Congressional Record, Volume 142 Issue 124 (Wednesday, September 11, 1996)

[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 124 (Wednesday, September 11, 1996)]
[House]
[Pages H10207-H10215]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

WHITE HOUSE TASK LIST

The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Roth). Under the Speaker's announced
policy of May 12, 1995, the gentleman from California [Mr. Cox] is
recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
Mr. COX of California. Mr. Speaker, I rise this afternoon to talk
about a document that was recently provided, very belatedly, by the
White House to the Congress, a document now referred to as the task
list. It is dated December 13, 1994, but it was just provided to the
Congress in recent days. The task list shows 39 scandals that the White
House staff in the West Wing, taxpayer supported staff, decided that
they needed to work on because there was now going to be a Republican
Congress. This memo was prepared just after the November 1994
elections.
I would like to read just briefly the scandals that the White House
decided that it needed to task its own staff to work on. Some of these
scandals are, of course, well known to the American people, but other
scandals have only recently become known, even though this memo was
written on December 13, 1994.
No. 1, Foster document handling. We will return shortly to the
specifics contained in this memo on each of these. There are several
admissions of illegality in this very memo.
Travel Office. We know all about Travelgate, of course. That has
become a major scandal just as they predicted in here.
White House-Treasury contacts. Of course, we know about the illegal
contacts between senior political appointees at the Department of the
Treasury and the White House, tipping off the President, giving a heads
up to the President and Mrs. Clinton about the criminal referral of the
Whitewater matter.
Obstruction of justice, I am reading this from the White House
internal memo, obstruction of justice re DOJ handling of criminal
referrals. Use of White House resources for response efforts. Of
course, that is what this memo is all about, but that is one of the
scandals that is listed here. This entire memo is devoted to how to
spin the press about the various scandals.
Foster suicide. Espy. Of course we know that Mr. Smaltz was assigned
as an independent counsel to investigate the Mike Espy ethics question.
We know about the criminal problems with Tysons there. Henry Cisneros,
Ron Brown, Hubbell. Of course, we all know about the next top ranking
man at the White House right underneath the Attorney General, Webster
Hubbell, who is now in jail.
Ickes, union representation. And of course with Coia and all that ABC
News has done on this scandal just in recent days, we now know why in
1994 they were worried about that.
Stephanopoulos, Nation's Bank. Again, this is a White House memo that
they prepared secretly inside the White House using taxpayer resources
and in the White House counsel's office, which they should not have
been doing. That is not appropriate use of taxpayer funds. They have
listed all of these scandals that they wanted to innoculate against and
spin the press about.
The Stephanopoulos-Nation's Bank story was of course what the press
widely described as a sweetheart, below market mortgage for George
Stephanopoulos, the kind of deal that ordinary Americans could not get.

{time} 1715

State Department passport files; another Clinton administration
scandal that we are so familiar with.
Archives abuse of personal system. This is one scandal that they have
not fully disclosed to us and that we will find out more about.
The Legal Defense Fund, and of course we know all about the ethical
problems that the President encountered there, soliciting funds for the
Legal Defense Fund when such solicitation is, in fact, in violation of
the law.
The Health Care Task Force, and of course we know that that resulted
in litigation against Hillary Rodham Clinton's task force. We know that
a Federal judge ruled against the task force, and found that it was put
together in violation of the Federal Advisory Committee Act and that
documents were withheld from the public and from Congress when they
should not have been.
Now there are 39 of these scandals that White House staff--there is a
name of a White House staffer right after each one of these, after each
one of these scandals, and they were all assigned and presumably are
all still working at taxpayer expense on preventing the Congress from
getting to know all of the facts in these things.
White House operations, drugs, passes, helicopters, and does that not
ring a bell for so many of us? Each of those scandals, drugs in the
White House, the passes being given to people without personnel
clearances, the misuse of helicopters which resulted in the termination
of White House staff; this is next on the White House, the Clinton,
list of scandals that they were working on secretly in the White House.
Residence renovations. This is one that they believed was a potential
scandal, but the American people do not yet know about it. We have just
received this document.
Presidential immunity. Well, of course, we know that that is all
having to do with the Paula Jones litigation, Paula Jones having sued
the Governor of Arkansas for acts in his capacity, not as Governor but
as a private individual apparently abusing the office, at least
according to the allegations in the complaint, and the President has
used not outside lawyers but taxpayer supported lawyers to make sure
that his private civil litigation could be put off until afterward.
This is, by the way, something that the courts have now reversed on and
they have decided that President Clinton cannot put this off, but he
has successfully put it off beyond the election.
White House Arkansans, Thomasson, Nash, Rasco; need we say more?
PIC surplus.
Improper electioneering at the SBA.
Now these are all admissions by the Clinton White House to themselves
within the White House internally of what they were doing wrong.
GSA.
Value Partners. Now Value Partners was, of course, the partnership
that Hillary Rodham Clinton invested in. Rather than putting their
funds in a blind trust, they did not do so like President Bush did,
like President Reagan did, like President Carter did; rather, ran their
own investments, and Hillary Rodham Clinton was a partner in Value
Partners, a hedge fund which sold short pharmaceutical stocks at a time
that the pharmaceutical stock market was falling through the floor
because of the Hillary Rodham Clinton

[[Page H10208]]

Task Force, and that was, of course, scandal number 7 or so up here on
the list.
Presidential campaign, FEC audit.
Commodities.
Now of course we know what the commodities is all about. That is the
miraculous fortune that Hillary Rodham Clinton made on the investment
of a mere thousand dollars in the cattle futures market.
Gubernatorial campaigns; Lindsey, Wright, recordkeeping. There is
more in this memo about that later on, but of course we know that in
connection with the Whitewater criminal prosecution that Mr. Lindsey
was named as an unindicted coconspirator.
Gubernatorial campaigns dash MGSL, and that means Morgan Guaranty
Savings and Loan. The S&L at the heart of the Whitewater scandal was
apparently involved in gubernatorial campaigns, gubernatorial campaigns
back in Arkansas that the White House counsel were working on in this
administration in the White House, 1994, December, with taxpayer funds.
And then the next scandal is Whitewater slash Morgan Guaranty Savings
and Loan.
Other: MGSL slash McDougal, right below that.
Rose law firm, the next scandal. HRC, and that is Hillary Rodham
Clinton, worked for Morgan Guarantee S&L.
David Hale slash Susan McDougal slash SBA, and there are different
White House staffers assigned to it.
Tucker, and of course Tucker is now in jail, the Governor, or headed
for jail.
Next: Lasater, bond deals, cocaine, Roger Clinton.
Now this is not a Member of Congress reading things to impugn the
White House. This is a White House memo that says ``privileged'' on it
because it is being handled by lawyers in the White House counsel's
office at taxpayer expense for Bill Clinton, that was requested by the
Congress and was not turned over to us until just now.
Lasater, bond deals, cocaine, Roger Clinton was the next scandal that
they have tasked White House staff to work on.
Use of loans to achieve legislative initiatives. This is a new one
that we were not aware of, but apparently they were working to cover
that up.
Mena Airport. Well, we all know about the drugs and deaths
surrounding Mena airport while Bill Clinton was Governor.
Troopers, another scandal, the so-called Troopergate scandal, and
then there is a whole category here of scandal, women. That was during
the Clinton campaign when President Clinton was running in 1992, his
own campaign, not Republicans but his own campaign, referred to as
bimbo eruptions.
Now this memo goes on in the case of each scandal to describe tasks
to be performed and strategy for dealing with that particular scandal.
Let me give you one example.
Mr. WALKER. If the gentleman would yield before the gentleman moves
on, could I just clarify in my own mind what the gentleman is telling
us about the memo itself? Do I understand the gentleman to say that
this is not a memo prepared by any congressional committee or any
organization here on Capitol Hill, or for that matter, any outside
organization? Do I understand the gentleman correctly? This is a memo
that was prepared inside the White House?
Mr. COX of California. That is correct. This document called the
White House task list is dated December 13, 1994. It was compiled by an
associate counsel to the President, Jane Sherburne. Her initials are on
it, and it lists all of the scandals that she anticipated would plague
the Clinton administration and that Congress was now likely to look
into because in 1994 we had just been elected, a Republican Congress,
not yet sworn into office, and this memo explains how they were going
to make sure that Congress did not----

Mr. WALKER. That is what I wanted to clarify.
Now the date the gentleman has given us is December 13, 1994, which
is a matter of a few weeks after Republicans have taken over the
Congress. Now they had had no problem up until then because literally
all of the calls for investigation of White House potential problems
had been buried on Capitol Hill.
But now, if I understand the gentleman correctly, this memo is
prepared because they now anticipated that they would have some
problems with the new Congress that would obviously not be friendly on
some of these issues and would actually likely investigate some of the
scandals.
Is that the gentleman's impression?
Mr. COX of California. That is exactly right, and it is rather clear
that Jane Sherburne, the associate White House counsel who personally
drew up this list of all of these scandals, was prescient. While they
were claiming no wrongdoing, behind the scenes they were putting
together memorandums like this, and the result in the ensuring years
has been that 5 of Bill Clinton's closest associates, including his
Attorney General and including the Governor of Arkansas, have since
been convicted of crimes.
Mr. WALKER. So what they were doing here was they decided that, ``OK,
we've got a problem. We've got a Congress that is likely to begin
looking into things that have gone wrong in this administration.''
And so is the gentleman telling us that what they did was they
prepared a list of everything that they thought Congress might look
into where they had themselves a big problem?
Mr. COX of California. That is exactly right, and furthermore, what I
have just covered is the list of the names of these scandals, but the
memo, which is quite lengthy, goes on then to describe the strategy for
dealing with each of these scandals so that anyone trying to
investigate would not be able to get to the bottom of it, and I will
give you one example.
One page 4 of this memo there is a heading, ``Security,'' by which
they mean White House security slash Livingstone issues.
Now keep in mind that this was dated December 13, 1994. You may
recall approximately when Craig Livingstone came upon the national
scene, became a household name because of that Clinton scandal. It was
not in 1994, but in 1996, 2 years later. But listen to what this memo
says back in 1994.
``Review Livingstone file.''
Now, presumably they did.
``Interview Livingstone.''
They wanted, apparently, to deal with Livingstone problems back in
1994, all of which were covered up so that the Congress and the
American people did not find out about them and did not find out at all
about Filegate, literally hundreds of files on Republicans who had
worked in the White House in previous administrations, FBI files which
had been collected by this White House under Craig Livingston.
Mr. WALKER. Okay, but if I can just follow up on the gentleman for
another moment.
So what we have here is a memo that was prepared internally within
the White House suggesting that they knew that they had a series of
scandals that Congress was likely to investigate and that they had
reason to be worring about.
Is that what we believe we have in front of us?
Mr. COX of California. That is precisely this memo. I will give you
another example if you wish.
Mr. WALKER. Now, if this was an internal document within the White
House, how do we now have it?
Mr. COX of California. Well, of course we had to subpoena it, we had
to threaten to subpoena it, because we asked for all of the Travelgate
memos to be turned over. Travelgate, which was another Clinton White
House scandal, involved the firing and smearing, through the use of the
EBI, of what we now know were honest and innocent White House civilian
career employees.
Mr. WALKER. So the only way that this memo came to light was the fact
that Congress was subpoenaing documents. Now, was this particular memo
withheld from Congress for a while?
Mr. COX of California. For a very long while, The request for 3,000
pages was originally described not all that long ago by the White House
as a request for toilet paper, that this was a trivial request, that
they should not be asked for such documents. When finally we got the
first 1,000 pages of the 3,000 that we requested, we got the famous
list of all of the FBI files, the background files, the very, very
confidential law enforcement background files, on people who had worked
in the White House. These had been collected

[[Page H10209]]

illegally by the White House for patently political purposes.
Mr. WALKER. And so for a while the White House was claiming that this
information was in fact information that no one had the right to know,
not even the Congress, when originally the memo was prepared because
they believed that Congress would want to know about these matters.

{time} 1730

Mr. COX of California. Precisely. In fact, while we learn about this
same process in what turns out to be pulling teeth from the White
House, trying to get them to cooperate, because they are claiming
executive privilege about all of these things so they do not have to do
anything cooperative with the Congress, they first gave us 1,000 of the
3,000 pages. And in that first batch of documents which we got under a
threat of subpoena, we found out about Filegate and all of the FBI
files that had been collected on senior officials, including James
Baker and others well known.
But we did not get this memo. It was only 2 weeks ago, on August 15,
that we got this memo. This is brand new, and almost no one, even many
of our colleagues here in Congress, has yet had the opportunity to read
this, but it is clearly shocking.
Mr. WALKER. So while White House spokesmen like the press secretary,
Mr. McCurry, and even officials within the White House, have gone to
the American public and suggested to them that there is absolutely no
substance to any of the scandals that have been discussed on Capitol
Hill and that Congress should be embarrassed to look into these
matters, they internally had prepared a document which suggested that
all of those scandals were real, and in fact, that they were very
worried about them?
Mr. COX of California. Correct. Not only were they very worried about
them, but what is outlined in this memo is a specific step-by-step plan
to keep the Congress and the American people from finding out the
truth.
Mr. WALKER. So this is not just a listing of the scandals they are
worried about, this is a listing on how they are going to cover it up?
Mr. COX of California. Let me read it. Here the issue is ``chain of
custody re transfer of Clinton personal files.'' Of course, we are
talking about the Whitewater files here, because these have not been
turned over. They have not been made public. The President has not come
clean and cooperated on this.
Here is an item on the to do list: ``Determine strategy re release of
Whitewater file.'' They wanted to determine their strategy for
releasing this. This was not a decision to share with the public, they
want to find out how they can selectively make this available. I do not
know what else a strategy re release of files is. If you were going to
share the information and cooperate and show there was nothing to be
concerned about, you would simply make the information public. But here
they say they want to determine a strategy re release of Whitewater
file.

``Under search of Foster office'', another heading, they have this
item to do: legal research on the basis for resisting identification
and production of all documents in Vince Foster's office and Bernie's
safe. So they wanted to go and do legal research so they could come up
with a legal pretext for resisting identifying and producing all
documents in Vince Foster's office and Bernie's safe. That is the kind
of memo.
Mr. WALKER. So what we have here is a memo designed to look into all
of the ways in which they could resist any kind of investigation on
Capitol Hill; and is it possible that some of this was also designed to
resist any investigation by a special counsel?
Mr. COX of California. I do not think there is much question about
that. Under the heading ``Obstruction of justice,'' and I have to
repeat, because otherwise this sounds----
Mr. WALKER. They believed they had a problem with obstruction of
justice?
Mr. COX of California. It is the very heading in their own memo,
``Obstruction of justice.'' This is prepared by the White House
counsel's office, analyzing the legal problems of the Clinton
administration.
Mr. WALKER. So in 1994 the legal counsel's office believes that the
White House could have a problem with obstruction of justice?
Mr. COX of California. It does not say ``could,'' it says
``Obstruction of justice,'' and underneath that it says ``Delay in
addressing criminal referrals, Department of Justice role.'' Under that
it says, ``Determine usual process.'' Think of what it is that we are
talking about here. The delay in addressing the criminal referrals,
that was, of course, the delay in referring for criminal prosecution
the whole Madison Guaranty Savings and Loan default and collapse at
taxpayer expense.
The job for the White House counsel, and remember, this is now
Whitewater, this is the real Whitewater business, with Madison
Guarantee and the Whitewater loan transactions and so on. We have the
White House counsel, the lawyers for the President of the United Stats
in his official capacity, working at taxpayer expense to do this task:
Determine usual process, so we can find out how they should have done
it, because obviously they know they did not do it the usual way, so
they had to look up, after the fact, what would have been the usual way
to handle the Whitewater transaction.
Mr. WALKER. Is the White House counsel's office even supposed to be
engaged in this kind of thing?
Mr. COX of California. This is one of the reasons why I am here on
the floor this evening, because as senior associate counsel to the
President myself in the White House counsel's office, I could not be
more familiar with the distinguished history of the White House
counsel's office and its authentic purpose.
The reason that the White House counsel has a five-decade history of
serving Presidents from both parties is that its mission is to protect
the President and the Presidency from illegal acts or from any kind of
trouble arising during his course or her course, should we have a woman
President one of these days, of administration during the course of
office.
It is for the President's official activities, not for his tax
returns, his personal tax returns, and certainly not for his private
investments, and certainly not for the criminal investigation or
prosecution of his friends and cronies from Arkansas or even elsewhere
in the administration. But that is exactly what this White House
counsel's office has been doing.

I will tell you, when I worked in the White House counsel's office in
a previous administration, we did not look at the President's tax
returns. That was done at the President's personal expense by the
President's own private law firm. But in this White House counsel's
office, Vince Foster at the time of his death was actually working on
the Whitewater partnership tax return. That is what he was doing in the
West Wing of the White House at Government expense.
It is a perversion and abuse of that function, and it is obviously
all the more poignant when one reads this very long memo called the
task list of some 39 separate scandals identified by the Clinton
administration, all being handled in that White House counsel's office.
Mr. WALKER. If I understand what the gentleman has told us, you have
the White House counsel's office preparing a memo on how to evade
examination by the Congress of matters that they believed were of
serious concern, and also how to evade potential legal prosecution for
some of the things that may in fact be illegal?
Mr. COX of California. That is correct; and also how to conjure,
after the fact, legal justifications and pretext for sins of omission
and commission already occurred.
Mr. WALKER. Is there any precedent for the White House legal
counsel's office, for the White House counsel's office, to be the
perpetrator of a memo designed to bring about a cover-up?
Mr. COX of California. To the contrary. In past administrations, the
role of the White House counsel's office has been to facilitate the
flow of information, to make sure that when a question arises in
connection with a potential scandal or an accusation of law-breaking,
that all of the relevant information is shared not only with law
enforcement authorities or an independent counsel, but also with the
Congress.

[[Page H10210]]

I can tell the Members that in the Bush administration, in the Reagan
administration where I served, and I am sure that this is true also of
the Carter administration, the Ford administration, that if there was a
question of the President breaking the law, if there was a suspicion
that the White House staff might themselves to be complicit in law-
breaking, then no claim of executive privilege would be used to shield
that person from proper inquiry by the law enforcement authorities or
by Congress in fulfillment of its oversight responsibilities.
To the contrary, this administration has asserted executive
privilege, up until August 15; over this very document. Executive
privilege is not meant to be a shield for White House staff who are
accused of criminal misdeeds. Neither is it supposed to be a shield for
the President's own personal investment problems. Rather, it is meant
to protect the Nation and the national security.
Mr. WALKER. Am I not correct that a number of people who are tasked
on this memo, it is called a task list, as I understand it, a number of
the people who are listed as having the task of doing these jobs that
are designed, as the gentleman points out, for cover-up, are in fact
employees of the White House counsel's office?
Mr. COX of California. In fact, they are all of them employees of the
White House, all of them staff of the President.
Mr. WALKER. Let me check with the gentleman. For instance, I see down
here the name Kendall. Now, Kendall----
Mr. COX of California. David Kendall is an outside lawyer.
Mr. WALKER. But a number of the people who are given these tasks
involved with trying to withhold information from Congress and also to
cover up these scandals are in fact people who are employed at the
taxpayers' expense in the White House counsel's office, is that
correct?
Mr. COX of California. That is correct, in the White House counsel's
office and in the White House staff, a total of 15 staff members, we
have toted this up, earning an annual salary of $1.3 million. These
people who are supposed to be doing the people's business, executing on
legislation, policy, and the national responsibilities of the President
of the United States, are instead on scandal detail, and what a long
scandal list it is, 39 separate scandals identified in this memo, and
strategy outlined not just for dealing with the Congress, not just for
withholding documents, not just for coming up with legal pretexts for
doing so, but also for dealing with the press. Because in almost each
case, there is another item to do on the list: Prepare press strategy.
We have, for example, a heading ``White House/Treasury Contacts.''
You remember Mr. Altman had had to resign because of illegal contacts
between the highest levels of the Treasury Department and the White
House, tipping them off as to pending investigations, when that was a
complete violation of normal procedure. ``Prepare press strategy'' is
what they have on their list here.
So when you see a representative of the White House in the press room
or a representative of the Treasury in the press room coming clean with
the press, what they are really doing is executing on a strategy that
was concocted all the way back in December 1994 to prevent the American
people and the Congress from learning the truth.
Mr. WALKER. I think this is one of the more incredible documents that
we have had released. Of course, it was released under duress. The
committee literally was told for months that these kinds of documents
did not exist in the White House, and that the committee had no right
to be asking for them, and then only under extreme circumstances did
this particular memo come to light.
Now we find out within this memo that, in fact, there was a plan
being executed to try to see to it that such memos did get to Capitol
Hill, and that responsible investigators were not able to understand
anything about what was really happening inside the White House.
I find all of this extremely disturbing. It is one thing to claim
executive privilege as a way of protecting vial national secrets that
affect the operation of the Government. It is another thing to claim
executive privilege and try to use it to cover up the misdeeds of
people within the White House and within the administration, misdeeds
that are so obvious that the White House counsel's office was able to
prepare a list of all the ones that they thought that they were
potentially guilty of.
It is a horrible manifestation of the use of executive privilege and
is something which I would think in most cases should disturb anyone
who looks at the willingness of public officials to come clean about
potential problems within their jurisdiction.
Mr. COX of California. There is no question that this memo gives the
lie to two claims made by the White House. The first is that they would
be relying on outside counsel, which, of course, they should, because
these are all scandals, private criminal problems of the people
involved. Clearly they were still using the White House counsel's
office, even after they hired their outside counsel. They were using
some 15 members of the White House staff at an expense, an annual
salary, of $1.3 million.
Second, when they said they were coming clean, when they said they
were cooperating and trying to put all the information out for the
public to see, what they were really doing was just the opposite, using
legal devices to cover it up and stonewall. Unfortunately, now
executive privilege in this administration is coming to be a synonym
for coverup.
Consider just a few items on page 10 of the task force memo. We have
under the heading ``Whitewater investment'', ``Press strategy.'' It is
all sort of the Dick Morris spin of how are we going to pretend to be
talking truthfully to the American people on these issues when, in
fact, it is all a strategem?
Take a look here under the heading ``MGSL,'' Madison Guaranty Savings
& Loan, where they say ``Rose Law Firm work, HRC,'' Hillary Rodham
Clinton; A, conflicts; B, enabled Madison Guaranty to stay open longer
than it should have. What an admission in a document we did not get
until 2 weeks ago.
Mr. WALKER. I would agree with the gentleman, that is a fairly big
item. In other words, they knew that some of the work done by the Rose
Law Firm enabled the Madison Guaranty Savings & Loan to stay open
longer than it should have, and those were the kinds of institutions,
as I recall, that cost the taxpayers millions of dollars when these
savings and loans stayed open longer than they should have and
continued to eat up the resources.

{time} 1745

Mr. COX of California. This is, of course, what this memo says, but
we know what the public face has been, the public face of the White
House, that Mrs. Clinton did no such work and in fact had nothing to do
with Whitewater or Madison Guaranty Savings and Loan or the Rose Law
Firm involvement in this, and in fact the collapse of Madison Guaranty
had nothing to do with her.
But in this memo, which is not prepared for you or for me or for law
enforcement but for each of the people in the White House, the heading
is, ``Rose Law Firm work, HRC, conflicts enabled MGSL to stay open
longer than it should have.''
This is the scandal that they are dealing with internally and this is
their approach to each one of the 39 scandals listed in this memo:
Develop a press or spin strategy.
The White House counsel's office rather obviously is being misused on
the taxpayer's tab. The American people should not be asked to shell
out for what amounts to coverup and back-and-fill strategy in the White
House, the protection of Presidential cronies and the protection of
people who ultimately, since 1994, have found themselves in jail and
behind bars, being convicted of felonies.
Mr. WALKER. I found it kind of interesting, something on page 11,
where it talks about Negative Associations, it calls it. Among the
people listed are Jim Guy Tucker, David Hale, Jim McDougal, and Dan
Lasater. Three of those names, we have become quite familiar with, as
the trials have gone forward in the whole Whitewater mess, but
obviously the White House had some very big concerns about the fact

[[Page H10211]]

that the President has, or the White House has some of those negative
associations. But then behind Dan Lasater's name, there is a
parentheses saying ``bond deals, cocaine, and Roger Clinton.'' I mean,
we obviously have a range of people here that the White House counsel's
office was very worried about, thus these negative associations.
Mr. COX of California. This, remember, is a task list. So presumably
after receiving these instructions from Jane Sherburne on December 13,
1994, the people who were listed here followed through on those tasks.
That means that the White House internally, at taxpayer expense, went
out to put together information on Dan Lasater's bond deals,
information on Dan Lasater's involvement with cocaine, and that is
according to this memo, and Roger Clinton and his involvement with the
foregoing, with Dan Lasater, bond deals and cocaine, all or some of the
above. But those documents that were most assuredly prepared, if people
followed through on this task list, have not been provided to this
Congress nor apparently to law enforcement authorities. Each one of
these 39 scandals with its subsidiary task listed on this memo is
something that the White House, at public expense, using the White
House lawyers and the counsel's office, has decided to build a wall
around, to stonewall, so that the American people, law enforcement, and
the Congress cannot find out about it. That of course is exactly why
this memo was prepared just after the election of the Republican
Congress, and that is why the press has so reported.
Mr. ROHRABACHER. If the gentleman would yield for a question, I have
not read these documents. But of course both of us worked in the Reagan
White House, so we are somewhat familiar with the internal workings of
the White House and also the relationship between the White House and
the Congress.
Would the gentleman answer for me, does this memo in any way indicate
that the higher levels of management in the White House, the White
House staff, had prior knowledge of the FBI Filegate scandal?
Mr. COX of California. Mr. Speaker, as a matter of fact, there is a
heading in this memo concerning security/Livingstone issues. It appears
at page 4 of the memo. Two of the tasks under that heading are: Review
Livingstone file, and interview Livingstone. Obviously the White House
counsel's office had a problem with Livingstone and security in the
White House at that time.
Apparently his FBI and personnel files, and the result of any search
of his background and the result of any search of the issues that have
all exploded onto the national scene since then obviously must have
been that they knew in 1994 what was going on. Yet, as we know, those
FBI files on your colleagues and mine who worked in the Reagan and Bush
White Houses, all of those files were kept there and not returned to
the FBI. They had been improperly obtained by some political thugs to
begin with, and they were kept apparently with the knowledge of at
least the White House counsel's office.
Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Speaker, so this document seems to indicate that
the senior staff of the White House knew there was something wrong and
was looking into this situation that would have led them to investigate
what was happening with what a year later became, actually more than a
year later, became the FBI file scandal. Is that correct?
Mr. COX of California. Mr. Speaker, that is correct.
Mr. ROHRABACHER. Let us remember what happened when the information
about the Filegate scandal came out originally. Correct me if my memory
is faulty here. Did the President not act like he did not know anything
about this? In fact, did the President not say: Well, we are only
talking about 39 files, and it has something to do with a military
fellow that was over here on some sort of a transfer over here to the
White House? So, in other words, this was all an act on the part of the
senior staff of the White House, perhaps the President.
Mr. WALKER. If I recall correctly, they called it a kind of a
bureaucratic snafu.
Mr. COX of California. I believe my colleague would be correct if he
had said that that was a precise quotation from the President. He
described this as a bureaucratic snafu. This was a couple of years
after the White House counsel's office began investigating the whole
thing according to this very memo and identified it as a scandal in the
making. Only, they identified it just to themselves, not to anyone
else. Yet when it first burst upon the national scene, it was for the
President to say, this is merely a bureaucratic snafu. Now we know that
the administration was at least criminally incompetent if not
malevolent in abusing the privacy of scores of honest public servants.

Mr. ROHRABACHER. The first figure we were given by the White House
was, I think, 39 or something like that, FBI files were involved, they
in fact knew that the number that they were giving out at that time was
incorrect. This indicates that they had done a study, at least they had
red-flagged this a long time before, and that was probably an
intentional, I would say, error, or intentional misinformation, when
eventually the figure came out of 900 FBI files. So this is indicating
that they were looking into that matter. When the number 39 went up to
900 FBI files, this is all part and parcel of something the White House
had thought out a long time before.
Mr. COX of California. What we know specifically from this memo is
that the White House had reason to be concerned about Craig Livingstone
himself in December 1994 because not only were they worried about
security issues for which he was responsible but the task, the specific
task on this list is to interview Livingstone and look at Livingstone's
file. You would not look at Livingston's file unless you thought he was
a problem.
Any kind of competent search about Livingstone, since we have all
read about him in the newspaper and his unsavory background, would
obviously have yielded the result that such a person ought not to have
been placed and maintained in a position requiring professionalism and
trust. We know nonetheless the result. This political hack was
maintained in this position, this very sensitive position in the White
House with access to FBI files on so many Americans for 2 years.
Mr. WALKER. In fact was given raises as I recall.
Mr. COX. of California. And described by George Stephanopoulos as a
very able, competent person, who they loved having in the job.
Mr. ROHRABACHER. And this man had been involved with opposition
research during political campaigns prior to this time?
Mr. COX of California. Well, of course. And he was a bouncer.
Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Speaker, having our background in the White
House, let us examine this angle of the story. What has happened in
other White Houses that we could actually compare it to? Did Chuck
Colson not have something to do with an FBI file?
Mr. COX of California. He possessed one FBI file, it was learned, and
therefore he was convicted and sent to prison, for one file.
Mr. ROHRABACHER. So Chuck Colson, in the Nixon era, when we had a
Republican in the White House, was found guilty of mishandling one FBI
file and went to prison. And today we know that there were probably up
to 900 FBI files in the possession of a person who had been involved
with opposition research for the Democratic Party, yet this question
does not seem to be asked of the President by the press anymore.
Mr. COX of California. The comparison is not apt if we just leave it
at that. The truth is that the White House counsel's office in its
current incarnation is literally a response to Watergate. They decided
that no longer would the lawyers for the President be kept in a small
office in the Old Executive Office Building across the street. There
were only two of them in the Nixon administration.
We all remember John Dean's testimony about his inability to come
across with the President and convince him of the gravity of these
things. The White House counsel's office was then moved right into the
West Wing of the White House. It became a significant law firm, with
very, very professional people who have acquitted themselves with great
distinction through the Carter administration, through the

[[Page H10212]]

Ford administration, through the Reagan administration and the Bush
administration, to keep the administration out of trouble, to prevent
things like this from happening. But what goes on in this White House
counsel's office? They are the engines of these misdeeds. It is the
White House counsel's office that was coming up with these FBI files,
multiplying one hundredfold the crime for which Mr. Colson was
convicted during Watergate.
Mr. WALKER. Mr. Speaker, I seem to recall some years ago a press
secretary in a Republican administration who got fired for having made
up a quote along the way. Now you look down through this memo, and this
memo has a press strategy for purposely misleading the public. The
level of question that arises from this kind of task list is pretty
substantial.

Mr. COX of California. It does trouble me that with respect to each
one of these 39 scandals, one of the items to do, on the to-do list for
the White House counsel's office, the legal counsel of the President of
the United States, is to develop a press strategy. If we are coming
clean, if we are trying to share with the American people all the
relevant facts so that their minds can be put at ease that no
illegality is occurring at the highest levels of our Government, one
would wish that, rather than a press strategy, we simply had a
procedure by which the documents were shared and made public.
Mr. Speaker, they ought to be shared with law enforcement, shared
with the American people and with the Congress. Instead, each time we
have a scandal listed here, whether it is Ickes' union representation,
Stephanopoulos, Nations Bank, improper electioneering at the SBA,
Presidential campaign and FEC audit, commodities. There are 39 of
these.
Mr. WALKER. The use of time and White House resources for response
efforts. In other words, what they are admitting to there is they have
got this problem. They are using the taxpayer dollar. They are using
the White House itself and taxpayer dollars for essentially political
responses.
Mr. COX of California. That is precisely it. The press strategy seems
to be the preoccupation of the White House counsel's office, whereas
they are supposed to be paid by the taxpayers and they are for the
benefit of the President to keep everything on the level, to keep the
President and the highest levels of our executive branch out of
trouble.
Mr. ROHRABACHER. So we can assume through this memo, can we not, that
basically the White House and the upper echelons of the White House
were red-flagging every possible problem so that they could build
contingency plans in case these things came to the public's attention.
So when things like the FBI scandal or perhaps even the billing records
scandal, the billing records that miraculously appeared in the living
quarters of the first family in the White House, that were lost for so
long, that perhaps that was not just an accident. Perhaps actually a
strategy was developed on how to handle this crisis. Maybe there is
another file someplace else that basically details how to handle all of
these problems that are red-flagged.
Mr. COX of California. The gentleman is being very circumspect and
charitable, having now received this memo, to say ``perhaps.'' It is
obvious that the purpose of this task list is to marshal all of the
efforts of the White House staff, led by White House lawyers, to
prevent Congress from investigating each and every one of these 39
scandals.
One of the headings in this memo is Research Re Limitation on
Legislative Power to Investigate. What the White House counsel's office
is doing here is coming up with legal arguments that will prevent the
Congress from getting to the bottom of what they have already
identified as scandals.

{time} 1800

``Research re: limitations on legislative power to investigate.''
Under that heading, we have DNC, DCCC, DSCC.
For those of us who are uninitiated, the DNC is the Democratic
National Committee, the DCCC is the Democratic Congressional Campaign
Committee, and the DSCC is the Democratic Senatorial Campaign
Committee.
Under that they have ``surrogates.'' So they are going to be using
all of their political machinery. This is a taxpayer paid memo, and
taxpayer paid lawyers inside the White House wrote this memo about
DCCC, DNC and DSCC, to use them as surrogates to announce to the
American people that there are legal reasons, that the White House
counsel then went out and researched and came up with, that Congress
cannot and should not be investigating these 39 scandals, which are
neatly itemized in this secret memo.
Mr. ROHRABACHER. Could this be characterized again, and you looked at
these things legally, Mr. Cox, and you are a trained lawyer and I am
not, I have a journalistic background, but would it be inaccurate to
suggest that this was a game plan for a coverup?
Mr. COX of California. As I said earlier, it appears chiefly from
this brand new memo, which we have had only for a few weeks, and also
from all of the context of the administration's nonresponse to our
request for those 3,000 documents, which they referred to as a request
for toilet paper and which eventually yielded the information about
Filegate and all the FBI files on earlier administrative personnel that
they obtained for political purposes, that executive privilege, which
has been their basis for refusing to turn over these documents, is
increasingly becoming a synonym for coverup.
Mr. ROHRABACHER. I think it is important that those people who are
reading this in the Congressional Record or hearing this over C-SPAN
should understand that none of the information we are talking about in
this memo, or, I might add, many of the other revelations we have
discovered, whether it is the FBI files or the billing records we were
trying to find for the Rose Law Firm in dealing with this S&L scandal
which the First Lady was in some way attached to, these things would
not have been ever disclosed to the public, nothing about this would
ever be known by the public, except for the fact that the U.S. Congress
changed hands.
This memo, it appears that this memo is a recognition that the
administration recognized very early on that the game was up in terms
of hiding everything from the public. That they could have kept all of
this information, if the Democrats would have maintained control of the
House and the Senate, and there was no way the public would ever have
known about this.
Which also suggests one other thing, and this is a point I would like
to make and the public should understand: The liberal Democrats, who
controlled both Houses of Congress and control the executive branch
today, have a total disdain for the press. They do not believe that the
press can uncover anything. They in fact trusted that the press would
not even try to uncover any of these things.
It was only when the House of Representatives changed hands and we
had the power then to subpoena and ask people under oath questions
about these types of misdeeds, that the administration became cautious
enough and became frightened enough to try to look at what their
potential vulnerabilities were. If we would not have had control of the
House, they would not fear a thing from us.
Mr. WALKER. If the gentleman would yield, I think the gentleman from
California makes an excellent point, because actually Chairman Clinger,
at that time a ranking minority member of the committee, attempted to
pursue the Travelgate scandal while a minority member of the committee,
attempted to get the committee to look into the problem at that time.
He was told by the Democrats that it would not be done. In fact, I
think, I do not remember exactly, but I think they actually voted him
down and suggested to him that he was not going to be able to pursue
the matter. It was not until he became chairman of the committee that
he was able to pursue the matter, because specifically that committee
decided to permit the White House to cover this matter up and not take
it up before the proper congressional committees.
Mr. COX of California. It is at least true that prior to the
revelations, so many of which have occurred since the election of an
opposition party to get to the bottom of this in the White House, that
there was an attitude by the Democrats in power in Congress at

[[Page H10213]]

the time that they simply did not want to know the answer to these
questions, because, after all, we had not seen this document until just
a few weeks ago. But now that we have it, I think any fair-minded
person, any Democrat or any Republican, would have to say, this is a
virtual roadmap to scandal.
If the majority party in Congress were to put together a list of
scandals of the administration that ran to more than a dozen, it would
be called a partisan exercise. Yet here we have, prepared by the White
House staff itself, by President Clinton's own staff, a secret memo for
their own privileged consumption, stamped ``privileged'' on the cover,
a list of 39 scandals, with detail of each, and some rather damaging
admissions about each.
Let me point our just one such that we have not referred to in this
brief colloquy, and that is the scandal labeled Hubbell, and that is,
of course, Webster Hubbell, the acting Attorney General. ``Webster
Hubbell's cooperation is to be monitored.''
Now, why would we be concerned with this? This is right before
``determine press strategy.'' Why would we be concerned with monitoring
Webster Hubbell's cooperation, if we were willing to let the special
prosecutor do his job?
The answer is, of course, the administration was very concerned about
just how far Webster Hubbell might go in cooperating with that special
prosecutor. As we all know, Webster Hubbell was subsequently convicted
and sent to jail.
Mr. WALKER. And right below that is ``Ickes's union representation.''
We know that one of the unions and one of the individuals that Mr.
Ickes had a relationship with now now somebody who has been under
congressional investigation, and where we have FBI data calling him a
criminal associate of the mob, this person who Mr. Ickes was associated
with. I see they were assembling a binder with summary and key
documents with regard to that union representation.
Well, since the White House has had this direct relationship with
this person, Mr. Coia, who has been called by the FBI a criminal
associate of the mob, that could be a very damaging kind of question
that is raised as a part of the scandal memo prepared at the White
House.
In fact, ``ABC News'' has done quite an expose on this. It turns out
the scandal itself was under active investigation by the White House
Counsel's Office on December 13, 1994, and it is highlighted in this
White House task list.
Mr. WALKER. But since that time, the President has continued to have
direct association with the person involved, the gentleman described as
a criminal associate of the mob.
Mr. COX of California. I think at this point it would be appropriate,
because each of our colleagues should have the benefit of this memo in
full, that I ask unanimous consent to include the memorandum in its
entirety in the Record at this point.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Without objection, subject to the rules of
the House.
There was no objection.

Task List--December 13, 1994

1. Issues

a. Foster document handling (Nemetz)
b. Travel Office (Cerf)
c. White House/Treasury contacts (revisited; report) (JCS)
d. Obstruction of justice (DOJ handling of criminal
referrals; Jay Stephens; RTC whistleblower reprisals)
e. Use of White House resources for response efforts (Nolan)
f. Foster suicide (Nemetz)
g. Espy (ethics; expanded Smaltz inquiry re Tyson's, Hatch
Act) (Mills/Nolan)
h. Cisneros
i. Brown
j. Hubbell
k. Ickes/union representation
l. Stephanopoulos/NationsBank
m. State Department--passport files
n. Archives--abuse of personnel system
o. Legal Defense Fund (Mills)
p. Health Care Task Force (Neuwirth)
q. White House operations (drugs, passes, helicopters)
(Mills/Nolan)
r. Residence renovations (Neuwirth)
s. Presidential immunity (Sloan)
t. White House Arkansans (Thomasson, Nash, Rasco)
u. PIC surplus
v. Improper electioneering (SBA)
w. GSA (Roger Johnson)
x. Value Partners (Neuwirth)
y. Presidential campaign (FEC audit)
z. Commodities (Kendall)
aa. Gubernatorial campaigns (Lindsey, Wright)--record keeping
(Kendall)
ab. Gubernatorial campaigns)--MGSL (Kendall)
ac. Whitewater/MGSL (Kendall)
ad. Other MGSL/McDougal (Kendall)
ae. Rose Law Firm (HRC work for MGSL; Frost Case, FSLIC
representation) (Kendall)
af. David Hale/Susan McDougal/SBA (Kendall)
ag. Tucker
ah. Lasater (bond deals; cocaine; Roger Clinton)
ai. Use of loans to achieve legislative initiatives
aj. ADFA (political favors; Larry Nichols)
ak. Mena Airport
al. troopers
am. women (Kendall/Bennett)

2. preliminaries

a. Identify key republican objectives and routes for
achieving them--e.g.
i. sustain shadow on WJC character
ii. hype HRC threat to white men, traditional women
b. Identify guiding principles for responses--e.g.
i. nothing to hide
ii. stick to the facts
iii. get it right the first time
iv. keep it simple
v. resist harassment
vi. govern America
c. Executive privilege research
i. OLC state of the play
ii. comments by republicans re assertion
iii. protocol
iv. strategy/principles for asserting
d. Research re entitlement of Congress to HRC/WJC transcripts
of depositions given to Fiske
e. Research re congressional subpoena power
i. reach (HRC/WJC)
ii. precedents
iii. committee rules
iv. procedures
f. Research re limitations on legislative power to
investigate
i. legislative purpose
ii. overreaching precedents
g. Learn new Hill committee jurisdiction, membership
h. Courtesy visits to Hill--member and staff level (e.g.,
Frank, Sarbanes, leadership; Harris, Meek, etc.)
i. Consultations
j. Offensive structure
i. FEC legal research
ii. W&C
iii. DNC/DCCC/DSCC
iv. surrogates
k. Representation of Administration officials by private
counsel
i. compensation
l. Research re proper role of OWHC with respect to pre-
inaugural issues with an aim toward articulating
principles for determining who should be principal
spokesperson on a particular issue and the extent to
which each (private counsel/OHWC) should participate.

3. foster documents handling

a. Independent counsel inquiry
(1) identify options with respect to issuance of report--
(a) precedents
(2) inquire about status and timing
(3) HRC/WJC depositions
ii. status check with counsel for individuals
b. Congressional hearings
i. identify likely committees (Senate Banking; House
Banking, Gov Ops, Judiciary)
(1) identify friends--key Members and staff
(2) identify leadership
(3) identify key republicans
ii. congressional visits
(1) Daschle
(2) Sarbanes & other Banking
(3) house
iii. prepare background materials
(1) assemble public record
(2) talking points and fact memoranda
iv. determine how to handle representation of individual
White House staff
(1) outside counsel
(2) attorney fees
(3) assertion of privileges
c. Press strategy
d. Surrogate role
i. Hamilton
ii. identify others
e. Offensive research
f. Issue specific tasks
i. security/Livingstone issues
(1) debrief Joel
(2) review Livingstone file
(3) consult with Randy Turk
(4) interview Livingstone
(5) fact memo
ii. inconclusiveness re Williams removal of documents
(1) confer with Ed Dennis
(2) debrief Joel re security officer
(3) assemble public reports of document removal on 7/20 and
statements attributed to White House officials
iii. chain of custody re transfer of Clinton personal files
(1) complete interviews
(a) Carolyn Huber
(b) Linda Tripp
(c) Deborah Gorhan
(d) Bob Barnett
(e) Syvia Mathews
(2) fact memo
(3) assemble public record
(4) determine strategy re release of White H2O Devel
Corp. file
iv. search of Foster office

[[Page H10214]]

(1) assemble public record
(a) including any relevant testimony at Senate hearing on
Foster suicide in July 1994
(2) fact memo
(a) obligation to seal the office immediately
(b) obligation to cooperate with law enforcement
authorities vs. protection of privileged material
(c) basis for protecting disclosure to Congress of
privileged material in VF office
(3) legal research
(i) basis for resisting identification/production of all
documents in VF office and Bernie's safe
v. Delay in surfacing suicide note
(1) complete interviews
(a) Gergen
(b) Burton
(2) assemble material in public record
(3) fact memo
(4) legal research
(a) obligations to disclose a note to law enforcement
authorities
(i) if not obviously a suicide note
(ii) timeliness requirements

4. foster suicide

a. Chris Ruddy/Center for Western Journalism
b. Causes for suicide
c. Monitor Senate report; coordinate with Hamilton
d. Develop press response

5. obstruction of justice

a. Delay in addressing criminal referrals; DOJ role (D.C. and
Paula Casey)
i. determine usual process
ii. develop chronology/fact memo with key
(1) Charles Banks
(2) Paula Casey
(3) (track Lewis correspondence released by Leach)
iii. identify Committee interest (D'Amato; House)
iv. assemble public record
b. RTC/Kansas City investigation (suspension of Jean Lewis,
Richard Iorio etc.; April Breslaw; pre-1993 activity)
i. develop chronology of known facts and key documents
ii. interview Breslaw
iii. identify Committee interest (Leach; Senate)
iv. examine last day of House hearings for offensive help
c. Jay Stephens retention
i. track public record
ii. identify efforts to give IC civil jurisdiction
iii. identify Committee interest (D'Amato; House)

6. white house/treasury contacts

a. Senate Report
i. review/comment on Report
ii. keep in touch with Minority Report developments
iii. prepare press strategy
iv. identify surrogates
b. White House investigation of White House/Treasury contacts
(receipt of information about RTC investigation; work
product; redactions)
i. prepare file memorandum describing use of unredacted
transcripts
ii. determine continuing Bond interest
c. Truthfulness of White House and other Administration
witnesses (referral of testimony to Starr--Ickes,
Stephanopoulos)
i. consult with lawyers
ii. identify areas of vulnerability
iii. research on perjury
iv. press response
d. Heads-up policy
i. surrogates
ii. uniform application
iii. Treasury status
iv. press strategy for release of Committee report
v. work up background paper on precedents
e. Recusal policies/OGE/Executive Orders
i. press strategy for release of Committee report
ii. background paper
iii. consult with OGE
iv. consider Executive Order or other response to Committee
f. Contacts policy (Executive Order)
i. press strategy for release of Committee report
ii. background paper
iii. consult with OGE
iv. consider Executive order or other response to Committee
g. Rikki Tigert
i. determine her first likely congressional appearance in
the new congress
ii. assemble public record
iii. interview Gergen, Tigert and Klein re communications
on the subject of recusal
(1) determine response to allegations of ``pressure''
(2) determine response to allegation that Klein misled the
committee
iv. determine press strategy/talking points

7. smaltz investigation

a. Espy--ethics (Mills)
b. Beyond Espy ethics (Hatch Act, Tyson's)
i. determine charter, scope of inquiry
ii. determine press strategy
iii. identify congressional interest
iv. assemble public record
v. fact gathering

8. white house whitewater response effort

a. Legal research
i. the appropriate role of White House staff with respect
to issues arising pre-inauguration (see above)
b. Fact development (scope of effort, etc.)
c. Determine press strategy/develop talking points
d. Assemble public record
i. Lindsey involvement pre-1994
ii. Ickes' Ward Room undertaking (1/94)
iii. Polesta damage control effort

9. cisneros

a. Gather facts
b. Establish contact with counsel
c. Determine press strategy/develop talking points
d. Identify source of congressional interest
e. Assemble binder with summary and key documents

10. brown

a. Establish contact with counsel
b. Determine press strategy/develop talking points
c. Identify source of congressional interest
d. Assemble binder with summary and key documents

11. hubbell

a. Monitor cooperation
b. Determine press strategy/develop talking points

12. Ickes (union representation)

a. Monitor
b. Assemble binder with summary and key documents

13. Stephanopoulos (nationsbank)

a. Monitor
b. Assemble binder with summary and key documents

14. State department (passport files)