[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 38 (Tuesday, March 19, 1996)]
[House]
[Pages H2334-H2339]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




      REIMBURSEMENT OF FORMER WHITE HOUSE TRAVEL OFFICE EMPLOYEES

  Mr. SMITH of Texas. Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and pass 
the bill (H.R. 2937) for the reimbursement of legal expenses and 
related fees incurred by former employees of the White House Travel 
Office with respect to the termination of their employment in that 
Office on May 19, 1993, as amended.
  The Clerk read as follows:

                               H.R. 2937

       Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of 
     the United States of America in Congress assembled,

     SECTION 1. REIMBURSEMENT OF CERTAIN ATTORNEY FEES AND COSTS.

       (a) In General.--The Secretary of the Treasury shall pay, 
     from amounts in the Treasury not otherwise appropriated, such 
     sums as are necessary to reimburse former employees of the 
     White House Travel Office whose employment in that Office was 
     terminated on May 19, 1993, for any attorney fees and costs 
     they incurred with respect to that termination.
       (b) Verification Required.--The Secretary shall pay an 
     individual in full under subsection (a) upon submission by 
     the individual of documentation verifying the attorney fees 
     and cost.
       (c) No Inference of Liability.--Liability of the United 
     States shall not be inferred from enactment of or payment 
     under this section.

     SEC. 2. LIMITATION ON FILING OF CLAIMS.

       The Secretary of the Treasury shall not pay any claim filed 
     under this Act that is filed later than 120 days after the 
     date of the enactment of this Act.

     SEC. 3. REDUCTION.

       The amount paid pursuant to this Act to an individual for 
     attorney fees and costs described in section 1 shall be 
     reduced by any amount received before the date of the 
     enactment of this Act, without obligation for repayment by 
     the individual, for payment of such attorney fees and costs 
     (including any amount received from the funds appropriated 
     for the individual in the matter relating to the ``Office of 
     the General Counsel'' under the heading ``Office of the 
     Secretary'' in title I of the Department of Transportation 
     and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 1994).

     SEC. 4. PAYMENT IN FULL SETTLEMENT OF CLAIMS AGAINST THE 
                   UNITED STATES.

       Payment under this Act, when accepted by an individual 
     described in section 1, shall be in full satisfaction of all 
     claims of, or on behalf of, the individual against the United 
     States that arose out of the termination of the White House 
     Travel Office employment of that individual on May 19, 1993.

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Pursuant to the rule, the gentleman from 
Texas [Mr. Smith] and the gentleman from Massachusetts [Mr. Frank] will 
each be recognized for 20 minutes.
  The Chair recognizes the gentleman from Texas [Mr. Smith].
  Mr. SMITH of Texas. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may 
consume.
  Mr. Speaker, H.R. 2937 would reimburse the legal expenses incurred by 
former employees of the White House Travel Office due to their 
dismissal on May 19, 1993. The Secretary of the Treasury would 
reimburse such costs out of money not otherwise appropriated.
  On May 19, 1993, all seven White House Travel Office employees were 
fired. We now know that the employees' firing and the subsequent FBI 
investigation was actually instigated by individuals who were pursuing 
travel and aviation business controlled within the White House. As a 
result of the actions of those individuals, the seven employees 
suffered public and private humiliation and incurred extensive legal 
expenses in their attempt to defend themselves.
  Today, after the conclusion of all the investigations, no one has 
been found guilty of any of the charges. Both a GAO report to Congress 
and a White House management review acknowledged that the actions of 
people within the White House, the public acknowledgment of a criminal 
investigation, and the investigation itself tarnished the employees' 
reputations and caused them to incur considerable legal expenses.
  On the bases of these facts, the committee feels that in the interest 
of equity, these particular individuals' attorneys fees should be 
reimbursed.
  Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
  Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as 
I might consume.
  Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the very thoughtful manner in which the 
chairman of the subcommittee has managed this at subcommittee. We did 
adopt a few amendments to tighten it up.
  I should note that this is not entirely unprecedented. As a matter of 
fact, well back in the early 1980's the Congress appropriated funds to 
compensate for lawyer's fees, Hamilton Jordan, because when he was 
working for Jimmy Carter he was, wholly unfairly, accused of things.
  At the point the independent counsel statute, then called the special 
prosecutor statute, had a very, very low trigger, and very 
irresponsible and inaccurate accusations against Mr. Jordan triggered 
the statute as it was then written. He was then compensated. Indeed, 
the former Member of the House who is now the Secretary of Agriculture 
carried the bill at the time because he chaired the appropriate 
subcommittee, and Mr. Jordan was compensated for his attorney's fees.
  So it is not unprecedented that we compensate people who were 
unfairly put to the need to hire attorneys. In fact, after the Jordan 
situation, when Congress reenacted the independent counsel statute in 
1982, I believe it was, we raised the trigger because we did not want 
others to have to go through that. We also included a provision there 
which had not been in the original act, which compensates anybody who 
was the subject of an independent counsel investigation, the potential 
target who is not indicated.
  Indeed a great deal of money has been paid out, and I would guess 
millions of dollars for that as the price of this statute, because then 
under the independent counsel statute people find themselves 
investigated where they might not otherwise have been because the 
trigger, although higher than originally, is still lower than in some 
cases.
  Also in the course of that the late Judge George McKinnon, who was a 
very distinguished head of the special court that appointed independent 
counsel, developed a lot of law which we alluded to, I believe, in this 
report and in the discussion in committee to properly distinguish 
between lawyer's fees that ought to be compensated and other fees that 
should not be.
  Lawyers can do a lot of things for people. They can write articles; 
they can be public relations advisers. Judge McKinnon set down some 
very good criteria for differentiating between those properly 
compensable fees and other expenses, and I am glad to say that I think 
we will be building on that in that.

                              {time}  1430

  I think the precedent that, having been set before, is useful to 
follow now, and it is not a binding precedent. No one can then come 
before us and say, ``You must do that.'' We are not governed by the 
rule of stare decisis the way the courts are.
  However, I think reaffirming the principle that people who have 
unfairly been put to significant legal expenses, people who were there 
not because they happen to be in the way of some investigation as an 
ordinary citizen, but people who because of their governmental position 
and because of a variety of factors were put to expenses that they 
should not have had to have been put to, that it is reasonable to 
compensate them. It is not the first time we have done it. In my 
judgment it should not necessarily be the last time, because there are 
other cases where people are involved.
  I think it is appropriate to provide the funds for these people here, 
and understand that we are once again affirming a principle that people 
who have been unfairly put to great expenses, particularly people of no 
great personal wealth, ought to be able to look to this Congress for 
some compensation.
  Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
  Mr. SMITH of Texas. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman 
from Pennsylvania [Mr. Clinger], chairman

[[Page H2335]]

of the Committee on Government Reform and Oversight.
  (Mr. CLINGER asked and was given permission to revise and extend his 
remarks.)
  Mr. CLINGER. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding time to 
me.
  Mr. Speaker, I want to rise in support of H.R. 2937, which will 
reimburse the legal expenses incurred by some of the former employees 
of the White House Travel Office with respect to the firings that took 
place on May 19, 1993.
  Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to say that the White House has 
indicated that President Clinton will sign this legislation. I am 
particularly appreciative of the extraordinary assistance of my 
colleagues on the Committee on the Judiciary and the support of my 
colleagues on the minority side of the aisle, and I urge my colleagues 
to support this vital legislation.
  As hard as it may be to believe, nearly 3 years have passed since 
that late morning of May 19 when five White House Travel Office 
employees were fired summarily by Mr. David Watkins in order to be out 
of the White House by noon.
  Two of their colleagues were not present for what Mr. Watkins 
characterized as a surgical procedure. One was on a White House 
advanced trip to South Korea and learned he had been terminated by CNN. 
The other, who was on vacation, on a personal vacation in Ireland, 
was called by his son in Ireland and told, ``Dad, Tom Brokaw said you 
were fired.'' So this was really the beginning of what was a nightmare, 
really, for these seven individuals, their families, and their friends. 
It was a nightmare from which they are only now really beginning to see 
the light.

  I understood and I think most of us here in the Congress understood 
all along that the Travel Office employees served at the pleasure of 
the President; so, I think, did the Travel Office employees themselves, 
as a matter of fact, understand that they served at the pleasure of the 
President. But from the very first, the manner in which these men were 
fired raised troubling questions. In particular, the White House's May 
19, 1993 statement that the FBI was launching a criminal investigation 
of the Travel Office was really, I think, highly inappropriate and 
improper. While that was the most troubling issue arising from the 
firings, others festered in the days and weeks which followed.
  While we are continuing to investigate the events leading up to and 
surrounding these firings, I am pleased there has been bipartisan 
support for beginning today to right the wrongs done to these 
individuals by passing this legal expense relief bill. It is impossible 
to imagine what the fired Travel Office employees, their families, and 
friends felt, and the fear that they had to feel as FBI agents combed 
their neighborhoods and as IRS agents threatened them with audits, as 
they faced grand juries and possible prosecution in a really Kafkaesque 
kind of atmosphere.
  By May 25, 1993, the media had uncovered strong indications of 
conflicts of interest in the takeover of the White House Travel Office, 
and in the wake of media scrutiny and public outrage, the White House 
backtracked on its firings of five of the seven travel office employees 
and placed them on administrative leave. Those five men eventually did 
indeed find employment elsewhere in the Federal Government, and the 
Director and the Deputy Director of the Travel Office retired.
  When I introduced this bill last month, I referred to the eloquence 
of the seven Travel Office employees, when they testified before the 
Committee on Government Reform and Oversight, to the pride they took in 
serving the White House under Democrat and Republican Presidents alike. 
I believed then and I believe now that Mr. McSweeney said it best when 
he said:

       I would hope that people would understand that for me and 
     thousands of others, when Air Force One would arrive, the 
     markings on the side were not Democratic Party or Republican 
     Party; it read, and reads, ``United States of America.'' The 
     emblem on its side was not a political poster, it was the 
     seal of the Executive Office of the President of the United 
     States, and when the door opened, the man or woman chosen by 
     the people of this country to fill that office had my 
     complete loyalty and support. I did that for 13 of the 
     proudest years of my life.

  The eloquence of the fired Travel Office employees has resonated, I 
think, across this Nation. In the wake of their January 24, 1996 
testimony before the Committee on Government Reform and Oversight, I 
have received literally scores of letters supporting the fired Travel 
Office employees and decrying the damage done to their reputations. An 
example, a Connecticut woman wrote saying:

       My husband and I were astounded when one night a few weeks 
     ago we happened to turn on C-Span right at the moment when 
     Billy Dale was beginning his story on what happened to him in 
     the matter that has now become known as Travelgate. We 
     listened as each of the seven gentlemen told his story, their 
     opening statements. Up until that evening we had been under 
     the impression that Billy Dale and possibly some of his 
     associates had fraudulently misappropriated funds from the 
     travel office and we were so thankful that your committee 
     gave us the opportunity to learn the truth about what 
     happened to these men. What our government did to those 
     seven men should not happen to anyone.

  But it did happen, and unfortunately the dedicated longstanding 
service of those seven men throughout some of the proudest years of 
their lives cost them dearly in the end. Six of the seven never were 
charged with any crime, while the seventh, Mr. Billy Dale, was 
acquitted by a jury of his peers in 2 hours following a 30-month 
investigation by the Justice Department.
  Billy Dale's legal defense cost him nearly $500,000. His six 
colleagues spent more than $200,000 in their own defense, some $150,000 
of which has been reimbursed by the 1994 Transportation appropriations 
bill, so we have seen partial compensation made to some of these 
gentlemen.
  This bill will never mitigate the suffering of innocent men, their 
families and friends. It will, however, I think, make them whole for 
the legal defense expenses still outstanding against them, and quite 
rightly so.
  So again, I would express my appreciation for the help of the 
chairman of the committee, the gentleman from Illinois [Mr. Hyde], the 
gentleman from Texas [Mr. Smith], my colleagues on the Committee on the 
Judiciary and the Committee on Government Reform and Oversight, and 
Members of the minority, for their bipartisan support for this very, 
very humane and overdue piece of legislation. I urge support for this 
bill.
  Mr. SMITH of Texas. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman 
from New Mexico [Mr. Schiff].
  Mr. SCHIFF. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding time to 
me.
  Mr. Speaker, I want to say that I have seen a great amount of 
testimony and other information about the Travel Office matter. This is 
because I serve on both of the committees represented here today, the 
Committee on the Judiciary and the Committee on Government Reform and 
Oversight. Unfortunately, all of the matters that exist between the 
administration and the Congress about what happened in the Travel 
Office, even back almost 3 years, have not been resolved yet.
  The center of contention is that the administration believes it has 
furnished Congress with all of the information requested about how 
things happened and how we got to this point, and some Members of 
Congress believe that is not the case, so there is still an area of 
contention between the two branches of government.
  But there is no difference of opinion between the administration and 
the Congress as to the fact that these individuals, these employees of 
the Federal Government, were not treated fairly; in fact, were 
mistreated in this whole process. That has been acknowledged by the 
administration, I think to their credit, to look back at it and say, 
``We know we didn't handle this right.'' Mr. Speaker, it is also my 
understanding that the President does intend to sign this bill, should 
it reach his desk. I want to urge all Members to vote in favor of this 
legislation.
  Mr. SMITH of Texas. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman 
from California [Mr. Horn].
  Mr. HORN. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding time to me.
  I commend the gentleman from Pennsylvania [Mr. Clinger], the 
distinguished chairman of the Committee on Government Reform and 
Oversight, the Committee on which I serve. Mr. Clinger pursued this 
matter of the unfair treatment of employees in the Travel Office at the 
White House when

[[Page H2336]]

all doors were blocked as to what really happened. Today, after several 
years of pursuit of the truth, a basic characteristic of the American 
people, which is fairness, has finally come into play.
  I have sat for hours through the testimony of those involved. 
Chairman Clinger has been a great leader in this effort to secure long-
overdue justice for those employees who worked effectively to meet the 
travel needs of the various reporters who accompany the President on 
domestic and international trips. A few of those employees had served 
both Democratic and Republican Presidents since the early 1960s.
  Suddenly, the new Clinton administration fired them. White House 
employees serve at the pleasure of the President. Instead White House 
agents abused their authority and abused these employees. This is not 
new. Occasionally a White House aide has abused the power of his 
office. Too often, immature individuals who have been successful during 
the campaign have been asked to join the White House staff. They cause 
Presidents a lot of difficulty. This is that kind of a case.
  President Clinton was ill-served in this matter by the aggressiveness 
and eagerness of a few members of his staff.
  As I noted, they misused their authority. They treated the employees 
of the Travel Office very unfairly. They made false accusations about 
very loyal employees. They misused the Federal Bureau of Investigation. 
As was noted, there has been a sudden loss of records as well as 
memory.
  Travelgate is a sordid chapter in the history of White House staffs. 
Thus, I am delighted that the Committee on the Judiciary has reported 
this bill. I urge my colleagues in both parties to adopt it and end 
this case. At least we will have tried to make whole as to their legal 
fees to defend themselves the various persons whose lives have been 
very sadly and badly disrupted by these improper and unjustified 
activities.
  Mr. SMITH of Texas. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman 
from Virginia [Mr. Davis].
  Mr. DAVIS. Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of this bill. We had here 
Federal employees, career employees, who were dismissed from their 
jobs, put, sitting down, in a windowless moving van with no seats and 
their belongings, and summarily dumped onto the Elipse, out of sight of 
the press corps, where they could not comment on the firings.
  Some of these employees had worked at the White House since the 
Kennedy administration for Presidents of both parties. Some of their 
families learned about these firings through the television, which, 
according to the White House press office, told that the employees were 
fired due to embezzlement and severe financial irregularities. We know 
now that these career civil servants did no wrong. In fact, they were 
good at what they did. They simply got in the way of larger political 
and patronage objectives of the White House.
  The White House had every right to terminate these individuals if 
they wanted to. That is not the issue in this case. The problem is that 
instead of `fessing up to the deed that this was a political firing, 
documents were leaked to the press in an attempt to create the illusion 
that these firings were somehow for cause. They even tried to trump up 
criminal allegations against one Billy Dale, who, after several weeks 
of trial, was acquitted in less than 2 hours by a jury of his peers.
  Mr. Speaker, this bill is an attempt to pay the legal bills of those 
wrongly accused. It can never mitigate the suffering they and their 
families endured, but I ask the support of my colleagues for this bill, 
and I say thank you to these employees for a job well done. This, in a 
small way, is our way of thanking those employees for the service they 
gave the Government.
  Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Speaker, I yield such time as he may 
consume to the gentleman from California [Mr. Waxman], the ranking 
member of the Committee on Government Reform and Oversight.
  Mr. WAXMAN. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding time to 
me. I am not the ranking member, but I am a member of the Committee on 
Government Reform and Oversight.
  Mr. Speaker, I think we ought to put some perspective to this debate. 
We are faced with an anomalous situation. We are singling out seven 
Federal employees for special and unprecedented treatment by 
compensating them for their legal expenses.
  The House of Representatives has taken great pride in the fact that 
we are now going to operate under the rules that apply to other 
employers. That started in January of this year. In December of last 
year, over 100 House employees were summarily fired, and some of them 
apparently were fired because they were Democrats. They were, many of 
them, career people who had been here for a very long period of time. 
They are out. They do not have a job. No one is seeking to compensate 
them.
  What we are faced with in this case is not compensating people for 
losing their jobs, because six of the seven travel office employees got 
jobs right away. What we are seeking to do is to pay for their legal 
fees. That might be the right thing to do, but it might have been the 
right thing to do when Federal employees were targeted and smeared by 
Senator McCarthy and other investigators over the years. It might be 
the right thing to do for many in the Clinton White House, employees 
who face hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal bills.

  Yesterday an article in the Legal Times noted, and I want to quote 
this:

       At last count, nearly 40 current and former officials of 
     the Clinton White House alone have found it necessary to 
     retain counsel. The essential problem is that anyone taking a 
     senior governmental position these days, especially in the 
     White House, may end up in need of legal counsel, no matter 
     how honorably she (or he) conducts herself (or himself). That 
     wasn't true 20 years ago. It is a consequence of our current 
     culture, of hair-trigger resort to criminal investigations as 
     the ultimate weapon in partisan warfare.

   Mr. Speaker, there have been a growing number of investigations by 
appointed investigators, as well as congressional ones, much of which, 
in my opinion, have been motivated by partisan considerations.
  The White House, under President Clinton, came in and looked at the 
travel office and they had an independent review by the Peat, Marwick 
accounting firm that said there was a shambles in the travel office 
operations in terms of bookkeeping, a lot of mismanagement. They 
brought this to the attention of the people running the internal 
operations of the White House.

                              {time}  1445

  In fact, some of the claims about mismanagement led to the Justice 
Department deciding to prosecute Mr. Dale. He was acquitted, but in 
this legislation, the proponents seek to compensate him for his 
attorney's fees.
  There is another former White House aide that had something to do 
with the travel office, David Watkins. He has incurred, according to 
testimony he gave us, over $100,000 in attorney's fees and more bills 
are yet on the way. Mr. Watkins has not been charged with any crime. 
Should we be compensating him for his attorney's fees?
  Many lawyers in this House know the adage, ``tough cases make bad 
law.'' Unless we use H.R. 2937 as a precedent for future Federal 
employees, this will indeed be a bad law. We should never single out 
one group for special treatment, even if they have a meritorious claim, 
while ignoring others in similar situations.
   Mr. Speaker, I hope in passing H.R. 2937 the majority will also 
commit to supporting future legislation that provides such compensation 
to other Federal employees. That is the precedent we are taking in 
adopting this legislation. It is one that I hope the Judiciary 
Committee thought through quite carefully, because it may be one that 
will incur the taxpayers of this country an enormous amount of 
expenses, for not just these seven people but others who have as 
meritorious, if not more meritorious, a claim that for their Government 
service and for their having to deal with accusations and 
investigations, for which they had to hire lawyers just to protect 
themselves in case someone later wanted to come back and second-guess 
them on anything they might have said or anything they might have done.
   Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for allowing me to make this 
statement and I hope Members will be very thoughtful about the 
consequences of legislation that we are looking at today.

[[Page H2337]]

  Mr. SMITH of Texas. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman 
from New Mexico [Mr. Schiff].
  Mr. SCHIFF. I thank the gentleman for yielding me the time.
  Mr. Speaker, I rise to respond briefly to some of the comments made 
by the gentleman from California [Mr. Waxman]. He is certainly very 
correct when he said that the administration had the power legally to 
discharge all of the White House travel employees upon their entry into 
the White House if they had wanted to. If they had just done that, we 
would not be here today.
  Mr. Speaker, the fact of the matter is that in a number of positions 
they do change politically, from Republican to Democrat, from Democrat 
to Republican, sometimes even within a party if different individuals 
take charge. That is part of the system, whether we all approve of it 
or not. The problem is that is not what happened here.
  Mr. Speaker, what happened here is the fact that these individuals 
were virtually slandered by public accusations of financial 
mismanagement as the reason why they were, in fact, discharged. Those 
have never been supported. I do not believe there was officially an 
audit of the White House Travel Office.
  Mr. WAXMAN. If the gentleman will yield, there was an official audit 
by Peat Marwick.
  Mr. SCHIFF. I will yield in a moment to the gentleman. I believe it 
was a management study.
  Mr. Speaker, in any event, the General Accounting Office took a look 
at the new White House Travel Office and the first thing they found was 
financial discrepancies in the sense of deposits not being entered in 
the checkbook and so forth. Nobody has been fired in the White House 
Travel Office over that. The point is that was never the reason why 
these employees were discharged. There has been ample evidence of that 
throughout all of the testimony.
  Mr. Speaker, I just want to say before I yield to the gentleman from 
California that with respect to Mr. Watkins' legal fees, I do not know 
what will come out of that. Maybe at some point Mr. Watkins can come to 
the Congress also. I can say, however, because I attended the hearings 
that this matter continues to be alive in the U.S. Congress because Mr. 
Watkins' memorandum, which he himself wrote and notes that he himself 
wrote, contradict, in my judgment at least, what he and others told the 
official investigators in this case, and that is what is keeping this 
matter at the center of congressional attention, getting a straight 
story on that.
  With that, I yield to the gentleman from California.
  Mr. WAXMAN. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding.
  I want to point out that when the General Accounting Office did their 
evaluation, they talked to a Mr. Larry Herman from Peat Marwick. He was 
a Peat Marwick senior partner who led the travel office review. In Mr. 
Herman's professional judgment, and I am quoting from the GAO notes, 
the travel office's accounting records were, quote, ``the messiest, 
most illegible bookkeeping he had ever seen.'' He stated he was, quote, 
``barely able to read the writing, very sloppy, and inconsistent with 
no explanations of differences,'' end quote.
  Mr. Speaker, he was also frustrated he could not obtain appropriate 
responses from Mr. Dale, and they further went on that they seemed to 
have no concern for recordkeeping of other people's money. This might 
just be sloppiness, but they certainly raised a lot of concern when 
this audit was presented to people in the White House as to whether 
they ought to continue to keep the travel office employees in their 
jobs, and they decided eventually not to.
  Mr. Speaker, what all of the Members here seem to be saying is that 
if they simply fired them for political reasons, that would have been 
OK.
  Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as 
I may consume for what I believe will be my final comments, although I 
make no guarantees.
  Mr. Speaker, I want to say first that I appreciate the gentleman from 
New Mexico's point as a member of the Committee on the Judiciary. I 
think he has made the only appropriate statement we can make. We do not 
set precedents here in the way a legal court does. No Congress binds a 
future Congress.
  Mr. Speaker, the Congress retains always not the right but the 
responsibility to make judgments case by case, and I think the 
gentleman from New Mexico has fairly pointed out, should some other 
individuals come before the Congress and be able to make claims that 
Congress finds similarly meritorious, they may benefit. I do have to 
differ a little bit with the argument that says, well, we should not do 
it for anybody if we cannot do it for everybody.
  Mr. Speaker, we unfortunately rarely can do justice for everyone. I 
have myself, because I served on the Administrative Law Subcommittee 
which dealt with claims, on the Immigration Subcommittee, been part of 
bringing to this floor legislation that made some people whole when 
other people similarly situated were not made whole. We can never do it 
all, and I think it would be a mistake to say either we do all of it or 
we do none of it.
  Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from New Mexico, who I think 
stated it the best way we can. This neither sets a precedent nor 
precludes someone. Any new case will be judged on the same merits, and 
I must say I think that we have dealt with this in a nonpartisan and 
fair manner. I believe other people who might find themselves as 
claimants can be assured similarly.
  The one thing I would take issue with was one of the previous 
speakers referred to this as a sordid enterprise at the White House, 
and I would disagree with that. I think the administration made an 
error. I think it was an error in several ways, in part because it 
happened early in the administration. I am convinced that they would 
know better now and would not repeat this. But an error having been 
made, then I think people ought to be compensated, and we ought to 
recognize that that opportunity will exist in the future if other 
people can make a similar case. We will not do justice to everyone, but 
I would not let that be a reason not to do some justice for some 
people.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.
  Mr. SMITH of Texas. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2\1/2\ minutes to the 
gentleman from Virginia [Mr. Wolf].
  Mr. WOLF. Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong support of the bill. There is 
precedent, I would tell the gentleman from California. This legislation 
builds upon an amendment that we adopted in a 1995 transportation 
appropriation bill where we provided $150,000 to defray the cost of 
these individuals one other time, and I think it was a unanimous vote 
here in the Congress.
  Second, it is the old saying, everything that goes around comes 
around, and what the Clinton administration did was to bludgeon these 
people. These were all career Federal employees, and one of them is a 
constituent of mine. Billy Dale does not have the beautiful people to 
go out and put a massive fundraiser on for him the way the President of 
the United States does. These people have been bludgeoned and their 
reputations have been ruined and financially they are in trouble. Even 
after Billy Dale was acquitted, the White House counsel came out and 
had to put a dagger in him again to say that maybe he was going to go 
for a plea bargain or something like that.
  Mr. Speaker, Billy Dale supported Clinton. Billy Dale was just a 
career person just trying to do his job, and I will say the only thing 
I agree with what the gentleman from California [Mr. Waxman], said is 
this one thing. There is too much in this town of filing suits and 
charges back and forth. It really began against Ed Meese. Ed Meese had 
to pay a horrible, horrible price. He eventually was paid for it, and 
it goes on in both parties. If the passage of this bill could be the 
beginning of a cease-fire for that, it would be appropriate.
  Let us not forget, and I want to make the record show, we may never 
know the truth. Billy Dale was acquitted by a jury of his peers. There 
is no evidence of gross mismanagement in the offices. There was no 
evidence of kickback with regard to Ultra Air. In fact, Ultra Air got a 
$5,000 benefit back from the IRS. They got a rebate from the IRS and 
the White House had to pay for the excise fees.
  Mr. Speaker, this, I think, makes whole not only from a financial 
point

[[Page H2338]]

of view but I think from a moral point of view. The passage of this 
bill should send a message to everyone in this city and this country 
that these people were innocent, and also for their families and future 
generations know that they were basically innocent and what happened 
was absolutely wrong and that passing it can make it as right as we 
possibly can.
  Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Speaker, contrary to the practices and precedents of 
the House, the majority of the Committee on the Judiciary filed the 
report to accompany H.R. 2937 without allowing the minority to 
opportunity to file additional views. Unfortunately, it comes as no 
surprise that the majority did not want the minority to file additional 
views. This breach of the traditional comity of the House is consistent 
with the partisan tone that has characterized the majority's 
investigation into the Travel Office firings from the beginnings. The 
majority's report weaves a web of conspiracy that would make even 
Oliver Stone blanche.
  To hear the majority tell it, the conspiracy to frame Travel Office 
director Billy Dale and drag him through a political show trial 
includes the FBI investigators and career prosecutors who tried his 
case, not to mention the private citizens on the grand jury who voted 
to indict him. Cases where Congress considers providing funds to meet 
the legal expenses of defendants should meet a threshold of 
prosecutorial misconduct or the compromising of the criminal justice 
system. There is no evidence of such misconduct in the case of Mr. 
Dale. This case was investigated by career FBI agents and prosecuted by 
career attorneys. No one has suggested misconduct on their parts as 
they pursued this case.
  The fact is that Mr. Dale deposited $50,000 of Travel Office funds 
into his personal bank account, and that became the basis for the 
criminal charges of embezzlement. Mr. Dale admitted that he deposited 
these funds into his account, but denied that his intent was 
fraudulent, and he was acquitted.
  However, even Mr.. Dale, in sworn testimony before the Government 
Reform Committee, acknowledged that there was no misconduct on the part 
of the prosecutors or investigators who pursued the criminal case. The 
gentleman from Pennsylvania [Mr. Kanjorski] asked Mr. Dale:

       When the allegation of criminal conduct was referred to the 
     Justice Department and the public integrity section of the 
     Justice Department; are you suggesting in any way that either 
     those attorneys in the Justice Department, the people in the 
     grand jury, the judge that tried the case or the people that 
     made up the jury were in some way compromised?

  Mr. Dale responded: ``Absolutely not.''
  There is no dispute that White House officials erred in the firings 
of the five lower level Travel Office employees. The White House 
admitted as much in its 1993 internal review, and four officials were 
subsequently reprimanded. It is because of this that I have not opposed 
H.R. 2937. To the extent that these individuals have legal expenses not 
covered by previous appropriated sums, it may be appropriate to provide 
this additional authorization. However, as the majority's report points 
out, the bulk of the expenses of the Travel Office employees were 
incurred by Mr. Dale for his defense to the criminal charges brought 
against him.
  I do not believe this legislation provides reimbursement for those 
expenses. Because H.R. 2937 is limited to costs associated with the 
employees' termination. Mr. Dale was indicted and acquitted for 
activities that took place prior to this administration, and therefore 
could not be related to the termination as required by the legislation.
  In fact, an examination of the facts which are conveniently ignored 
by the majority suggest, first improprieties in Billy Dale's running of 
the Travel Office had been rumored for years, and the Clinton White 
House had plenty of reasons to be suspicious of him; second, the Peat 
Marwick review provided ample evidence of financial mismanagement on 
Dale's part; and third, there were significant grounds to suspect that 
he may have been embezzling funds from the Travel Office.


            reasons to be suspicious about the Travel Office

  Rumors about improprieties by the Travel Office staff have been 
circulating since at least 1988, when allegations were made that 
included Travel Office staff accepting gifts from one airline doing 
business with the office, which in turn received the Travel Office 
business on a noncompetitive business. When the Reagan White House 
questioned Dale about these charges, he admitted that the Travel Office 
staff regularly accepted gifts of tickets to sporting events and 
invitations to elaborate fishing parties from contractors. Accepting 
gifts from contractors doing business with the office was against 
Federal regulations and may have been a Federal criminal violation.
  The Reagan White House, faced with this admission to impropriety, did 
not refer the evidence to the Justice Department for further 
investigation as required when any evidence of a crime is uncovered. It 
never took any disciplinary action against the employees for improperly 
accepting gifts. And it never instructed that a competitive bidding 
process be implemented. Instead, it swept the allegations under the 
rug.
  When asked about the lack of competitive bidding, Dale stated that no 
one else was interested in the business. Yet, during the course of the 
FBI investigation into the Travel Office, officials of a competing 
airline charter company told the FBI that it ``had concern as to why 
the Travel Office did not have competitive bidding and why a charter 
company would have an exclusive contract with the Travel Office.
  So when Darnell Martens, whose firm TRM had provided some services 
for the Clinton campaign, contacted Dale in early 1993 to discuss his 
firm's bidding on Travel Office business, it should have come as no 
surprise when Dale told him, according to Martens' notes of the 
conversation, that he had no chance of obtaining any business. Dale 
gave two reasons for his response to Martens. The first, that Martens 
would not be able to offer better price than Dale was already getting, 
cannot be taken seriously because Dale never even allowed Martens to 
make a bid. How could Dale possibly know Martens' price if he was not 
given a chance to bid?

  The second added even more to the suspicions about the Travel Office 
under Billy Dale. According to Martens' notes, Dale said, ``I have been 
here 31 years and no one has seen fit to replace me with commercial 
operations yet. So until they do, I will continue to handle this 
without your help.'' Does the majority, which professes to be the 
prophet of privatization, see the irony in defending a career 
bureaucrat fighting desperately for his job against a competitive bid 
from the private sector? Nevertheless, the 1988 allegations were known 
within the Clinton White House, and coupled with Martens' rebuke at the 
hands of Dale, there was plenty of reason to suspect that something was 
amiss in the Travel Office.


               peat marwick finds financial mismanagement

  The Majority, in the midst of its lengthy tale of intrigue of the 
Travel Office, conveniently fails to note the findings of the Peat 
Marwick review, while in the same breath discounting its conclusions. 
In fact, the Peat Marwick review uncovered significant evidence of 
mismanagement in the Travel Office, evidence that was communicated both 
to David Watkins before he made the decision to fire the employees, and 
to the FBI.
  The Peat Marwick findings, under the heading of ``Lack of 
Accountability,'' included a lack of financial control consciousness, 
no formal financial reporting process, no reconciliations of financial 
information other than reconciliations of bank statements, and no 
documented system of checks and balances on transactions and accounting 
decisions within the office.
  When asked to explain these findings at the Government Reform 
Committee hearing, Mr. Dale denied that the findings amounted to 
financial weaknesses. However, that same day, Larry Herman, the Peat 
Marwick senior partner who led the Travel Office review, told the 
Associated Press that he did in fact find clear evidence of financial 
mismanagement which may have warranted the firing of Mr. Dale. ``My 
personal assessment is that most companies today would question his 
management and would include questioning whether to remove that person 
from that position.''
  Mr. Herman was even more direct in an interview he gave to the 
General Accounting Office in September 1993. According to the GAO:

       In Mr. Herman's professional judgment, the Travel Office's 
     accounting records were, the messiest, most illegible 
     bookkeeping, he had ever seen. He stated he was, barely able 
     to read the writing, very sloppy and inconsistent, with no 
     explanation of differences. He was also frustrated that he 
     couldn't obtain appropriate responses from Mr. Dale. Mr. Dale 
     seemed to not understand the significance of items such as 
     lack of reconciliations, missing pages, and lack of followup 
     on open billings. Mr. Herman had orally briefed Mr. Dale on 
     Peat's findings and repeatedly asked for his assistance in 
     locating records. Mr. Herman believed that Mr. Dale had no 
     concern for record keeping of other people's money.

  Further, Mr. Herman told GAO that ``most of his clients would react 
the same way as the White House did. Mr. Herman's personal opinion is 
that it was a wise course of action to start over with [a] clean slate 
. . .''


                    the fbi's criminal investigation

  Information obtained during the course of the Peat Marwick review 
also provided sufficient evidence for the FBI of its own volition to 
initiate a criminal investigation of Mr. Dale. According to a 
memorandum from David Watkins to Mack McLarty attached to the White 
House management review, when FBI officials were briefed on the Peat 
Marwick findings, they believed there was sufficient cause for them to 
conduct a criminal investigation.
  Some of that evidence is contained in the Peat Marwick report's 
findings that of eight

[[Page H2339]]

checks written against the Travel Office's Riggs Bank account totaling 
$23,000 made out to cash and signed by Mr. Dale, only $2,000 was 
reflected in the petty cash fund. Of the $2,000 entry to the petty cash 
fund, the corresponding check from the Riggs account was for $5,000. 
The Peat Marwick team's suspicions are further described in later 
interviews they gave to the GAO and the FBI.
  For example, Mr. Herman's interview with the GAO provides more detail 
about the missing cash:

       On Saturday, during the Peat Marwick review, Billy Dale was 
     asked at least twice more about the missing $3,000. Mr. 
     Herman stated that Billy Dale suddenly seemed to recall 
     something, then turned and opened his desk drawer or credenza 
     and found the envelope with $2,800. This raised another red 
     flag to Mr. Herman. We, the GAO, questioned whether Mr. Dale 
     had the opportunity to place the funds in the drawer between 
     Friday and Saturday. Mr. Herman stated that he did.

  The FBI later learned that late on the previous Friday, after being 
confronted with the discrepancies in the petty cash log, Mr. Dale had 
withdrawn $2,500 in cash from his White House Credit Union account, and 
another $400 from an automated teller machine.
  Mr. Herman provided a progress report of the Peat Marwick review to 
two FBI officials that Saturday evening. According to the GAO interview 
with Herman, The FBI agents were specifically concerned with first, the 
eight incomplete transactions; second, the weak controls; and third, 
the $2,800 in Billy Dale's credenza.


              mr. dale never disclosed his secret deposits

  The FBI found this evidence to be sufficient to initiate a criminal 
investigation against Mr. Dale. However, it should be noted that during 
the Peat Marwick review, despite being interviewed for more than 2 
hours about his financial management of the Travel Office, Mr. Dale 
never informed the Peat Marwick reviewers that he had been depositing 
Travel Office funds into his personal checking account. The discovery 
that Mr. Dale deposited $50,000 of Travel Office funds into his 
personal bank account became the basis for the criminal charges against 
him.
  When asked at the Government Reform Committee hearing why he never 
told his colleagues or even his wife about this unusual and ultimately 
disastrous, if not criminal, practice, he stated that no one ever asked 
him. Of course, it would never cross most people's mind to ask the 
director of a Federal office if he was depositing office funds into his 
personal bank account. Yet, the Peat Marwick auditors, during their 
review, spent a considerable amount of time with Mr. Dale to understand 
his accounting practices. According to Mr. Herman's interview with GAO, 
Mr. Herman interviewed Mr. Dale to learn how the office worked and the 
flow of financial activities occurring in the office, such as, files, 
ledgers, details of advancing, and reimbursement by the press.
  This was the perfect opportunity for Mr. Dale to explain to an 
obviously suspicious team of reviewers a management practice that was 
the very least unusual. In any case, it was key to understanding the 
financial management of the Travel Office, and Mr. Dale purposely 
withheld that information from the Peat Marwick reviewers, Regardless 
of his ultimate intent, it is not in dispute that Mr. Dale never told 
anyone about this practice until the FBI discovered it on its own after 
subpoenaing his personal bank account records.
  Thus, based on the information provided by Peat Marwick and obtained 
during the course of its own investigation, the FBI had many reasons to 
suspect that Mr. Dale may have been embezzling funds. During the course 
of its investigation, the FBI found that he had secretly been 
depositing Travel Office funds into his personal bank account. That 
evidence was reviewed by career attorneys in the Public Integrity 
Section of the Department of Justice, and presented to a Federal Grand 
Jury who voted to indict Mr. Dale. As I stated earlier, there is no 
evidence of either prosecutorial misconduct or political interference 
with the criminal case.
  For these reasons, I do not believe that Mr. Dale under this 
legislation is entitled to be reimbursed for legal expenses stemming 
from the criminal charges filed against him.


                             general leave

  Mr. SMITH of Texas. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all 
Members may have 5 legislative days within which to revise and extend 
their remarks on H.R. 2937, the bill just considered.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Hutchinson). Is there objection to the 
request of the gentleman from Texas?
  There was no objection.
  Mr. SMITH of Texas. Mr. Speaker, I have no further requests for time, 
and I yield back the balance of my time.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The question is on the motion offered by the 
gentleman from Texas [Mr. Smith] that the House suspend the rules and 
pass the bill, H.R. 2937, as amended.
  The question was taken.
  Mr. SCHIFF. Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.
  The yeas and nays were ordered.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Pursuant to clause 5 of rule I and the 
Chair's prior announcement, further proceedings on this motion will be 
postponed.

                          ____________________