[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 57 (Tuesday, April 30, 1996)]
[House]
[Pages H4166-H4168]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Massachusetts [Mr. Markey] is recognized for 5 minutes.

  [Mr. MARKEY addressed the House. His remarks will appear in the 
Extensions of Remarks.]

[[Page H4167]]



              FIRST LADY'S FINGERPRINTS ON BILLING RECORDS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Indiana [Mr. Burton] is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. BURTON of Indiana. Mr. Speaker, Newsweek magazine reported this 
week that the FBI had discovered Mrs. Hillary Rodham Clinton's 
fingerprints on billing records from the Rose law firm discovered at 
the White House in January. These billing records have been under 
subpoena and could not be found for over 2 years. Nobody knew where 
they were. And yet, just recently, they were found in President Clinton 
and Mrs. Clinton's personal residence at the White House by Mrs. 
Clinton's secretary.
  Independent counsel Kenneth Starr is investigating to determine if 
anyone obstructed justice by hiding the subpoenaed records. The billing 
records supply important information about Mrs. Clinton's work for 
Madison Guaranty Savings & Loan and the Castle Grande real estate 
projects. Arkansas Governor Jim Guy Tucker, who at the time this was 
taking place was the Lieutenant Governor under President Clinton, is on 
trial right now in Arkansas for fraud because he defaulted on loans 
over $1 million related to Castle Grande.

  Now, Mrs. Clinton was the billing partner at the Rose Law Firm for 
the Madison Guaranty Savings & Loan account. However, she stated in a 
sworn statement to the Resolution Trust Corporation that she did very 
little work for Madison Guaranty and could not recall the Castle Grande 
project.
  Yet, these mysterious billing records, that could not be found for 
over 2 years that were just found, tell a different story. They show 
that she had 14 meetings and conversations with Madison executives 
about Castle Grande and she drafted a comprehensive option agreement 
for this project.
  Regarding the fingerprints, White House lawyers told reporters that 
Mrs. Clinton reviewed the billing records during the campaign in 1992. 
Now, this sounds strange, because if she reviewed them in 1992, she 
should have remembered that she had done extensive work on this project 
and on this comprehensive option agreement for the project.
  Anyhow, they said that the fingerprints on the telephone records can 
remain intact on paper and other materials for years, so her 
fingerprints on the billing records do not necessarily mean that she 
saw the records recently.
  Now, this is very interesting, Mr. Speaker, because when Vincent 
Foster died, you remember Vincent Foster, the assistant counsel to the 
President at the White House, when Vincent Foster died, a suicide note 
was found in his briefcase. At least that is what they called it. 
Despite the fact that it had been torn into 28 pieces, you have to tear 
it to get 28 pieces 14 of 15 times, there was not one single 
fingerprint on any one of those pieces. Investigators and various 
Clinton administration officials said at the time that it was not 
unusual, because fingerprints do not attach themselves easily to paper.
  Now, here we have the President's wife, the First Lady, Hillary 
Rodham Clinton, her fingerprints are all over these telephone records 
that nobody could find for 2 years and were found in their residence, 
while they were under subpoena, incidentally, and they are saying that 
it is not unusual for the fingerprints to be attached to paper, and 
that she probably attached them to those documents in 1992 during the 
Presidential campaign.
  Now, you cannot have it both ways. Either it can be attached to 
paper, you can get fingerprints on paper, or you cannot. Her 
fingerprints were on the documents, but the fingerprints were not on 
Vince Foster's alleged suicide note.
  Adding to the mystery, the first two times that the White House 
counsel at the time, Bernie Nussbaum, search Vincent Foster's 
briefcase, he did not find any torn up note. The note was found 6 days 
later when another White House aide searched the briefcase for a third 
time.
  Now, Mr. Speaker, it has to be one way or the other. If fingerprints 
attach themselves easily to paper and stay there for years, there is no 
explanation for why Vincent Foster's note had no fingerprints on them, 
especially since it had been torn into 28 pieces. And if fingerprints 
do not attach themselves easily to paper and if they wear off quickly, 
then Mrs. Clinton must have handled the billing records more recently 
than her aides are saying, which was 4 years ago, in 1992.
  Mr. Speaker, this is something else that I hope we get to the bottom 
of. Those records were subpoenaed over 2 years ago. They should have 
been given to the independent counsel. They are not. They were found in 
the White House Presidential residence. They had the First Lady's 
fingerprints all over them.
  There is something very mysterious about this. It should be explained 
fully to the American people. They were subpoenaed. They may have been 
an obstruction of justice, keeping those records from the independent 
counsel. If that is the case, somebody should be held accountable for 
it.

               [From the Washington Post, Apr. 29, 1996]

             First Lady's Prints on Document, Magazine Says

                           (By Susan Schmidt)

       Hillary Rodham Clinton's fingerprints have been identified 
     on the legal billing records that were discovered in the 
     White House In January, according to a published report.
       The records, sought for more than two years by Whitewater 
     special investigators and the subject of several subpoenas, 
     consist of a 116-page computer printout detailing work 
     Clinton and other lawyers at the Rose Law Firm did during the 
     1980s for the now-failed Madison Guaranty Savings & Loan.
       The independent counsel's office asked for the fingerprint 
     analysis in an attempt to determine where the records were, 
     why it took so long to find them and whether there are 
     grounds to bring obstruction of justice charges against 
     anyone for failure to produce them.
       Newsweek reported in the issue on newsstands today that 
     Clinton's fingerprints are among those the FBI has found on 
     the document. Deputy White House counsel Mark Fabiani said 
     the administration has no independent knowledge of the 
     fingerprint analysis. ``In January we said it was possible 
     Mrs. Clinton handled these records during the 1992 campaign, 
     so this report should not be surprising,'' he said. Clinton 
     said she did not recall whether she looked at the document 
     during the campaign.
       Fingerprints can remain intact on some materials, including 
     paper, for years.
       The billing records show that most of Clinton's work for 
     Madison was on the Castle Grande project. That real estate 
     project led to indictments, including some of the charges in 
     the ongoing criminal trial in Arkansas of Madison operators 
     James B. and Susan McDougal. The Clintons and McDougals were 
     joint owners of Whitewater, another land venture in the 
     Ozarks. In the billing records, Castle Grande is referred to 
     under the name ``IDC,'' the entity that sold the land to 
     Madison.
       During interviews with federal investigators in 1994 and 
     1995, Clinton was unable to recall most of the work that she 
     did for Madison.
       In particular, she said she was unable to recall doing any 
     work on Madison's Castle Grande real estate venture. The Rose 
     billing records were discovered this year by Carolyn Huber, a 
     White House aide who handles personal correspondence for the 
     Clintons, as she unpacked items that had been in the ``book 
     room'' in the White House residence. How the document got to 
     the book room remains a mystery.
       David E. Kendall, the Clintons' attorney, and White House 
     special counsel Jane Sherburne, called before the Senate 
     Whitewater committee in January, testified that they realized 
     the document--and the circumstances of its discovery after 
     two years--would be of great interest to independent counsel 
     Kenneth W. Starr and the committee.
       Sherburne said she raised the issue of whether Starr would 
     want to check the document for fingerprints and questioned 
     whether they should turn it over to Starr before copying it.
       After a discussion, she, Kendall and a lawyer for Huber 
     decided to examine and copy the document and to notify Starr 
     and the Senate committee the following day.
       Republicans contended that Sherburne and Kendall had 
     knowingly made it more difficult to obtain fingerprints from 
     the records.
       Yesterday, a White House official who refused to be named 
     accused Starr's office of leaking the results of the 
     fingerprint analysis, although the official said he didn't 
     actually know the source of the information.
       ``It is not surprising that this outrageous leak should 
     come at a time when independent counsel Starr is being 
     criticized for allowing the erosion of public confidence in 
     the fairness of his work because of his continuing partisan 
     affiliations,'' said the official. Clinton aides have 
     recently insisted that Starr's Republican credentials and 
     outside legal work for clients with interests adverse to the 
     government render him unfit to conduct an impartial probe.
                                                                    ____


                      [From Newsweek, May 6, 1996]

                         Telltale Fingerprints?

       As President Clinton prepared for his videotaped testimony 
     in the trial of his

[[Page H4168]]

     Whitewater partners James and Susan McDougal, independent 
     counsel Kenneth Starr has received new evidence in his probe 
     of the discovery of Rose Law Firm billing records in the 
     White House last summer. Sources close to the inquiry told 
     Newsweek's Michael Isikoff that FBI experts have identified 
     Mrs. Clinton's fingerprints on the documents. The records, 
     detailing her work for McDougal's Madison thrift, were 
     subpoenaed in 1994 but not turned over until this January.
       The documents include computer printouts and photocopied 
     pages made during the '92 campaign. They were removed from 
     the Rose firm in '92 by the late Vince Foster. Mrs. Clinton 
     has said she had ``no idea'' the papers were in the White 
     House. Her lawyer David Kendall later said ``it is possible'' 
     Mrs. Clinton was shown the records in '92, but ``she does not 
     recall.'' Kendall now says the fingerprint discovery is ``not 
     surprising.'' At the least, the findings show Mrs. Clinton 
     reviewed the records in '92, undercutting her claim she 
     couldn't recall many of the mid-'80s meetings they cover. 
     And, says one source, they could be ``critical'' in building 
     a potential obstruction-of-justice case against her. Starr's 
     office declined to comment on the FBI finding, but Newsweek 
     has learned the prosecutor is intensifying his inquiry. In 
     recent weeks, Mrs. Clinton's chief of staff, Maggie Williams, 
     and close friend Susan Thomases have been recalled by a grand 
     jury for further questioning about the records.

                          ____________________