
and the consensus of this body in passing that resolution 96 to 3. And 
when we reached the mid-January point, it was clearly stressed that an 
intensified schedule would enable the committee to complete its work on 
time and within budget. That did not happen. We did not get that 
intensification of schedule. Now we come, having passed the 29th of 
February, with Chairman D'Amato and the majority arguing that they now 
want an indefinite extension of this inquiry.
  I think the proposal put forth by the minority leader, Senator 
Daschle, is an eminently reasonable one. Regrettably, it was rejected 
in the Banking Committee on a straight party-line vote and rejected 
again in the Rules Committee by a straight party-line vote. In other 
words, the Democratic position was, we are willing to provide a limited 
extension in order to finish up the things that you assert are not yet 
done and will provide a limited amount of time. We do not want to, in 
effect, commit $600,000, but we will commit $185,000.
  Let me compare and contrast the procedure that has been followed with 
respect to this resolution and the question of its extension with what 
occurred on the Iran-Contra hearings which took place in 1987, namely 
the year preceding a Presidential election year, just as 1995 precedes 
a Presidential election year. In considering a resolution with respect 
to Iran-Contra, Senator Dole took the very strong position that the 
inquiry ought not to extend into the Presidential election year.
  In fact, in early 1987, when Congress was considering establishing a 
special committee on Iran-Contra, some advocated that it have a long 
timeframe, extending into 1988, in order to complete its work. There 
was a conflict between some Democrats in the House and Senate who 
wanted no time limitations placed on the committee, and Republican 
Members, led by Senator Dole, who wanted the hearings completed within 
2 or 3 months. And, of course, it was pointed out at the time, and 
escaped no one's attention, that an investigation that spilled into 
1988 would only place the Republicans in a defensive posture during the 
Presidential election year.
  Senator Inouye, who was selected to chair the special committee, and 
Congressman Hamilton, who was selected as its vice chairman, 
recommended at the time rejecting the opportunity to prolong, and 
thereby exploit for political purposes, President Reagan's 
difficulties. They determined, in fact, that 10 months would provide 
enough time to carry out the inquiry, and that was the requirement 
under which the Iran-Contra Committee moved forward. In fact, during 
the Senate debate on the resolution to establish a select committee on 
Iran-Contra, Senator Dole noted the good-faith effort of these two 
congressional leaders to have the committee complete its work in a 
timely manner.
  He stated:

       I am heartened by what I understand to be the strong 
     commitment of both the chairman and vice chairman to avoid 
     fishing expeditions and to keep the committee focused on the 
     real issues here.

  And the time period then was shortened from what many had been 
proposing in order to expedite and complete work on the matter and not 
carry it into the 1988 election year. Senator Dole argued during floor 
debate that the country had many other matters to deal with, and 
stated:

       With all these policy decisions facing us, the Senate--and 
     the country, for that matter--cannot afford to be consumed by 
     the Iranian arms sales affair.

  So the Senate, when it passed the resolution, established a 
termination date well before the end of 1987. The termination date in 
our resolution was in February 1996. But it was recognized that that 
was to avoid going further into a Presidential election year. In doing 
that, Senator Dole said:

       There is still a national agenda that needs to be pursued. 
     There are a number of issues that must be addressed, and the 
     American people are concerned about the Iran-Contra matter. 
     But they are also concerned about the budget, about the trade 
     bill, about health care, and a whole host of issues that we 
     will have to address in this Chamber.

  He went on to say:

       The problems of the past, as important as they are, are not 
     as important as the future. And, further, if we get bogged 
     down in finger pointing, in tearing down the President and 
     the administration, we are just not going to be up to the 
     challenges ahead, and all of us--all Americans--will be the 
     losers.

  I want to compare these two ways of proceeding because it was debated 
at the time of Iran-Contra, and recognized some push to extend it into 
1988 and into the Presidential election year. That was very strongly 
opposed by Senator Dole, and by his colleagues. In the end, Senator 
Inouye and Representative Hamilton turned down the opportunity to 
prolong the inquiry into the election year and extend it for political 
purposes.
  This Senate last May took, in effect, the same position by 
establishing the February 29, 1996 date. We have now reached that date. 
And we find the majority asking for an unlimited extension of this 
inquiry after we have been through a period in which neither in January 
nor in February did the committee embark upon an intense hearing 
schedule in order to finish its work by the cutoff date.
  As I have indicated, we had hearings only 8 days in the month of 
February, a month when the Senate was not in session. And, therefore, 
when it was possible to really devote all day every day to this issue, 
there were no hearings in the last week in February--only one hearing 
in the next to the last week. And in the month of January, once again, 
many days without any hearings by the special committee, 7 days of 
hearings out of the entire month, 8 days in February. That is a total 
of 15 days over 2 months.
  As I indicated earlier, this very committee last summer in the latter 
part of July and the first part of August--over a 3-week period--held 
13 days of hearings. But let us compare it with Iran-Contra because 
that was a situation in which the Democrats controlled the Congress. 
There was a Republican administration.
  The question then was, what was fair in terms of carrying out this 
inquiry, and how far should it extend into the Presidential election 
year? And the Democrats took the position that they were not going to 
extend it into the Presidential election year. They were going to try 
to keep politics out of the inquiry. Obviously, the further it goes 
into a Presidential election year, the more politics will come into the 
inquiry. And there is just no doubt about that, and the more the 
public's confidence in the impartiality of the inquiry will be eroded.
  In 1987, in order to meet this schedule, the Iran-Contra committee 
held 21 days of hearings between July 7 and August 6. It met literally 
every Monday through Friday with three exceptions over a 5-week period.
  So there was an intense set of hearings in order to carry through on 
the undertaking that had been made to finish up its work in a timely 
fashion and

[[Page S1559]]

avoid keeping the matter out of the 1988 Presidential election year--21 
days of hearings with only three open days during that period so it 
could complete its hearing work within the timeframe set forth in the 
resolution which established it; 21 days of hearings.
  Contrast that--the undertaking made by the Democratic Congress then 
dealing with a Republican administration to honor the effort to keep it 
out of the election year and out of the political context and not to 
have it turn into a partisan endeavor. Contrast this hearing schedule--
21 days of hearings in a 1-month period--with a hearing schedule that 
has been pursued by this committee over the last 2 months. There were 
only 8 days of hearings in February, and only 7 days of hearings in 
January for a total of 15; 15 days over 2 months when Iran-Contra had 
21 days in a month and finished up its work to honor the undertaking 
not to project it into a political year.
  My own view is that the committee could and should have finished its 
work by the 29th of February as it was charged to do by the resolution 
that was adopted by this body last May. I think that was well within 
the ability of the committee. It did not happen. We are now confronted 
with a situation in which Chairman D'Amato and his colleagues seek an 
unlimited extension of the work of the committee.
  Senator Daschle indicated on the 23d of January that he thought the 
committee could complete its work by February 29. Now he has prepared 
and has offered an alternative in an effort to accommodate providing 
some additional time and funding for the committee to carry on its 
work.
  In other words, we felt the committee should have finished by 
February 29. They did not follow a schedule in order to do that. The 
question is, what now? Senator Daschle, in an effort to accommodate, 
proposed providing additional weeks of hearings, until April 3 to 
complete a hearing schedule, until May 10 to complete a final report, 
and funding to carry out this work of $185,000 as contrasted with the 
$600,000 that Chairman D'Amato is seeking for an indefinite extension 
of the work of the committee. In other words, an extension that can go 
throughout 1996 and obviously right into the Presidential campaign--an 
extension which, in my judgment, by prolonging the investigation well 
into a Presidential election year, will contribute to a public 
perception that the investigation is being conducted for political 
purposes.
  It needs to be understood, of course, that the independent counsel's 
inquiry will continue. The independent counsel operates under, in 
effect, his own statute. He has unlimited funding. So that inquiry will 
go on as long as the independent counsel deems that it should go on. 
Judge Walsh, as we know, went on many, many years with respect to Iran-
Contra and, in fact, continued his work after the hearings were 
concluded.
  These hearings have never been related to the work of the independent 
counsel because the independent counsel is on a separate track. As we 
saw in Iran-Contra, those hearings ended in the latter part of 1987, 
but the independent counsel continued his work. Of course the work of 
the current independent counsel, Kenneth Starr, will go forward. He was 
given broad authority by a special panel of Federal judges to 
investigate Whitewater. He has a staff that eclipses anything that is 
available to any other inquiry that is now going on--we understand 30 
attorneys and over 100 FBI and IRS agents; and the Independent Counsel 
Reauthorization Act sets no cap on the cost of his investigation, which 
has been over $25 million thus far.
  So, in fact, many have raised the point: Let the independent counsel 
do the inquiry, on the premise that that is a less political arena than 
hearings conducted here in the Congress, particularly hearings that go 
into the election year itself, so you have politicians looking at 
politicians in a political year, and that is almost certain to 
guarantee a political endeavor.
  Now, in addition, it is important to realize that the RTC-
commissioned report, the comprehensive report by an independent law 
firm, Pillsbury, Madison & Sutro, headed by a former Republican U.S. 
attorney, Jay Stephens, that report has now been made public. It cost 
almost $4 million. And the conclusion transmitted to the RTC was that 
they found no basis on which the RTC should bring any actions, civil 
actions, with respect to the various matters which they investigated.
  That represents a very thorough and comprehensive review.
  Let me turn for a moment to the argument about requiring an open-
ended extension in order to get more material. It is my understanding 
that the White House has now provided all material requested with the 
exception of those further requests made to it by the special committee 
over the last 2 or 3 weeks.
  A great to-do is made about material that has been provided 2 weeks 
ago, a month ago, in early January. But the important thing to remember 
is that that material was provided; so it was made available to the 
committee. People raise a lot of commotion about the fact that Mr. 
Gearan's notes were not provided earlier on. Well, they were provided. 
He has an explanation as to why they were not provided earlier on. In 
any event, the committee got them, reviewed them, and held a hearing 
with Mr. Gearan, an all-day hearing, in which we went over those notes. 
The same thing is true of the notes with respect to Mr. Ickes.
  On March 6, today, Jane Sherburne, the special counsel to the 
President, sent a letter to Chairman D'Amato and to me as the ranking 
member in which she states the following, and I am quoting the letter:

       Since the issuance of the Special Committee subpoena on 
     October 30, 1995, the White House has received some 30 new 
     requests from the Chairman. This letter summarizes the status 
     of our response to those requests.
       We have provided responses to every request with the 
     exception of two new requests for e-mail made by the Chairman 
     in February after we reached what we had understood was the 
     Committee's finalized e-mail request memorialized in my 
     letter to the Committee on January 23, 1996. One of these 
     additional e-mail requests relates to the discovery of copies 
     of Rose Law Firm billing records which were provided to the 
     committee on January 5, 1996, 2 weeks before the Committee 
     staff finalized its e-mail request.
       The other outstanding e-mail request relates to the period 
     January 3 through January 12, 1994. This request was first 
     made on February 16, 1996, but without the necessary detail 
     to conduct the retrieval process. The detail was later 
     provided by staff orally.
       As you are aware, the Executive Office of the President 
     already has incurred over $138,000 in out-of-pocket costs for 
     the e-mail described in my January 23, 1996, letter. Although 
     we retrieved and reviewed 10 boxes of e-mails, this effort 
     produced nothing of use to the committee's inquiry. 
     Nonetheless, we are undertaking to respond to the new 
     requests and hope to provide you with the results shortly.

  Those are additional requests that were made. The original e-mail 
requests--well, the original request was so broad that no one really 
reasonably could be expected to respond to it, and after extended 
discussions, we were able to reach an agreement to focus those e-mail 
requests and to narrow them down, and they now have all been provided.
  In addition, the White House undertook to verify that all documents 
provided to the counsel's office by White House staff beginning in 
March 1994 had been reviewed and produced to the committee as 
responsive. They also undertook to verify that all relevant White House 
files of certain former White House officials that may contain 
responsive material had been reviewed. So they undertook to go back and 
scrub down the files as a consequence of a couple of these late-
arriving requests.
  As a consequence of that work, some additional material--not much--
has been provided to the committee. Most of them are copies or 
duplicates of matters that had previously been produced to the 
committee.

  But that material has also now been received by the committee. So the 
committee now has all of this material in hand, which seems to me 
argues very strongly for an approach as the one contained in that put 
forth by the minority leader, by Senator Daschle, which would provide 
the committee an extension of 5 weeks from the termination date in 
order to complete its inquiry, some additional time in order to do its 
report, and would really serve to keep this matter out of the election 
year.
  There has been no counterresponse to that proposal of the 
distinguished minority leader, Senator Daschle. I mean, the original 
proposition put forward by Chairman D'Amato was an indefinite extension 
and $600,000. Senator

[[Page S1560]]

Daschle and his colleagues on this side of the aisle indicated that 
that was unacceptable because it would really politicize this inquiry 
even further in an election year and guarantee that it would turn into 
a partisan political endeavor.
  The Democrats did not seek to do that with Iran-Contra in 1987, and I 
am frank to say I do not think the Republicans should seek to do that 
with Whitewater in 1996.
  The leader, faced with this proposal for an unlimited extension, 
offered what I think was a very reasonable proposal. That is for an 
extension until the 3d of April for hearings and until the 10th of May 
for the report. That has not elicited any response from my colleagues 
on the other side other than simply to press forward with their 
original proposal, which was for an indefinite extension and an 
additional $600,000.
  As we have indicated, Mr. President, we do not think that is 
necessary or required. We believe an indefinite proposal would make 
this inquiry simply a partisan political endeavor. We note that while 
the original resolution was passed by a very overwhelming bipartisan 
vote of 96 to 3, the proposal for an unlimited extension is moving 
along simply on the basis of a straight party vote.
  We do not believe that is the way this matter should be handled. I 
urge my colleagues on the other side to look again at the proposal put 
forth by the minority leader, which I think represents a very 
reasonable proposition.
  I yield the floor.
  Mr. BENNETT addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Utah.
  Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, I have several observations and reactions 
to the statement by the Senator from Maryland, who has done his usual 
thorough job of examining a whole series of issues. But if I may, Mr. 
President, without being disrespectful of my colleague, I would like to 
say that those issues are not particularly significant or relevant to 
what we are talking about here. I was not in the Senate when the Senate 
discussed Iran-Contra or the October Surprise or Watergate or any of 
the other hearings that he has discussed in such detail.
  The issue before us is not whether or not those hearings were 
conducted well or badly, whether they were conducted in a speedy and 
expeditious manner or whether they were dragged out. The issue is 
whether or not this committee deserves more time to do its work. For 
that reason, I will not really debate with the Senator from Maryland 
anything regarding Iran-Contra or October Surprise or any other such 
issue.
  The committee clearly needs more time to conclude its work. That is a 
given. The proposal offered to the Senate by the distinguished 
Democratic leader very specifically demonstrates a recognition of the 
fact that the committee needs more time. So I do not think that 
question is at issue.
  The only question at issue before us is, how much time do we need? To 
me, the answer to that is very simple--as much time as it takes to get 
the facts. It is not that complicated. I know my colleague from Florida 
spoke for 45 minutes, close to an hour. My colleague from Maryland has 
spoken for the same period of time.
  To me, the issue is very simple--how much time will it take to get 
the facts? Not how much time has elapsed or how many witnesses we have 
heard or how many documents have been furnished or how much time was 
taken in another controversy that took place years ago. How much time 
do we need to get the facts?
  In an effort to try to come to that point, Mr. President, I turn to 
the press. I will quote briefly from three editorials. They have been 
quoted extensively before. They have been put in the Record. So I will 
simply summarize some of them on the point that I have tried to make.
  The Washington Post on the 25th of February, after examining many of 
the outstanding issues says this in conclusion:

       Who knows where this all will lead? The committee clearly 
     needs time to sift through these late-arriving papers as well 
     as interview witnesses now unavailable because they are key 
     figures in the Whitewater-related trials. So like it or not, 
     the Senate committee is unlikely to go off into the sunset at 
     month's end when its mandate expires. Clinton officials have 
     done their share to extend the committee's life.

  That summarizes it for me, Mr. President. Why do we need more time? 
Because Clinton officials have not been as forthcoming as they should 
have been. The committee clearly needs time for two reasons. One, to 
sift through these late-arriving papers. Why are they late arriving? 
Again, ask President Clinton and his staff. The committee has been 
asking for them for months. One, to sift through these late-arriving 
papers, and, two, interview witnesses who are now unavailable because 
they are key figures in the Whitewater-related trials. Very 
straightforward. All right.
  The New York Times, making comment in the aftermath of the Iowa and 
New Hampshire primaries says:

       The excitement of Iowa, New Hampshire has diverted 
     attention from the Senate Whitewater committee and its 
     investigation into the Rose Law Firm's migrating files.

  I think that is an interesting phrase, the law firm's ``migrating 
files.''

       Naturally this pleases the White House--

  Referring to the lack of focus on this--

       Naturally this pleases the White House and its allies, who 
     hope to use the interregnum to let their `so what' arguments 
     take root. David Kendall, the Clinton's private attorney, 
     says the curious paper trail is just one of the meaningless 
     mysteries of Whitewater.

  Then the Times says:

       There are mysteries here, but they are not meaningless.

  Then it goes on again through that which has been covered so many 
times. I do not feel the necessity of covering it one more time. But 
the Times concludes:

       Perhaps the files will also show that there was no coverup 
     associated with moving and storing these files.

  And this sentence--I love it, because it summarizes what we are 
talking about.

       Inanimate objects do not move themselves. It is pointless 
     to ask Senators and the independent prosecutors to fold their 
     inquiry on the basis of the facts that have emerged so far. 
     To do so would be a dereliction of their duties.

  I love the way this is written. The ``migrating files,'' ``inanimate 
objects do not move themselves.''
  Another newspaper, USA Today, offered these comments in an editorial. 
It leads off with this statement:

       This week author Hillary Rodham Clinton was supposed to 
     inform the nation about the truths kids can tell us. Instead, 
     the nation is confronted with questions about whether the 
     First Lady is telling the whole truth about her role in two 
     scandals, Whitewater and Travelgate, and whether she and her 
     husband can stop acting like children when asked about it.

  It then goes on to list a series of questions. Again, they have been 
talked about at great length here on the floor. I see no point in 
asking them again just for the sake of asking them.
  But I like the conclusion, again, out of this editorial, after 
renewing all of these questions. It says:

       Mrs. Clinton and the President have raised these questions, 
     not Republicans.

  I would like to repeat that for emphasis, Mr. President:

       Mrs. Clinton and the President have raised these questions, 
     not Republicans. They've created the impression they may be 
     covering something up by being less than thorough in 
     responding to legitimate demands for information. This is not 
     the first time Mrs. Clinton has run into such a problem. She 
     never fully explained profits from the 1970's commodities 
     trades. Concerns linger that the profits came from wealthy 
     friends seeking political favors.

  And then the conclusion, with which I heartily agree:

       Rather than pointing fingers at the investigators, the 
     Clintons need to offer some apologies, plus the whole truth 
     of what went on with Madison, Whitewater and the travel 
     office. Nothing less will do.

  That is the end of that editorial.
  So, Mr. President, I could go on for a significant period of time and 
review what we found out in the committee, rehearse the various things 
that were said, comment once again on the inconsistencies and all of 
the rest of that. I do not see that it serves much purpose. The issue 
is very clear: How much more time does the committee need?
  I believe that the offer made by the Democratic leader is for an 
insufficient amount of time. The argument is made that the request made 
by the chairman of the committee for no firm date is too much time. I 
hope both sides can sit down and say somewhere between the offer made 
by the Democratic leader and the request for an open-ended

[[Page S1561]]

inquiry made by the chairman, we can find a date that can satisfy the 
two requirements, which are sufficient time to sift through the late-
arriving documents and enough time for us to hear from the witnesses 
who are currently unavailable.
  To me, it is not that hard to figure out. I hope that we can arrive 
at that point instead of tying up the Senate in endless rehashing of 
issues that, as I say, in my view, are not relevant.
  I go back to the New York Times for the final summary of that when 
the New York Times said editorially, for the Democrats to filibuster 
this request will look like silly stonewalling.
  Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  Mr. SARBANES addressed the Chair.
  Mr. BENNETT. I withdraw the request.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Maryland.
  Mr. SARBANES. Mr. President, I always enjoy the opportunity for an 
exchange with my distinguished colleague from Utah. I listened 
carefully as he quoted from the Washington Post editorial headed 
``Extend the Whitewater Committee.'' The Post then, in a subsequent 
editorial headed ``Extend, But With Limits,'' said:

       . . . but the Senate should require the committee to 
     complete its work and produce a final report by a fixed date.

  It then goes on to say, and this may, in effect, get into the area 
that the Senator was perhaps suggesting in his comments because I 
listened very carefully and as I made the point myself, the proposal we 
had from the other side was an unlimited extension.
  Mr. BENNETT. Yes.
  Mr. SARBANES. The distinguished Democratic leader said, ``Well, we 
can't agree to an unlimited extension, but we are prepared to offer 
carrying it forward.'' We have heard nothing back with respect to that. 
So that is the play on this issue.
  This editorial said:

       Democrats want to keep the committee on a short leash by 
     extending hearings to April 3rd with a final report to follow 
     by May 10th. 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 proceeding before summer when the 
     campaign season really heats up. That would argue for 
     permitting the probe to continue through April or early May.

  And, of course, we had suggested April 3.
  I know the Senator has quoted some editorials that say go on with 
this thing. There are other editorials, of course, which take just the 
opposite point of view.
  Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, may I respond to that very quickly?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Maryland has the floor. Does 
the Senator yield?
  Mr. SARBANES. I certainly yield to my colleague.
  Mr. BENNETT. I have to leave the floor, and I thank my colleague from 
Maryland for his courtesy. I simply say, Mr. President, that subsequent 
editorial that the Senator from Maryland quoted is in exactly the vein 
of what I am talking about, that I find the Democratic leader's 
proposal to be too short a leash, but this Senator would not object if 
we met the two objectives called for of enough time to sift through the 
late-arriving papers and the ability to interview witnesses who are 
currently unavailable. My only objection to the proposal made by the 
Democratic leader is that it does not provide for meeting those two.
  So I say to the Senator from Maryland, Mr. President, that this 
Senator would be willing to have some kind of agreement along the lines 
that he is now talking about. My objection is to the cutoff date in the 
proposal made by the Democratic leader which I think is too short a 
leash.
  Mr. SARBANES. Mr. President, let me point out that there are other 
editorial comments around the country which actually think this should 
end right now, period.
  The Sacramento Bee on March 2 had an editorial, ``Enough of 
Whitewater.'' Let me quote a couple of paragraphs:

       Senator Alfonse D'Amato, the chairman of the Senate 
     Whitewater committee and chairman of Senator Bob Dole's 
     Presidential campaign in New York, wants to extend his 
     hearings indefinitely, or at least one presumes until after 
     the November elections. The committee's authorization and 
     funding ran out Thursday, and the Democrats, in part for 
     related political reasons, want to shut the committee 
     hearings down. In this case, the Democrats have the best of 
     the argument by a country mile. With every passing day, the 
     hearings have looked more like a fishing expedition in the 
     Dead Sea.

  I ask unanimous consent that the entire text of that editorial be 
printed in the Record.
  There being no objection, the editorial was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

                [From the Sacramento Bee, Mar. 2, 1996]

                          Enough of Whitewater

       Sen. Alfonse D'Amato, the chairman of the Senate Whitewater 
     Committee and chairman of Sen. Bob Dole's presidential 
     campaign in New York, wants to extend his hearings 
     indefinitely--or least, one presumes, until after the 
     November elections. The committee's authorization and funding 
     ran out Thursday and the Democrats, in part for related 
     political reasons, want to shut the committee hearing down.
       In this case, the Democrats have the best of the argument 
     by a country mile. With every passing day, the hearings have 
     looked more like a fishing expedition in the Dead Sea.
       Given the fact that D'Amato's mighty and costly labors have 
     so far caught little but crabs; that there is a special 
     prosecutor going over the same ground; that there have 
     already been nearly 20 months of Senate hearings, first under 
     the Democrats, then under the Republicans; that a couple of 
     House committees have held their own hearings; and that an 
     armada of journalists has covered the ground for more than 
     three years, you'd think that whatever Whitewater is had been 
     covered to death.
       Thursday, the Democrats, though in the minority, managed to 
     use parliamentary devices to block the indefinite extension 
     that D'Amato asked for. They're willing, they said, to accept 
     a five-week extension to wrap up the hearings, then another 
     six weeks to allow the committee to write a report. That, 
     said D'Amato, sends ``the unmistakable message that (the 
     Democrats) want to prevent the American people from learning 
     the full facts about Whitewater.''
       In fact, it ought to be plenty. Even if every charge were 
     true, the political cronyism and favoritism allegedly 
     bestowed in connection with the Whitewater development while 
     Bill Clinton was governor of Arkansas--and so far only 
     alleged--would be of no interest to any congressional 
     committee were it not for the fact that Clinton is present. 
     Similar shenanigans--and worse--occur routinely in state 
     after state. Why isn't D'Amato investigating Lamar Alexander, 
     who benefited richly from business cronies during his days as 
     governor of Tennessee and as president of its state 
     university?
       There may well have been attempts in the Clinton White 
     House to cover up the dealings among the Clinton, the 
     Whitewater development company and the failed Arkansas 
     savings and loan that helped to bankroll it. There was 
     certainly a great deal of stonewalling and evasive behavior. 
     But Kenneth Starr, the special prosecutor, has been sparing 
     no effort to investigate both that and related matters. What 
     is it that D'Amato can credibly establish that Starr can't.

  Mr. SARBANES. Mr. President, finally an editorial in the Atlanta 
Constitution which calls for bringing this inquiry to an end. It goes 
on to point out, ``one, that a recent Resolution Trust Corporation 
investigation found no hint of impropriety by the Clintons regarding 
their Whitewater involvement.''
  It goes on to say:

       The first couple is still under investigation by 
     Independent Counsel, Kenneth Starr, a former Reagan Justice 
     Department official, who can be expected to scrutinize the 
     Clinton's legal and business affairs rigorously. Any 
     additional sleuthing by Senator D'Amato would be a waste of 
     taxpayers' money.

  I ask unanimous consent that that editorial be printed in the Record 
as well.
  There being no objection, the editorial was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

             [From the Atlanta Constitution, Feb. 15, 1996]

                    Take D'Amato Off Clintons' Case

       The Senate's Watergate hearings of 1973-74 were momentous, 
     delving into White House abuses of power and leading to the 
     resignation of a disgraced president and the imprisonment of 
     many of his aides. They lasted 279 days.
       Next week, Sen. Alfonse D'Amato (R-N.Y.) 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 1980s real estate and 
     banking scandal in Arkansas.
       With a Feb. 29 expiration date for his special panel 
     staring him in the face, 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

[[Page S1562]]

     $600,000. That's on top of the $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 D'Amato's request couldn't be 
     more obvious. Here he is, a chief political strategist for 
     the leading Republican contender for the presidency, Bob 
     Dole, seeking to legitimize the committee's hectoring of 
     President and Mrs. Clinton well into the campaign season.
       If the panel could demonstrate a glimmer of a hot new lead 
     connecting the Clintons to the Arkansas scams, D'Amato's 
     appeal for an extension might have merit. Invariably, though, 
     the committee's supposed revelations have evaporated for want 
     of substance. Witnesses who testified in the past are being 
     summoned back, often to go over familiar ground. Chelsea 
     Clinton's former nanny had to appear again this week, for 
     heaven's sake.
       This is not to let the Clintons off the hook. They might 
     have allayed suspicions about themselves long ago if they had 
     promptly produced documentation of their Arkansas business 
     and legal dealings. But lawyerly reticence, however 
     politically unwise, by no means indicates guilt. Remember 
     that a recent Resolution Trust Corp. investigation found no 
     hint of impropriety by the Clintons regarding their 
     Whitewater involvement.
       The first couple is still under investigation by 
     independent counsel Kenneth Starr, a former Reagan Justice 
     Department official who can be expected to scrutinize the 
     Clintons' legal and business affairs rigorously. Any 
     additional sleuthing by D'Amato would be a waste of 
     taxpayers' money.

  Mr. SARBANES. Mr. President, the Greensboro, NC, News and Record had 
an editorial headed ``Whitewater Hearing Needs To Wind Down.'' Let me 
just quote a couple of paragraphs from that:

       A legitimate probe is becoming a partisan sledgehammer.

  Let me repeat that:

       A legitimate probe is becoming a partisan sledgehammer. The 
     Senate Whitewater hearings, led since last July by Senator Al 
     D'Amato (R-NY), have served their purpose. It's time to wrap 
     this thing up before the election season.

  Then they end that editorial with this comment:

       Let the GOP use the fruits of D'Amato's labors as they will 
     in the coming campaign, but don't let the opposition party 
     run a smear campaign at public expense.

  I ask unanimous consent that that editorial be printed in the Record.
  There being no objection, the editorial was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

                 Whitewater Hearing Needs To Wind Down

       A legitimate probe is becoming a partisan sledgehammer.
       The Senate Whitewater hearings led since last July by Sen. 
     Al D'Amato, R-N.Y., have served their purpose. It's time to 
     wrap this thing up before the election season.
       The committee has documented the Clinton's various 
     relationships with a bankrupt Arkansas savings and loan and 
     related enterprises. It has developed evidence of a damage 
     control campaign run from the White House. And it has 
     revealed a mean and petty episode involving the White House 
     travel office. The portrait of Arkansas politics curing the 
     '80s is not a pretty one.
       All of this--including the mysterious, belated appearance 
     in the White House of documents that had been subpoenaed by 
     the committee months earler--will surely be politically 
     damaging to the Clintons. D'Amato's committee should sum up 
     its findings, publish them for all to see, and go on to 
     something else. The committee has done its work, sometimes 
     more than once.
       Still, D'Amato and company haven't had enough. The New York 
     senator wants his mandate, which has already eaten up $1 
     million of your money, extended indefinitely. He has asked 
     for another $600,000.
       Republicans charge that it has been the White House's 
     desultory compliance with the committee's requests that has 
     slowed its work, necessitating the extension of this 
     expensive and fruitless exercise. But that argument is 
     becoming tedious.
       The committee has already subpoenaed everybody and every 
     document in sight. The committee's thoroughness is not in 
     question. The committee's excesses are. They have begun to 
     eat into its credibility.
       Senator D'Amato tries to explain away his obvious conflict 
     of interest by making the laughable argument that his role as 
     New York chairman of the Bob Dole campaign has no connection 
     to his use of the Senate committee. Here's what's happending.
       D'Amato is carrying on Dole's campaign in the Senate with 
     repetitious hearings that highlight testimony from the White 
     House staff, then outside the Senate chambers with press 
     conferences. Covering Whitewater once in 1995 was a 
     legitimate Senate inquiry. Rehashing it in 1996, an election 
     year, is exploiting the forum to damage the president.
       What began as only a partly political exercise has over the 
     months become blatantly that, thanks to D'Amato and his North 
     Carolina ally, Sen. Lauch Faircloth.
       The committee had good reason to look into the Clintons' 
     role in the Madison Guaranty Savings & Loan mess and related 
     matters. But the panel majority, and especially the chairman, 
     have turned a search for the truth into a partisan vendetta 
     against the Clintons. Not even a casual observer of these 
     proceedings could miss the contempt that the committee 
     chairman has for the president and his wife. Allowing these 
     hearings to go on indefinitely would be giving D'Amato--and 
     by extension the legislative branch--a license to harass the 
     executive.
       There's no reason to let the Clintons off the hook. An 
     independent counsel is plowing the same ground--including the 
     serious allegations that the White House may have attempted 
     to obstruct justice and that Clinton exercised undue 
     influence over savings and loan regulators while governor of 
     Arkansas. There is no need for taxpayers to pay for this work 
     twice and then again, particularly not when the Senate 
     committee has so obviously become an arm of the Republican 
     campaign to unseat the President.
       Let the GOP use the fruits of D'Amato's labor as it will in 
     the coming campaign. But don't let the opposition party run 
     its smear campaign at public expense.

  Mr. SARBANES. Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  Mr. FAIRCLOTH. Mr. President, it would appear that we are going into 
not a debate on the issues here, but a debate on who can find the best 
editorials. I say to the Senator from Maryland that he read from the 
Greensboro, NC, News and Record. I have found, over the few years that 
I have been in the Senate, when I get an unfavorable editorial in the 
News and Record, I finally did something right. But since we are going 
into the editorials, I will read one from USA Today. I am quoting from 
the last four paragraphs:

       Why did it take so long to find the papers? Subpoenas for 
     Travelgate and Whitewater documents are many months old. 
     Failure to provide them quickly warranted legal action. The 
     statute of limitations for filing suits against Madison 
     lawyers lapsed just days before the bills were produced. How 
     could the White House have missed them? Mrs. Clinton and the 
     President have raised questions, not Republicans. They have 
     created the impression they may be covering up something by 
     being less than thorough in responding to legitimate demands 
     for information. This is not the first time Mrs. Clinton has 
     run into such a problem. She never fully explained profits 
     from a 1970 commodity trade--

  And they are being kind to her when they say ``never fully 
explained.'' She never even slightly explained.

       Concerns linger that the profits came from wealthy friends 
     seeking political favors. There has never been any 
     explanation of that. Rather than pointing fingers at the 
     investigators, the Clintons need to offer some apologies, 
     plus the whole truth about what went on with Madison, 
     Whitewater, and the travel office. Nothing less will do.

  Now, that is from USA Today, January 10, 1996.
  Mr. President, we have been through this charade with the 
administration for more than 2 years now. It is time that it ends, and 
the length and amount of time that we have expended in these 
investigations is brought on not by the Republicans on the committee, 
but by the delay of the White House in providing subpoenaed 
information. That is simply the reason we are here today asking to 
extend the length of the resolution.
  Mr. President, the central issue in this debate is this: Will the 
U.S. Senate, for the first time in my memory, take the affirmative step 
of refusing to investigate a scandal of public corruption? That is very 
simply what we are talking about doing with the filibuster here today--
it is that the Senate is saying, ``We are not going to investigate 
these people. We do not want to get into it.''
  The length of the investigation is irrelevant. As I said, the delays 
have come about not by the investigating committee, but by the White 
House itself. It has been nothing more than an attempt to wear it out, 
to use it up, to exhaust the people, to exhaust the money, to hope it 
would go away, and the length and time set for the investigation would 
lapse.

  Just a few weeks ago, we received key documents from Mark Gearan. We 
received new documents from Harold Ickes, the White House Deputy Chief 
of Staff. And even just this week, still documents are coming in from 
White House lawyers. If the legal staff and the White House do not know 
where their notes and papers are, maybe that explains some of the 
confusion we see coming out of the White House. What do they know if 
they do not know where their notes and papers are?
  Last December, on the Senate floor, we voted for a resolution to 
subpoena William Kennedy's notes from a November 5, 1993, meeting 
concerning Whitewater. The full Senate voted a subpoena. And last 
Friday, Bruce

[[Page S1563]]

Lindsey admitted that he, too, had notes from this meeting. Last 
Friday. That is 2 years and 3 or 4 months. He brought those notes 
forward for one reason, which is that he believes this investigation is 
going to go on and he has a fear of obstructing justice. Can you 
imagine someone of that rank at the White House telling the committee 
that he did not take notes and then find them after the deadline has 
expired? We are asked to believe that. Furthermore, the accidental 
discovery of documents always seems to occur on Friday afternoon after 
the news deadline. This is when Bruce Lindsey turned over his 
documents. This is when the First Lady's billing records were released. 
I do not think a committee of the U.S. Senate should be treated with 
the disrespect the White House has shown this committee.
  The cost of the investigation is not small, but I have asked, ``Can 
we put a price on the integrity of the White House?'' Mr. President, it 
is worth discussing how we arrived at this point? It is worth reviewing 
how Whitewater became a congressional issue, because it tells us 
something about the failure of the savings and loan industry and also 
tells us a lot about the ethics of Bill and Hillary Clinton?
  In February 1989, Madison Guaranty Savings Loan failed. The failure 
cost American taxpayers an estimated $60 million at that time. I see 
figures today that it is over $70 million. But, whatever, it was a lot 
of taxpayer dollars. In fact, the entire savings and loan crisis cost 
the American taxpayers $150 billion--an unbelievably staggering amount 
of money. The Banking Committee has every right--and, in fact, a duty--
to review the cause of the crisis. Is there any question that the 
American people, who are paying this bill--they are paying the $60 or 
$70 million Madison lost, and they and their children and grandchildren 
are going to pay the $150 billion, and they have a right to know where 
the money went and how it happened.
  While Madison was a small institution, its failure was one of the 
worst in the Nation. When it failed, the cost to the taxpayers was 50 
percent of the assets of the institution--50 percent.
  In Arkansas, 80 percent of the State-chartered S&L's failed while 
Bill Clinton was Governor. Jim McDougal took over Madison from 1982 to 
1986. In 4 short years, the assets grew from $6 million to $123 
million. Now, if we will back up and look at what assets mean, that 
means he borrowed $117 million more in a period of 4 years. He borrowed 
$117 million that wound up being guaranteed by the taxpayers of this 
country. In 4 years, he borrowed $117 million that the taxpayers of 
this country wound up paying off for him. Part of that money, a good 
bit of it, went to Whitewater Development.
  He increased his loans to insiders. That is what Bill and Hillary 
certainly would have been, since they were his partners in a real 
estate deal. He increased his loans to insiders. When he took it, the 
insider loans were $500,000. Four years later, he had increased his 
loans to insiders, which were Bill and Hillary Clinton, the President 
and First Lady, to $17 million. Whitewater was one of the ventures that 
caused Madison to fail.
  Furthermore, the claims that the Clintons lost money is false. They 
never had any of their money at risk. You cannot lose money you did not 
have. It was a sweetheart deal for the new Governor, tracking and 
congruent with the commodity trade in which Hillary Clinton earned 
$100,000. Do you know how she earned $100,000 in the most speculative 
business in the world? She read the Wall Street Journal. After she 
earned $100,000, without explanation, in this brilliant, brilliant 
trade, worked by a commodity broker named Red Bone who was investigated 
for everything, she quit. No more commodity trades. If she possessed 
the skill to turn $1,000 into $100,000 in that length of time by being 
First Lady, she is wasting the most valuable and potential money-making 
asset this Nation has ever known.
  The Pillsbury report that has been referred to many times by Senators 
in the minority showed that the taxpayers of this country lost far more 
money on Whitewater than the Clintons. To me, that alone is a scandal.
  Furthermore, there are reports in today's Washington Post that Mrs. 
Clinton herself was much more involved in Whitewater than we believed, 
that she was fully aware that the McDougals had put more money into the 
deal than the Clintons did. Again, we have two Yale-educated attorneys 
that today tell us they were oblivious to the whole affair, that they 
did not understand it. It is almost beyond the concept of most of us on 
the committee to see two of the ``smartest lawyers''--said her press 
people or somebody; we were clearly often told Mrs. Clinton was one of 
the 100 smartest lawyers in the Nation, and he certainly was at 
Oxford--could not buy 300 acres of cheap Arkansas land without a 
national scandal. The two smartest lawyers in the country could not buy 
300 acres of cheap Arkansas land without creating a national scandal.

  Why? Because it was not a clean legal deal. That is why you could not 
buy it without a scandal. Madison Guaranty was a high-flier savings and 
loan. It has been called the personal piggy bank for the political 
elite in Arkansas. I called it a calabash or a pot of money that the 
politicians were dipping in and taking out. I do not often agree with 
the editorial pages of the New York Times, but they have called the 
Whitewater hearings a stew of evasion and memory lapses. They do not 
often get it correct, but they did that time.
  Mr. President, the central issue in Whitewater has been whether 
Madison received favorable treatment from Arkansas savings and loan 
regulators because of Jim McDougal's close ties to President Clinton. 
Essentially, the question is this: Did the losses to the taxpayers 
increase because Jim McDougal pressed his case with State regulators, 
which President Clinton, then Governor Clinton, Bill Clinton, had 
appointed?
  The notes from Gearan's meeting, from the meeting he was in, 
suggested the White House wanted to send somebody down to Little Rock 
to get the story straight with Beverly Bassett Schaffer, the State 
savings and loan regulator. Get the story straight. The folks we were 
talking about, if we send them--and I do not remember the initials--but 
if we send CP, HL, and CB, it will come out. We cannot send them. Maybe 
we could get somebody from New York to go. They probably would not be 
recognized very quickly in Little Rock. Maybe we can get somebody from 
here or there to go. If we send our people, they will be recognized; it 
will get out.
  Well, if it were an honest, clean trip, what was there to get out? 
Why not go down and talk to Ms. Schaffer and say, ``Here is what we are 
here for. Tell us the truth.'' That was not the purpose of the trip. 
The purpose of the trip was to get the story to match.
  Had the American public been given the real picture in the wake of 
the savings and loan crisis, I think they would have reacted very 
differently to the inside quid pro quo way of doing business in 
Arkansas and Little Rock, particularly since the American taxpayers 
paid for the lax regulations. We will be paying for this into the whole 
next century.
  Mr. President, Whitewater extends even farther than Madison Guaranty. 
It involves a small business investment corporation called Capital 
Management Services. This company was run by a man named David Hale. 
It, too, served as a personal bank for the politically connected in 
Arkansas. Its purpose was to make loans to the disadvantaged, but that 
turned out to be the rule-making politicians of Little Rock. 
Regrettably, the American taxpayers paid over $3 million for the 
failure of Capital Management.
  Mr. President, it is a fact that Capital Management made a $300,000 
loan to Whitewater. Now, inside the beltway of Washington and in the 
vernacular of the Congress, $300,000 would not even be a blip on the 
screen. To the average American, $300,000 is an enormous amount of 
money.
  Now, Capital Management made a $300,000 loan to Whitewater. That is 
far more than anybody had put into it in real money. We have strong 
evidence that President Clinton asked this loan be made. I think time 
will tell that David Hale is telling the truth when he says that Bill 
Clinton pressured him to make this loan to help benefit Whitewater. If 
it is not true that Bill Clinton pressured David Hale to make this 
loan, then we need to--and I hope

[[Page S1564]]

the Democrats would be pushing to extend these hearings so we can bring 
David Hale to the hearings and let him clear Bill Clinton's name.
  If it is true, if it is true that the President, now President 
Clinton, pressured him, then that needs to be brought to the light and 
let the public see it.
  Here again, the American taxpayers have paid to subsidize President 
and Mrs. Clinton's failed real estate venture in Arkansas. Again, our 
Whitewater hearings have uncovered that the White House was aware of 
the Hale investigation from the very beginning. They had testimony from 
a career SBA official that the SBA briefed Mike McLarty in May 1993, 
about the SBA investigation of David Hale. They briefed McLarty about 
the SBA investigation of David Hale, the man who said he was pressured 
by then-Governor and now President Bill Clinton to make the loan.
  That is essentially what these hearings are about, the loss of 
taxpayer money in Madison, Whitewater, and Capital Management. We have 
never had Mr. Hale as a witness. We need him as a witness and we need 
to wait until the legal proceedings going on in Little Rock are over 
and bring him as a witness.
  Mr. President, on another issue, Vince Foster's death and the 
handling of his papers on the eve of his death has raised the most 
questions with the committee. We know for a fact that the First Lady 
spoke with her assistant, Maggie Williams, before Maggie Williams went 
to the White House and Vince Foster's office. In fact, she spoke to her 
in almost record time that you could drive from Maggie Williams' house 
to get in Vince Foster's office. And we know by the telephone records 
when she left her home and we know by the Secret Service records when 
the alarm went off in Vince Foster's office and she went in. And she 
did it in almost record time.
  We asked her before the committee, why did she go to the White House? 
And the explanation was a somewhat vague, that she was out riding and 
had to be somewhere. Well, she was somewhere, in Vince Foster's office.
  We know that they spoke later in the evening, immediately upon Maggie 
Williams' return from the White House. We know that she called, Mrs. 
Clinton called her. She went to the White House. We know she went to 
the White House, she went to Vince Foster's office, she went directly 
back home, and she called the First Lady. That we know.
  Then, in the morning, 1 a.m., Maggie Williams was talking to Susan 
Thomases. We have the sworn testimony of uniformed Secret Service 
Officer Henry O'Neill, who saw Maggie Williams remove documents from 
Vince Foster's office on the night of his death. All of this is 
undisputed fact.
  Within the last few weeks we have gathered more information that I 
think gives credence to the notion that files were indeed removed on 
the night of Mr. Foster's death. First, two files relating to the 
Madison Guaranty were sent back to the Rose Law Firm by David Kendall. 
They had to have come out of Vince Foster's office. Yet these files 
were never part of the box that Maggie Williams said she took from 
Foster's office 2 days after his death. These documents were reviewed 
and cataloged by Bob Barnett, the Clinton's other attorney. The two 
Madison files never appeared there.

  Mr. President, what we have seen is massive inconsistency and 
confusion. It has gone on and on and on. The truth, as I use a poor 
simile, is that getting information out of the White House was akin to 
eating ice cream with a knitting needle. And that is about what it has 
been, a little bit here and a little bit there. But never enough to 
satisfy.
  This is the way it has gone on since the beginning of the hearings 
and unbelievable stories we have been asked to believe. We can go back 
to the Maggie Williams/Susan Thomases flurry of telephone calls, and 
also to Mrs. Clinton's explanation of them.
  Maggie Williams: I do not know why I went to the White House. I could 
not possibly have taken anything out. Yet she met a uniformed 18-year 
veteran of the Secret Service in a 5-foot hall, and neither of them are 
small people. He had no reason to tell it wrong. She immediately calls 
Mrs. Clinton from her home phone when she gets back to her house, and 
she went directly back to her house. There were many calls to Susan 
Thomases and Mrs. Clinton over a very short period of time. And the 
explanation we have for these calls is this one: They were 
commiserating with each other. They were making sure everybody was all 
right. They were checking to see if the bereaved were comfortable.
  Mrs. Clinton herself said that these calls were commiserating and 
there was a lot of sobbing going on on those calls that night.
  I find that extremely difficult to believe, and if I am wrong I would 
be delighted to be corrected by the facts. But we find no calls from 
Mrs. Clinton to Mrs. Foster or the children. The telephone records have 
not indicated those calls existed, and so far they have not been 
brought forward. I believe the documents that Maggie Williams delivered 
that night are the now-famous missing billing records. I fully believe 
that Maggie Williams had them in her arms that night. Certainly 
everybody agrees that Vince Foster's handwriting was all over these 
billing records--in the original writing, not copies. The records were 
copies but his handwriting was the original. It was all over them.
  Many have said, Well, what is it in the billing records that is 
significant?
  There are two very important significances. One of them is that they 
were subpoenaed by a Senate investigating committee, they were 
subpoenaed by an independent counsel, and whoever knew where they were 
should have brought them forward regardless of what they said. They 
were subpoenaed papers.
  But the significance--another significance is the work on the Castle 
Grande project is important. That was the one project that RTC said: 
There may be legal liability for the Rose Law Firm. Is it any wonder 
that they stayed hidden until after the statute of limitation had 
expired?
  The First Lady had over 14 calls with Seth Ward, according to her 
billing records. Seth Ward was the Castle Grande man. This was a known 
sham deal identified by the RTC as a sham deal. Is it reasonable to 
think that one of the 100 smartest lawyers in the country could have 
had 14 telephone calls with a client doing a sham deal and not suspect 
it or known it was wrong? I think she knew well what she was doing. She 
had to know. That is why the documents did not turn up.
  Castle Grande cost the American taxpayers $4 million. The RTC tried 
to collect some of the money. But Mrs. Clinton had disguised work on 
this issue. No wonder they were so concerned about the statute of 
limitations expiring in 1994 but extended until the end of 1995. This 
is what sparked the meeting that we saw in 1994.
  Mr. President, in conclusion, we still have key witnesses to call, 
witnesses that know where the bodies are buried, witnesses that will 
talk and can talk, but they are tied up in a trial in Little Rock now. 
We need to get them here. Jim McDougal, Susan McDougal, and David Hale. 
Can you imagine if we held Iran-Contra hearings without Ollie North or 
John Poindexter or Bud McFarland? What would the hearings show? Can you 
imagine if the Republicans wanted to end these hearings and had wanted 
to end them? The media would have crucified us. It would not have 
happened.
  To conclude, here are some of the questions that need answers. These 
we need answered before we conclude the hearings.
  Who placed Mrs. Clinton's subpoenaed records in the White House book 
room? Nobody has given me any argument that the White House book room 
and Mrs. Clinton's private adjoining office are the two most secure 
rooms in the world. If they are not, they should be, because that is 
where the President spends his private time.
  Were those records in Vince Foster's office the night he died? If so, 
who removed them? And where were they stored for 2 years?
  Clearly, the records did not walk out of Vince Foster's office. They 
were walked out, and whoever walked them out knows where they carried 
them and where they were hidden for 2 years.
  Did White House officials lie to investigators about what went on in 
the hours and days after Vince Foster's death? Did the White House 
response

[[Page S1565]]

team obstruct justice by attempting to control the scope of the 
investigation? Did the White House Whitewater response team obstruct 
justice by attempting to tamper with a witness? Did then-Governor 
Clinton pressure a local judge to make an illegal loan to his business 
partner? These we can answer if we get the people here.

  Why did the Clinton business partner pay most of the Clintons' share 
of Whitewater Development Corps. bills? What motivated his generosity? 
Was the administration involved in any action which prevented, impeded, 
or obstructed the administration of justice? If so, who directed it, 
who carried it out, and what was done? Why cannot the American people 
get the answers to these questions?
  If there is nothing to hide, which has been contended by the 
Democratic side and the White House, why not bring forth the facts, 
bring forth the documents and stop letting them out little by little by 
little? Nothing would clear the name of the Clintons quicker than to 
bring forth all of the facts, bring the people in from Little Rock, and 
conclude the hearings.
  Would we be literally facing a filibuster if there were nothing to 
hide? If there is not, let us end the filibuster, and let us get on 
with the investigation.
  Mr. President, I think it is time that we get on with the 
investigation. I agree with the Democrats: We need to bring it to a 
conclusion, but we need to complete our work before we bring it to 
conclusion.
  Mr. President, I see my colleague and friend from California is on 
the floor. So at this time I will yield the floor.
  Mrs. BOXER addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from California.
  Mrs. BOXER. I thank my friend for yielding the floor at this time.
  Mr. President, what I would like to do in the beginning of my remarks 
is to correct the record on a couple of matters that the Senator from 
North Carolina raised. First of all, the statute of limitations on the 
Castle Grande transactions had not expired when the Rose Law Firm 
billing records were found in the White House in early January 1996. In 
fact, by a agreement between the RTC and the Rose Law Firm, the statute 
of limitations had been extended until March 1, 1996.
  So, Mr. President, we could have a disagreement on whether we ought 
to continue these hearings, but let us not get on the floor of the 
Senate and say things that are not true. It is simply wrong to suggest 
that the documents were discovered because the statute of limitations 
had expired when, in fact, the statute of limitations had not expired.
  Second, Mr. President, I think it is very important when colleagues 
stand up and make comments that there be a basis for those comments.

  I am happy to yield to my friend for a question.
  Mr. FAIRCLOTH. I am very much aware, and we all are, that the statute 
of limitations was not applicable to the First Lady's business. But as 
a member of a Rose Law Firm, as the attorney involved, and as a billing 
attorney involved in this--and she was the billing attorney on Castle 
Grande--she would certainly have a responsibility, maybe not a personal 
financial responsibility, but she very much would be involved in the 
proceedings.
  Mrs. BOXER. If I might reclaim my time, I think my friend is not 
contradicting what I said. I will repeat what I said.
  The statute of limitations had been extended until March 1, 1996, and 
it is wrong to suggest that the documents were discovered because the 
statute of limitations had expired. That is the only point I am making 
to my friend. I think it is important we not stand up here and say the 
statute had expired.
  I am going to have to take back my time and tell my friend he is 
going to have to seek time on his own only because of a pressing 
appointment in my office. I need to make this statement and finish it, 
if I might.
  I am glad to yield to my friend, but I hope he would have a question.
  Mr. FAIRCLOTH. My question is in answer to the statement. Mrs. 
Clinton's attorney, Mr. Kendall, said it was a legal question whether 
it involved the Rose Law Firm or Mrs. Clinton personally. I yield the 
floor.
  Mrs. BOXER. I would just restate that whether it did or did not is 
not my point. My point is a statement was made here that the statute 
had expired, and the implication is that, if there was something wrong 
in the billing records, the First Lady and the Rose Law Firm would be 
off the hook. The statute did not expire. In fact, we know the billing 
records were turned over, and actually underscored what the First Lady 
had said, that the time she put into that is minimum.
  That is the first point I want to correct, Mr. President.
  Second, I want to quote from the Madison Guaranty Savings and Loan 
and Whitewater Development Co. supplemental report written by 
Pillsbury, Madison & Sutro. And we know part of that firm is Jay 
Stephens, who has strong ties to the Republican Party. This is what 
they found. I am going to state this and quote directly from the 
report.

       There is no basis to assert that the Clintons knew anything 
     of substance about the McDougals' advances to Whitewater, the 
     source of funds used to make those advances, or the source of 
     the funds used to make payments on the bank debt.

  That is on page 77.
  On page 78, quoting from an investigative report that cost about $3 
million--excuse me, I stand corrected, $4 million--page 78:

       There is no basis to charge the Clintons with any kind of 
     primary liability for fraud or intentional misconduct. The 
     investigation has revealed no evidence to support any such 
     claim, nor would the records support any claim of secondary 
     derivative liability for the possible misdeeds of others.
  Page 78. ``It is recommended''--and this is very important, I say to 
my colleagues--``it is recommended that no further resources be 
expended on the Whitewater part of the investigation.''
  Now, this is an objective report, paid for by the taxpayers, done by 
the firm of Pillsbury, Madison & Sutro, a great law firm, including Jay 
Stephens, known for his ties to Republicans, and what do they say?

       It is recommended that no further resources be expended on 
     the Whitewater part of the investigation into Madison 
     Guaranty.

  So what are we doing in the Senate? Ignoring this, ignoring this and 
moving on with an investigation of a Senate select committee. I think 
we ought to start listening to people who are objective on this, who 
have no political ax to grind. As a matter of fact, people thought in 
the beginning, when Pillsbury, Madison & Sutro got that: My God, this 
is going to be political.
  Well, it turned out that the Clintons have been cleared.
  Now, I know that annoys a lot of my Republican friends, and I feel 
sorry for them, that this is the biggest thing in their lives, some of 
them. But I have to tell you there are other things in the lives of the 
American people that have to be addressed by this Senate. And I have to 
tell you, these attacks on the First Lady of the United States, these 
personal attacks, these personal attacks on the President of the United 
States border, in my opinion, on being unpatriotic. It is my personal 
opinion. But that is up to each individual Senator. And clearly it is 
up to the people of the country to decide.
  I have to say, listening to these attacks, when my colleague says he 
believes David Hale, well, that is his right. This is a man who has 
already pleaded guilty to two felonies, as I understand it. And not 
only that, but we have word that the State is prosecuting him as well. 
And this is the individual that is quoted in this Chamber to prove that 
our First Lady and our President are not good human beings. Well, 
again, it is every Senator's right to call it the way he sees it, but I 
think the American people see right through this. And who are they 
going to believe? A man who has already stated that he committed two 
felonies or Pillsbury, Madison & Sutro, which says in their report: Let 
us spend no more time on this investigation. The Clintons are not 
guilty of anything.
  Now, I supported every single vote here to move this investigation 
forward. I voted to set up the special committee. I voted to extend the 
special committee. I had nothing but support for those two resolutions. 
We reached across party lines. We worked together. We shaped 
resolutions that were not political. But I say it is time to step back 
and wind this thing down.

  I have to tell you, the offer that we Democrats have made is 
extremely

[[Page S1566]]

generous in terms of the time and the allocation of funds we have 
recommended. Let me prove that point. We have already heard from 121 
witnesses, some of them two and three times, mind you. They are brought 
back. They have to pay for attorneys. Some of them do not have means to 
do it. Some of them will be paying that off for decades, if ever. But 
we have done it.
  We have met for 230 hours of hearings. I want you to keep that number 
in mind--230 hours of actual hearings. Now, the Democratic leader and 
ranking member, Senator Sarbanes, and all of us are saying, let us have 
an additional 5 weeks of hearings, almost $200,000 more, recommending 
also that there be 4 weeks allocated in addition to write a report, and 
our Republican colleagues say it is not enough. It is not enough.
  Why? Why? This is their latest reason. Because they cannot get up 
here and say we want to keep investigating, keep the story alive 
because it hurts the First Lady and it hurts the President. You cannot 
say that. But this is what they say. In the court, there is a hearing. 
There is a trial in court, and we need to call those people. We need to 
wait.
  Let me quote from a letter signed by our ranking member, Senator 
Sarbanes, and our chairman, Al D'Amato, that was written in October 
1995. This is signed by both.

       The special committee does not intend to seek the testimony 
     of any defendant in the pending action brought by your 
     office.

  This is to Ken Starr.

       Nor will it extend to expand upon the grants of immunity 
     provided to persons by your office. Indeed, Senate Resolution 
     120 expressly provides the special committee may not immunize 
     a witness if the independent counsel informs the committee in 
     writing that immunizing that witness would interfere with the 
     independent counsel's ability to prosecute.

  So, in writing, our chairman said he had no intention of calling any 
witnesses. Now, the big reason we have to wait is we have to call the 
same people who are going before this jury.
  Now, let me say something. And this was brought out by our ranking 
member, Senator Sarbanes, but it bears repeating. I wish to say to my 
Republican friends, this is America. We do not have trials in secret in 
this country. Every one of these people involved in the trial, all the 
people who Senator Faircloth says he wants to hear from, they are going 
to be in that courtroom and we are going to hear from them. But, no, 
that is not enough. We want to play prosecutor. You know, this is not 
``L.A. Law.'' This is the Senate of the United States of America. We 
are legislators, not prosecutors. That is why we have the independent 
counsel.
  And by the way, does the independent counsel have any limits to his 
investigation? The answer is no. He has, as I understand it, 100 FBI 
agents on this matter and 30 lawyers; unlimited sums of money. But we 
are going to play prosecutor. Maybe some of them are jealous; they want 
to be prosecutors. Well, they ought to do that and not be Senators. 
That is fair. But do not turn this Senate into a group of prosecutors 
because that is not our role. That is why we have the independent 
counsel. Take the politics out of this thing. So we have had 230 hours 
of hearings, and now we are offering another 5 weeks.
  Now, let me say this to anyone who is listening. I sat down with my 
pen and figured out how many hours of hearings we could have under the 
Democratic proposal. Let us say we worked 8 hours a day, taking an hour 
for lunch like most Americans, 8 hours a day, and held those hearings 5 
days a week. Most Americans work 5 days a week. I think it is a sound 
idea myself. We could hear from so many witnesses. We could hear from 
100 witnesses, maybe more.
  As I figure it, we would have 175 hours of additional hearings. They 
have only had 230. They could have another 175 hours. What happens if 
we decide to work 10 hours a day? Just work a little harder, take an 
hour for lunch, a 10-hour day. We could have another 250 hours of 
hearings under the Democratic proposal.
  We have only had 230. So we could just do as much as we have done, 
plus. If my Republican friends are so anxious to work on this, let us 
get to work. Let us go. Let us get your witnesses, let us line them up, 
an hour at a time. Let us do our work.
  But, no, as the ranking member has pointed out, there are some weeks 
they have one witness. They harangue them for 9 hours--and I mean 
harangue--to no avail, by the way. So if we are really serious, the 
Democratic alternative has offered them more hours than they have 
already spent. So let us stop saying that we want to close it down. By 
the way, some Members on my side do want to close it down. They do not 
want any more hours. I happen to believe let us close it down in an 
orderly fashion. So I am supporting this additional 5 weeks, with 4 
weeks to write a report.
  I just cannot understand why my Republican friends do not want to 
take this, if they are serious about saying they want to get their work 
done. They want to hear from these witnesses in the jury trial. We can 
listen in, just as all Americans can, and read all the reports about 
the trial and get the information we need. If we feel we need to take 
more action legislatively because we found out new information, we can 
do that.
  By the way, I also point out we do have a Senate Banking Committee 
that can meet any day of the week. Why do we need to hire all these 
special lawyers they bring in? They go on television every night and 
report, move their careers up the line. At what cost? At what cost? We 
have very good people on staff. We can do some of this in the Senate 
Banking Committee.
  So we are legislators, not prosecutors. The Democratic alternative 
gives you more hours than you have already expended on this matter. The 
only reasonable conclusion I think the American people can draw is that 
that is not their interest. Their interest is in dragging this out 
until election day--until election day.
  I have to tell you something. It is not working for them. From a 
political standpoint, if I were being political, I would just let them 
go right ahead, because the American people are disgusted. They are 
watching this, and they are saying, ``This is incredible. These people 
are meeting back here in Washington, and what are they doing? Nothing 
to make our lives better, nothing to make our lives better. As a matter 
of fact, spending $600,000''--which is the proposal of the 
Republicans--``which could be better spent either on deficit reduction 
or restoring some of the cuts to education they so happily made here.''

  Teachers are being laid off all over who teach reading to children, 
because of the actions of this Senate. They could not find the money 
for education. But boy, oh, boy, they find it pretty easy for this.
  I have a Superfund site in San Bernardino, CA, where a poison plume 
is moving down into the water supply. That cannot be cleaned up because 
the Republicans, who control this body and the other body, do not even 
have the budget passed. I am on the Budget Committee. We are supposed 
to be working on the next budget. They do not even have the current 
budget passed.
  But, oh, no, we have to talk about Whitewater. We need $600,000, not 
to restore some of these cuts, not to reduce the deficit, not to clean 
up Superfund sites, not to raise the minimum wage. You do not even need 
money to do that; you just need time on the floor to vote on it. It is 
at a 40-year low. People try to live on it. They cannot take time for 
that.
  I mean, it is just amazing to me. So politically, as far as I am 
concerned, when people look at this Congress, they are saying, ``We 
didn't expect this kind of change. We didn't expect a whole breakdown 
in the budget process. They can't even get their act together to pass 
the debt.'' Hurting our ratings because we cannot even do our job. But 
they have a lot of time for Whitewater.
  So maybe I should not be here complaining about it. Maybe, 
politically speaking, it will help, help change who is in control 
around here. But be that as it may, I have to say what I think. What I 
think is that this offer from the Democrats to extend these hearings 
for 5 weeks, another 4 weeks to write a report, if we got our act 
together and worked 8, 10 hours a day, we could just have well over 100 
witnesses and wrap this up and get on to the work and keep this out of 
the political arena.
  People want job training, education. They want pension protection. 
They

[[Page S1567]]

want health insurance that is portable. We have a great bipartisan 
bill. Why is that not up here? The Kassebaum-Kennedy bill will protect 
our people from getting their insurance canceled because of a 
preexisting condition. It would allow them to take that health 
insurance with them.
  I ask you, what is more important for our people, standing up and 
berating the President and the First Lady on something that happened 
years and years ago, where the special counsel has all the resources he 
needs to bring justice, or doing the work of the U.S. Senate? I am 
absolutely amazed that, after all the bipartisanship we have had on 
that committee over so many years, our ranking member and our chairman 
cannot agree when we have offered hours and hours of hearings to them.

  It is extraordinary to me. I think this issue of the trial is a false 
issue. Again, this is not going to be a secret trial. So, Mr. 
President, I am clearly distraught that this is the priority of the 
U.S. Senate.
  Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that I may speak for 3 minutes 
on a different subject. Then I will yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection? Hearing none, so ordered.
  Mrs. BOXER. Thank you so much, Mr. President.

                          ____________________