[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 92 (Thursday, June 20, 1996)]
[House]
[Page H6633]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                                FILEGATE

  (Mr. BURTON of Indiana asked and was given permission to address the 
House for 1 minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. BURTON of Indiana. Mr. Speaker, every American values his or her 
privacy. The people who work for this Government are no exception--408 
individual Americans who worked for previous administrations, 
Republicans, had their files taken from the FBI, and we believe that 
many of them were going to be used for dirty political tricks in the 
future. Some people say, ``Well, it was a political mistake. The White 
House made a mistake.''
  It was not one mistake. It was 408 individual requests. Four hundred 
eight. Bernie Nussbaum, the counsel to the President's name, was on 
each one of those requests. He said he did not know anything about it. 
If he did not know anything about it, who requested those files? This 
is not the book 1984 where Big Brother looked into every one of our 
lives. This is supposed to be a free democratic society. Yet 408 people 
had their files, which are supposed to be secret, exposed to others at 
the White House and many of those things were leaked to other people 
they should not have been leaked to. This is something that needs to be 
fully investigated and the FBI should not be the only one to do it.

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