[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 135 (Thursday, September 26, 1996)]
[House]
[Pages H11387-H11392]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
FOLLOW THE MONEY AND LOOK AT THE NOSE
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of May
12, 1995, the gentleman from California [Mr. Dornan] is recognized for
60 minutes.
Mr. DORNAN. Mr. Speaker, if the gentlewoman wants to bid a fond
farewell to the gentleman from Louisiana, Cleo Fields, I would yield to
her, if I may do it first.
It has been an honor serving with you, sir, and I am glad they did
not roast you tonight.
But I would gladly yield some time to the gentlewoman, also a
distinguished Portia, a barrister and a lawyer in her own right of some
standing.
continuing tribute to congressman cleo fields
Ms. JACKSON-LEE of Texas. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for his
kindness and his collegiality this evening, for this is a special
occasion, and I will not be long. I respect the Speaker and the time
that is allotted to the gentleman.
Being in my office, as the waning hours of this session and this
104th Congress came to a close, I could not allow this evening to close
out without my recognition of a friend, a legislator, an extremely able
American, and that is in the name of Cleo Fields.
It is interesting, coming in as a freshman and working with my
senior, the honorable Cleo Fields. He was a very good teacher. He is a
lawyer by training, he is a legislator, but over the time that we have
had an opportunity to work together, what I notice most about him is
that he does not take up causes. He has avocations or he takes up
issues which are filled with compassion.
I have watched him in his continuous efforts to have Americans
recognize the need for not only educating our children but housing our
children in the right infrastructure and a structure to allow them to
learn.
I view Cleo Fields not only as a friend but as a friend of his
constituents, a friend of Louisiana, and a friend of this country. As a
young man he is someone who understands working families. I have
watched him in women's issues be just as passionate about the needs and
rights of women. I have watched him talk about, passionately, the
opportunities for your college students and the need for a fair and
just affirmative action.
I have watched him come to the floor continuously to talk about
helpless babies who are in need of Head Start, school lunches, and, as
well, who are in need of opportunities which he said he would have
never had if the doors had not been open to him.
I spoke with him about his future, and in his own humble way he never
offered to say that I expect to go on and slay a dragon.
{time} 2315
I think what he said to me is that he will be back, that he wanted to
continue to be a humble servant he wanted to continue to serve people.
His proudest moment, as I have been able to recollect, is the birth of
his son and, with his loving wife, I have watched that young man, now
that I call him, though he is under 2 years old, grow in the love of
his father.
The first days of the birth of his son, we were always kept apprised
of his growth, the interesting things that he would be doing, the late
nights that I understand that he was a good sleeper, but his father
loves him and loved him and you could always see that relationship even
as this young baby is growing up.
I really come to the floor to simply say that my friend, you will be
missed, but you have claimed a place in our hearts and the minds of the
American people. You have claimed a place by simply saying that I am a
fighter for just causes. I will not do it in anger. I will do it
forcefully.
Along with colleagues who joined you on the floor tonight, along with
your colleague and friend, Jesse Jackson, Jr. who I heard describe the
friendship and both your aspirations and wonderment about being in this
place, we are better for it. This Congress is better. This Nation is
better. I, for one, will certainly ask you to keep the light burning,
to let us hear your voice resounding, for there are many great things
in store for the Honorable Cleo Fields, for the 21st century is yet to
open its doors to your bright mind and what you have to offer this
country.
Partisan comments at this point certainly, and I will recognize the
gentleman, are not appropriate, for I think, as my colleague from
California has noted, he has enjoyed serving with you. So this is a
bipartisan farewell, to say to you that all of us collectively will
look forward again to the activism, the light, the message, the word of
Cleo Fields, a great citizen of the State of Louisiana and a great
American. God bless you.
I thank the gentleman from California.
Mr. DORNAN. Just remember the words of a great, if not the greatest
American general, I shall return. Jesse Jackson will be here waiting
for you.
the saddest day
Mr. Speaker, I was glad to give up those few minutes, I have 42\1/2\
minutes left. I want to try and cram 2 special hours into that. As I
said earlier, the title for my overall special order, which I am going
to say later, does not apply to this first part which I would call, the
saddest day in my 20 years on Capitol Hill. That is today.
Today I was told, without a direct phone call, what we still have
here, as they said in the movie, is a failure to communicate, Cool Hand
Luke, I was told today, after I had already sent out thank you notes to
the Speaker and others for getting the POW missing in action protection
act back into law within a few days by tomorrow by putting it in the
continuing resolution. This is different. This is not authorizing
language on an appropriations bill. Clinton signed it into law.
The Bob Dole, Ben Gilman, Lautenberg POW-MIA language that POWs and
concerned citizens who have worked with them for 20, 25 years
circulated on this hill for two decades and Clinton signed it into law
in February 10, and one human being at the north end of this building,
gutted it out and referred to people like myself, who have given more
than months, years of their life, 8 trips to Vietnam in my own case
while the war was going on, narrating while the brother of a U.S.
Senator, sitting Senator now, while his younger brother was in POW
clothing in a cage in Pershing Square for 2 days to make the case of
what was happening to his brother at the ugly nonmercy of the
Communists in Hanoi, and I narrated it, traveling around, getting
people on. I create the cover of a Life magazine in November 1972, with
a Navy hero on it, Ron Dodge, whose remains were finally returned years
after I pushed the file at the Vietnamese in Hanoi and had the honor of
going to his funeral at Arlington, to have one person at the north end
of this building call me and others a hobbyist, this is
[[Page H11388]]
not a hobby for me. This is a gut-wrenching issue.
Twelve hundred Americans left behind in Korea, at least three that I
can name off, Air Force Captain Earl, known by his friends and his
family as Glen Cobeil, C-O-B-E-I-L; Kenneth Cameron, another naval
officer, James J. Connell, these men were beaten into a mental state,
but recoverable, especially for two out of the three, they could have
recovered. And the association of a loving wife Patty and son Jeffrey
and a daughter could have even, I believe, brought Glen Cobeil out of
this catatonic state that his torture masters had beaten him into. They
were left behind under a Republican President, Nixon, left behind to be
executed or rot and die because the Vietnamese Communists, the same
ones in power right now, the two Senators stood by Clinton's side as we
normalized relations with them, those same leaders murdered these men,
allowed them to be murdered by Cubans and other guardsmen, pounding on
them in savage medieval torture. They were left behind.
Abandoned, hundreds abandoned in Korea, hundreds of air crewmen
captured in the spy planes around the periphery of the evil empire,
abandoned. Thousands of Americans with Ukrainian and Slavic and Serbian
and Russian, Belorussian, Ukrainian last names, abandoned.
It is a pattern in every war that we have had with Communism that we
have abandoned men on the battlefield. So after this was signed into
law on February 10, the same erosion process started that gutted, by a
handful of people in another legislature, not this one, not this body,
they gutted out my law that was to take effect August 10, that if you
had a permanently permanent, nonreversible by medicine or surgery, a
permanently permanent condition that through conduct kept you from
being combat trainable or deployed overseas or you were jerked
overseas, retrained into some healthy young man of woman's job and they
were fired out of the military, that they would be honorably discharged
on August 10, and two lame duck people at north end of the building
demanded from my leadership here that they take the Dornan law out of
Public Law. And it worked for them in May.
So what was signed into law February 10 came out and we now have
about 900 people on active duty who have a fatal venereal disease
called the AIDS HIV virus. And they are restricted here to the
Continental United States. And they are not combat trainable and they
are not deployable. And we had to retrain most of them in other jobs.
They have medical appointments all year long, and $10,000 to $30,000
worth of drugs. They are in experimental programs. They would all be
taken care of beautifully in the VA, in some cases the same hospitals.
And that was stripped out of law.
Now it has happened again. This week, when the President, when
Clinton signed the defense authorization, out came the Dornan POW law
that was actually, as I said, the Dole-Gilman-Lautenberg POW protection
law supported by a 7-year Hanoi POW, a hero, Sam Johnson of Dallas, TX,
spent half of his captivity in solitary confinement in a stinking
little hole called Alcatraz where they put 11 of the toughest. Pete
Peterson, who is leaving this Chamber, worked out with me, in a fair
compromise, a burden on CINCs, combat commanders in the field, and took
out the major objection of one human being in this town.
And then I put this bill together and got 272 original cosponsors,
including Mr. Mica sitting in the chair, a House record for 20 years,
272 original cosponsors, when I dumped in, honorably placed it in the
bill hopper, introducing it on August 2. Then we picked up 30 more
people. Democrats came forward, our one independent, Bernie Sanders.
When we were through, we almost had 300 cosponsors. I asked my chairman
of national security, give me a hearing on this.
We had a special hearing, and the ranking Democrat, Ron Dellums, and
every Democrat in the hearing came on board. Ten before we voted asked
to be cosponsors. And we got a vote, Duncan Hunter got a vote, 49 to 0.
And my leadership, breaking promises today, would not put it in the
continuing resolution. So I said, give me a stinking suspension, will
you, tomorrow? So we are going to debate it on the House. Those people
who track this House by electronic means will not understand a
suspension, but it means you have to get two-thirds. And we will get
that in a breeze in this House. But any suspension going over to the
other body this late in the year, one Senator, because that is a body
of 100 single legislators, each one is a lone force and only takes one
person to blackball it.
I am told it is dead even if it goes out of here unanimously. This is
wrong. This is a betrayal of the POW-MIA families. This is a travesty.
This is my saddest day here in 20 years. I am not a hobbyist. I cannot
believe this. Some people are not up for election in 1996. They are in
1998. I will not forget this. I will not forget banking scandals. I
will not forget anything. I am not going to let this sit.
There is one salvation, Mr. Speaker. Our great rules chairman, a
marine, proud marine, Jerry Solomon, if my Speaker is going to keep his
word to me, Jerry Solomon can vote out a rule right up there on the
third floor of the Committee on Rules. We can put this on that CR. The
Dole campaign, his great young campaign manager, Scott Reed called the
leader of the Senate today, the leader of the Senate is with me in
heart and in mind and said, do it. It is hurting the Dole campaign. It
is hurting the Republican contender for the presidency of the United
States, who served 38 years his people as a 100 percent disabled vet.
This is his law, his language, he and Mr. Gilman in this Chamber
carried this. Do not hurt his campaign. Do not upset these POW
families. Now the Korean families are suffering because we know we left
behind 500 wounded and amputees and mentally hurt people because of the
horrible conditions in the hell like North Vietnamese Communist camps.
They are hurting now. They are going to go to sleep crying theirselves
to sleep, sons and daughters, their late 40's, early 50's, because one
human being, one contradicts 300 people over here, 49 to 0 on national
security and easily two-thirds tomorrow in a suspension.
Where is the leadership here? Where is the leadership? Is tomorrow
going to be a day of betrayal at the end of the day when one human
being crushes my 20 years of activity on this hill, 40 years, 43 years
of studying this issue since it was introduced to me as a young pre-
cadet at Williams Air Force base when Army psychiatrists told us young
Air Force cadets about the brainwashing and the torture and the
prisoners, when I have gotten the documents out of the Eisenhower
Library, when I have looked up Life magazines on four F-86 pilots left
behind for 2 years on Jack Arnold's B-28 crew where they kept behind
the two young radar guys, when I have had 2 years, the last 2 years, I
am a hobbyist, a stinking hobbyist. Is that what I am called by a Naval
officer whose father I loved, whose grandfather was a legend in the
Navy? No, no. This does not sit.
Bob Dole himself, Mr. Speaker, for every veteran in this country from
whom he properly asked loyalty, must call himself to the leader of the
United States Senate and say, control your troops and get the Dole
language that has been law since February 10 and out of law for the
last 72 hours, get it back into law tomorrow night. Let these POW and
MIA families, who are naturally inclined toward a pro-military strong
anti-Communist, strong pro-family party, get behind our nominee.
What a sad day. What a travesty. The fight is on. I will not forget.
I am coming back here next year. This sends me home for 39 days
tomorrow to fight harder than I have ever fought in my life, to retake
my chairmanship on military personnel and move from 8 years on the
intelligence committee, and what revelations I am finding out about
Communism in the last week, so I can work it as a top secret cleared
Congressman with the knowledge on how to get this information that is
so precious to us representatives of the people here. I know how to get
it now.
{time} 2330
And I will probably move to the Government Reform Committee. My
leadership is going to have a lot to make up for me for a lot of double
talk stripping out Dornan public law. I told my leadership this is not
a question of embarrassing me in my district, but you will. It is not a
question of making me look like I do not have the support of my
leadership, but it will. It is a question of the honor of the
Republican
[[Page H11389]]
Party, the Grand Old Party, born out of the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln,
and that horrible blood letting of brother against brother.
The honor of this party demands that they back up Bob Dole in his
language in his presidential race and use any vehicle they can to get
around one single human being arrogantly blackballing this. The honor
of the Pow's left behind demands this, the honor of every American that
may have been experimented on in some stinking Czech-built hospital in
North Korea, that the tragedy of what we have done leaving American
warriors behind wounded and crying and saying I am from the strongest
country in the world that won World War II for the world, and I am
being left behind to rot in Communist brutality. Now we have game
playing, talking about problems for commanders in chief that has
already been resolved by a former Democrat POW, 6 years and 7-year
horribly tortured POW on this side of the aisle, Peterson and Sam
Johnson.
Now, something else happened to me today. Besides meeting a young man
who told me he was corrupted here as a page on the elevator in one of
the Rayburn buildings, said it cost him 2 years of school and finally
he is getting out of the university late. I also saw Clinton come to
the Longworth Office Building, so I thought I would stand in the hall,
ask him about tampering with a grand jury system by telegraphing pardon
messages through the media, specifically through PBS on Jim Lehrer's
show. Got the transcript here from the Wall Street Journal. It is
unbelievable. Outrageous is what it is. It is just what the Wall Street
Journal calls it.
So I am standing there and out comes that battered wife, George
Stephanopoulos. That is what Bob Woodward of Watergate Woodward and
Bernstein fame, naval officer, Robert Woodward wrote: George
Stephanopoulos is like a battered wife. The volcanic eruptions come out
of the man's head with lava flowing all over George, and he is treated
like a battered wife. I did not see whose head; the man.
So here comes the battered wife, and he comes up and said what are
you doing. You going to talk through the man?
I will insert ``the man'' a lot tonight.
And I said, ``Oh, just wanted to find out about jury tampering,
telegraphing messages through media interviews and tampering with
witnesses that are at this moment going before the grand jury in Little
Rock.''
He says OK.
He runs back into the Ways and Means room, a whole operation is
organized. I saw the secret service smiling. I saw the Capitol police
laughing. We saw the advance men talking in their little hand mikes,
and I cost hundreds of people, I guess, 10 or 15 minutes as they had to
run an operation kind of like the Bowery boys, you know playing 24 A,
the diversion, to fake me out, and it worked. Got to give it to him.
But they had to announce to the entire press corps, the AP camera
man, the Washington Post: Look, here comes the President, everybody--
actual word out of advancement: all the press look this way.
So of course I looked that way, too, and we are all looking, and
behind me comes Al Gore, Vice President, and the man, and up to the
microphone. I turn around, I said, ``Well done, guys.''
But he will get his day in court. I was going to remind him that
Paula Corbin Jones had her day in court and he will have his day in
court because I am filing impeachment papers. I have got lawyers
working on them and have been for about 5 or 6 months, and this may be
the crowning issue, this may be the straw on the camel's back,
telegraphing pardon messages to people. It is unbelievable.
So I stood there, and I looked, and the first thing that came in my
mind was baby boomers in power, and the second thing came to my mind
were the words of Maureen Dowd about the scenes on sacred Omaha Beach,
that hallowed territory, that hallowed sand where so many Americans
died, a thousand in few hours there in Utah Beach on the gorgeous coast
of Normandy, France. And I thought of Maureen Dowd, New York Times
reporter, her words: The prepubescent yuppies running around serving
the man.
Well, listen to this, Mr. Speaker. Seven pounds of heroin were found
in the nose cone of an Air Force One aircraft taking the President to
the U.N. in New York from Bogota, Colombia. The President in this case
is Ernesto Samper, the man whose Presidency is collapsing in Bogota,
Colombia, a nation which drug users in this country have helped to
destroy, particularly cocaine users. They have helped to destroy it.
When you see somebody with a big red bulbous nose and doctors tell me
it is not allergies; that makes your eyes water. The nose only swells
from alcohol or from tearing up your nasal passages with cocaine. When
you see that, you will know that that is a person who has caused--Nancy
Reagan had it right, just say no--who has caused a thousand young
police officers to be killed in Colombia in the last year, calendar
year 1995. This year we are running ahead of a thousand young men.
The head of the police force down there came to my office, speaks
pretty good English, he told me that he asked these young boys to go to
mass every morning or to Protestant services because they may see Jesus
before the sun goes down or during that night. Gun battles over two-
thirds of all the main police headquarters; it is kind of a Federal
police. It is as though our FBI wore uniforms and had street duty
instead of just investigative duties, and they are dying because people
want to trip out up here on cocaine, because coke powder snows on
Hollywood and snows on some of the elite and some of the not so
wealthy, the crack cocaine in some of the poor areas of this country.
Thousands of young Federal police officers in Colombia die, and now
they have a President taking--it is alleged--narco money. Now this may
have been planted on his plane, but the evidence is pretty tough that
during his presidential campaign that money was coming in.
Well, so much for that President. How about another President in the
free world? Another President? There is more books written on him than
I have ever seen. How about this book by Roger Morris? Partners in
Power.
Listen to this, Partners in Power: Much bigger in scope then Blood
Sport. That was the book by Robert T. Stewart. Blood Sport. And
considered more devastating in its frank revelations.
I am going to read some of the clips from this book. I will not have
time to read clips from this book. I will not have time to read clips
from this book; it is--Boy is the title, and then the name of a
President in the free world, Boy something, the political biography by
R. Emmett Tyro, Jr.
Remember when I came to the floor with all the books that are still
down in my car, and I was too tired to carry them all up here. On the
Make, by Meredith Oakley; The Agenda, by Bob Woodward; The Choice, by
Bob Woodward; Inside the White House, by David Meredith, where the help
talks about dialog in front of the cooks and the servants and the
valets, those that were not fired. Blood Sport; Unlimited Access, the
conservative action group here, CAT we call ourselves. I wish we called
ourselves Tiger and were a little more effective around here since we
are a majority within a majority. Why do we get trashed all the time by
the lunch bunch? Blood Sport; Unlimited Access.
Here are the new ones. Boy Clinton. And Partners in Power.
Mr. Speaker, an important footnote here. I am not just reading about
the man. Here is a book that just had to be written by the most evil
person I have ever seen in public service, and it is a race now to see
who is going to get that title by Election Day. This is about Robert,
whose mother's maiden name was truly Strange--somebody asked me is it
not cruel to call him Robert Strange McNamara. That is his name, Robert
Strange McNamara. The Living and the Dead. An ex-seminarian, Paul
Hendrickson, writes the definitive book, praised by the liberals at the
Washington Post, praised by the conservatives at the Washington Times.
Listen to this.
The Living and the Dead, Robert McNamara, and five lives of a lost
war, and I remember two of them. I remember the pictures by Bob Capra
and Larry--from another war--and Larry Burroughs from Vietnam. Knew my
brother Don, who was a photographer. Been in some tough spots.
[[Page H11390]]
Remember David Halverson's book, The Best and the Brightest, in 1972,
a devastating portrait of McNamara? Halverson said he was a callous,
arrogant technocrat who made one catastrophic error after another,
blindly enthralled to his own qualifications and calculations,
compounded the error by brusquely ignoring or suppressing any arguments
or dissent.
Well, The Best and the Brightest has been topped by The Living and
the Dead. One story is the tale of Yankee Papa 13, a marine H-34
Choctaw helicopter. They had a whole exhibit to it in the helicopter
section at the Air and Space Museum. I hope they bring it back. I do
not think it is there now. But this book sets the record straight on a
war criminal named Robert Strange McNamara.
But I would beg people to buy this and not read it until after 40
days have gone by. Save this book after the election, when we either
contemplate that we have a new President who is a 100-percent disabled
American vet and a war hero who is a bridge to a future.
As my young son--not so young anymore, father of three, but as my son
Bob Junior keeps saying, Dad, get Bob Dole to say Back to the Future.
The young people will understand that. It was a successful movie. We
cannot get to the future without going back to the treasured values
that made this country so strong.
Mr. Speaker, you heard me say the other day that in a few months we
pass 266 million Americans. This is not rocket science. This is pretty
simple math. Cut 266 in half, and you get 133. That is how many million
Americans there were when Pearl Harbor was struck, 133 million, and
here we are exactly double that by Christmas time. Could we accomplish
what we did in 3--less than 3 years and 5 months driving an evil
demonic Adolph Hitler to suicide in 3 years and 5 months. Could we do
that with a country that looks like it did at the Louisiana war games
with bread trucks for tanks, tank written in cardboard on the side and
Lt. Col. Ike Eisenhower trying to recall his World War I memories down
there? I think we can. I think we have only got maybe 5-10 percent of
this country that went bonkers and maybe a third of the baby boomers
and the drug sexual promiscuity the last 30 years that grew out of the
mid-sixties. I do not know. I think we could do it again, but we are
going to have to go back to the future.
So when George, excuse me, another war hero, when Bob Dole talks
about a bridge and people make a play on his words and make a joke out
of it, I do not see any role models right now for young America in the
drug category.
I do not have time to read the review on the Boy book, but let me
read first the opening of the Wall Street Journal editorial today and
then ask unanimous consent to put it in the Record in its fulsome
detail and then Out To Get The Clintons, this interview with Clinton on
PBS News Hour with Jim Lehrer on the 23d. This is opening paragraph:
In some extraordinary statements Monday Clinton stoked Susan
McDougal's hopes of a presidential pardon and stepped up the White
House campaign against the independent counsel, Kenneth Starr. Before
the voters go to the polls in November it seems to us Clinton owes them
a forthright explanation about what he would do about both of these
issues in a second term, attacking Kenneth Starr, pardoning everybody
who he claimed when he was so angered that we voted to pay off Billy
Dale and the six other innocent people in the Travelgate scandal when
we offered to pay all of their legal--costing the U.S. taxpayers about
$500,000, and it is millions that we are paying out for all of these
people who have been wronged. And then the Senate went to vote for it.
He said he would veto it unless we paid the legal bills of the
McDougals and Jim Guy Tucker and everybody he said were so innocent and
punished only because they knew him. All these people, indicted, about
to be indicted, or going to jail only because they knew him. Yeah, the
secret message is not so secret of going on; he is going to pardon him.
Listen to this. Here is the transcript of Lehrer; I will put this in
the Record. Please do not write my office. Write your own Congressman.
Write Mr. Mica if you are in his district in Florida to get the Record
of today, September 26. Please, Mr. Speaker, let them not write me.
{time} 2345
I know the phones are ringing off the wall in my office right now.
That is why I have six people staying this late. Remember, it is only
coming up on 9 o'clock in L.A., only 7 o'clock in Hawaii.
Mr. Lehrer says, ``Susan McDougal told a Federal judge in Little Rock
the other day the reason she was refusing to testify before a grand
jury is she believed Kenneth Starr, the independent counsel, was out to
get the Clintons. Do you agree with her?''
He is speaking to Clinton.
``Well, I think the facts speak for themselves. And I think we all
know about her--she said what she said, and her lawyer said that he
felt they did not want her to tell the truth. They wanted her to say
something bad about us, whether it was the truth or not;'' us means the
Partners in Power; us, whether it was true or not. ``And if it was
false, it would still be perfectly all right. And if she told the truth
and it wasn't bad about us, she simply would be punished for it. That's
what her lawyer said.''
Jim Lehrer, in his deadly low key style, ``Do you believe him?''
``Well, I think the facts speak for themselves. There's a lot of
evidence to support that.'' ``But do you personally believe that is
what it is all about, is to get you and Mrs. Clinton?'' ``Well, isn't
it obvious'' ``You only obviously believe that, right?'' ``Isn't it
obvious?'' I mean, you know, look at the D'Amato hearings. What do
(the) D'Amato hearings reveal? Witness after witness after witness
testifying that as governor, every time I was given a chance to do
something unethical or ethical, I chose the ethical path. Witness after
witness after witness, and they still--whenever a question was answered
they'd go ask a bunch of new questions.
``But the American people have figured that out. They'll get that.''
That line, ``they'll get that; where have I heard that before?
January 26, on a specially tailored Sixty Minutes program that was
only 13 minutes long coming out of the Superbowl, all about a certain
scandal involving somebody whose name rhymed with flowers. He said,
``The American people get that. We have had problems. They will get
that. They will get that.''
I guess 43 percent got it, but the rest didn't.
``I'm not worried. I trust the people. I think that's what we all
should be doing.''
Mr. Lehrer: ``If you're reelected, would you consider pardoning the
McDougals and Jim Guy Tucker during a second term?'' ``I've given no
consideration to that. You know, their cases are still on appeal. And I
would--my position would be that their cases should be handled like
others, they should go through--there's a regular process for that, and
I have regular meetings on that,'' and on and on and on.
Here it comes. The reason he was over here in the Longworth building,
in my building, I am sitting up there in Jim Wright's, the former
Speaker's office. The reason he is over here is he thinks he has Bob
Dole in a box. People have thought they had Bob Dole whipped before. He
thinks he has got it made, so now he can go out and start campaigning
to take the House and Senate back.
I didn't know Harry Truman, but I read the Pulitzer Prize-winning
biography by David McCullough. You heard me read it the other day on
the floor. Harry Truman said, ``you can't ever trust a man who commits
adultery. If he will break his word to his wife, you can't trust him on
anything. Keep those bimbos away from me. He would run out of the
hotel, leave the building, if anybody had women around. Beth could
really trust him. We have no Harry Truman here.
Partners in Power. This is tough, so I am going to leave out the man
and only talk about people who are not protected by rule 18.
First of all, story: London, Sunday. Imagine the respect factor in
Europe. Here is the Sunday Telegraph, London, by Ambrose Evans
Pritchard. Some day I am going to get to meet this great journalist.
``The longer he resists pressure to release his medical records, the
stronger the suspicions become that he is hiding
[[Page H11391]]
something important, perhaps even something that could affect the
outcome of some elections.''
``Some press secretary,'' I am leaving out names here, ``was
distinctly ambiguous when reporters asked in public whether someone was
suffering from a sexually transmitted disease. It seemed almost as if
the press secretary wished to encourage this sexual line of inquiry,
because the calculation apparently is that nobody cares much about
encounters long ago of a sexual nature. The impact, in post-Puritan
America, would be nil.''
Imagine the British people reading this in the tube, on the subway.
``But not everybody has fallen for this diversionary tactic. In a
biting editorial last week,'' that I missed, so I will have to put it
in the Record in January, ``the Wall Street Journal asked whether''
someone was covering up a history of drug use. ``Drugs are a much more
serious matter. If the American people were ever led to believe that
somebody was a heavy user of cocaine while head of a certain
subgovernment entity in a certain state, the scandal would be
thermonuclear.''
Stories about past drug use by some are a staple of the talk show
programs around America, but no major paper in the U.S. has had the
guts yet to publish an investigative expose. The Washington Times
almost did this week. They came that close. They sent out sheets to
people around the country saying, ``Here it comes tomorrow.'' Then they
backed off, and I got a headline story out of it, interesting, with my
subcommittee on a Czech general saying that Americans were used as
guinea pigs from the Korean and maybe the Vietnam War, because it left
the whole area above the full front-page story empty.
So he goes on to say, Ambrose Evans Pritchard, to his London
audience, in the biggest circulation paper in Great Britain, he says:
This is not because drug use is too much of a tabloid issue. Far from
it. The mainstream media were quick to print uncorroborated allegations
of a stupid convicted felon in the slammer who claimed to have sold
marijuana years ago to a young Dan Quayle. Remember how that moved on
the network news, the headlines, of establishment paper after liberal
paper?
In the case of someone, a number of people have come forward with
direct knowledge of drug use, but the press always finds a reason to
impugn the source's credibility; hence, a fascinating meeting with 20
of us telling Gary Aldrich, ``We will protect you,'' giving him a round
of applause, and then came his two little children. Dan Burton and I
said, ``We were applauding for your honorable dad, Gary Aldrich, author
of `Unlimited Access.' ''
Back to the London paper. This is not a tabloid, this is like the New
York Times in London, or like the New York Post or Daily News.
He says, in the case of these people that have come forward, nothing
short of documentary proof, though, will induce the newspapers to
examine the claims. Hence, the intense speculation in Washington about
the medical records. But there are other records. A freelance
journalist, Scott Wheeler, has obtained copies of the Arkansas State
police surveillance audio tapes from the 1984 investigation of a Roger,
whose last name is Clinton, the younger brother of somebody. He was
eventually convicted for dealing in cocaine and sent to prison.
The tapes revealed that Roger Clinton was a drug trafficker, not just
an addict who crossed the line. He can be heard describing how he used
to smuggle large amounts of cocaine right through the airports hidden
under his clothes. And I have a tape somebody is going to play for me
tomorrow where he says, I'm not worried about the cops surveilling me,
I've got other cops watching those cops, because I've got a friend in a
high place.
And it says, the most interesting comment he makes about the Governor
is, got to get some for my brother. He's got a nose like a vacuum
cleaner. Then there is the case of Charlene Wilson, currently serving a
prison term in Arkansas for drug offenses. She told the Sunday
Telegraph in London 2 years ago that she had supplied somebody with
cocaine during his first term. He was so messed up that night he slid
down the wall into a garbage can.
The story has credibility because she told it under oath to a Federal
grand jury in Little Rock in December of 1990. At the time she was an
informant for the 7th Judicial District drug task force in Arkansas.
Gene Duffy, the prosecutor in charge of the task force, talked to this
Wilson lady days after her grand jury appearance. She was terrified,
the drug task force person, the prosecutor, says, prosecutor Gene
Duffy, she was terrified. She said her house was being watched and she
made a big mistake, she shouldn't have talked.
{time} 2355
That was when she told me she testified about seeing someone get so
high on cocaine he fell into a garbage can. I have no doubt she was
telling the truth. What happens to her, Duffy? She's now in hiding in a
secret place somewhere in Texas.
What about Charlene Wilson. Charged with drug violations. In 1992 she
was sentenced to 31 years for selling a half ounce of marijuana and
$100 worth of methamphetamine to an informant. She protested she was
set up to eliminate her as a political liability and she appealed on
the grounds of entrapment. With the help of a brilliant Arkansas
lawyer, John Wesley Hall, her case went all the way to the U.S. Supreme
Court--across the street, Mr. Speaker. Finding a violation of her
constitutional rights, the court ordered the State of Arkansas to give
Ms. Wilson a fresh trial or set her free. She's being set free as of
November--probably after the election.
And what about those grand jury transcripts? They are secret, of
course, sealed in perpetuity, but every witness has the right to the
transcripts of their own testimony if they make a formal request.
So she will probably formally request them and we will get to see
them and it may be too late because America has a morality test, all
day long until the polls close, a morality test on November 5. And then
at the same time it has an IQ test to see what we are going to tell the
children in this country.
In this book, ``Partners In Power,'' page 325:
On one of the 1983-84 videotapes--I better give the publisher, Henry
Holt. Get this book, folks, Pop for the $27.50, for pete's sake. Henry
Hold, ``Partners In Power.''
A fabulous biographer, Roger Morris, writes:
Yeah, there was a mansion in the guest house, Roger answered, oh,
they love it. Even sketchy State trooper entry and exit logs at the
Governor's mansion would bear him out showing him coming and going at
the family quarters accompanies by females, girl, a friend, at least 36
times after February 7, 1983, the height of drug trafficking, and
guards recorded visits within days of the women that he was bringing.
Roger in with 2 females to change for party. Roger and girl going to
the mansion, 2 hours. Girl, in, out. And on one of the 1983-84
videotapes filmed by the local narcotics officers, Roger Clinton was
said to tell a supplier jauntily: Got to get some for my brother, he's
got a nose like a vacuum.
So there it is, folks. You want the line. Get the book. ``Partners In
Power.''
announcement by the speaker pro tempore
The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. MICA). The Chair must ask the gentleman
from California to suspend for a moment at this point.
The Chair would remind all Members that it is not in order to engage
in personalities toward the President. Although remarks in debate may
include criticism of the President's official actions or policy, it is
a breach of order to question the personal conduct of the President
whether by actual accusation or by mere insinuation.
The gentleman may proceed in order.
Mr. DORNAN. Mr. Speaker, I have a question.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. The gentleman will state his question.
Mr. DORNAN. If a Member has read--and, of course, I was talking about
this Member--over 10 books, traveled Arkansas, spoken to people, and
believes that a high public official was and may still be a cocaine
addict, do I not have a right to state that publicly on the floor of
this House?
The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair would respond not on the floor of
this House. And also in response to a question concerning the proper
bounds, the requirements of decorum in debate prohibit any personal
abuse of the
[[Page H11392]]
President spanning the full range of affronts from the attribution of
unworthy motives to name-calling.
The gentleman may proceed in order.
Mr. DORNAN. Mr. Speaker, then let me deviate in the remaining few
moments to point out the headline--these are public issues--the
headline of yesterday's Washington Times: ``In Jail, McDougal Plays
Media Queen,'' is cocky. In Dayroom 212 of Pod B of the Faulker County
Jail, she is the queen, she thinks she is going to get pardoned.
``Clinton's Words Fuel Pardon Talk. Will Whitewater Figures Go Free?''
Imagine if a Republican tried this. Today's headline: ``Whitewater Log
On Files Has 6-Month Gap.''
These people are being charged with looting banks, and the taxpayers
having to make up the difference, pirating money from banks, and if one
person is immune from discussion, then let us talk about all the
others. A person is known by the company he keeps.
I want to close discussing this rule XVII because people watching
this House may be confused about the separation of powers. To keep
order in this place, there is comity between Members and the Members in
the other body, and it can be stretched when one Member criticizes on
the Senate floor this Member for being a hobbyist on a gut-ripping
issue like POW issues and Missing In Action, but we have to have some
comity here.
But only in this Congress, the 104th Congress, was the office of the
President and the office of the Vice President put under the rules,
thereby damaging the separation of powers. I can assure you after I
file charges of impeachment, articles of impeachment, and I can do it
from zero to 1,000, after that, I will move when we reassemble, God
willing I am back and you are back, I will demand in our rules from our
leadership to finally show the guts to go back to the way this existed
for over 200 years, and have this separation of powers so that the
offices of the President and the Vice President are no longer included
in our rule XVIII that demands civility between ourselves.
Let me read one line about President Samper of Colombia: A scathing
assessment of the Bogota scene with its dozens of censored stories,
crippling folly and indolence, intellectual shallowness, and social and
mercenary corruption by the political world it is supposed to monitor,
resulting in a ``day of the locusts'' talk-show demagoguery by
liberals.
Mr. Speaker, when you read this, the reaction to a young person would
be holy schnikes, how did our great country come to all this corruption
and scandals?
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