[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.
____________________