[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 40 (Tuesday, April 8, 1997)]
[House]
[Page H1293]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




        CLINTON ADMINISTRATION SHOULD COME FORWARD WITH ANSWERS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 21, 1997, the gentleman from Ohio [Mr. Boehner] is recognized 
during morning hour debates for 5 minutes.
  Mr. BOEHNER. Mr. Speaker and my colleagues, a week ago I did not 
think the allegations about the Clinton administration's ethics could 
sink any lower. I thought the stories about top administration 
officials arranging hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of no-show 
jobs for Webster Hubbell in an effort to buy his silence about 
Whitewater was the worst we could ever hear about an administration, 
much less this one.
  However, with this bunch, if we want to be stung by new news of 
sleazy ethics, all we have to do is wait another day. Sure enough, now 
Bob Woodward of Watergate fame is writing in today's Washington Post 
about the Clinton administration's use of top secret information from 
the CIA for political purposes.
  According to this morning's Washington Post, Bob Woodward said that 
the White House supplied top secret information to the Democratic 
National Committee to block a Latvian businessman with alleged ties to 
organized crime from attending a $25,000-per-person fundraising dinner 
with President Clinton, according to Government officials and other 
sources.
  Now, let me say this about top secret information. There is a reason 
that it is top secret. Maybe it is the risk of blowing the cover of 
agents who risk their lives getting valuable information for our 
Government. Maybe it is to keep the bad guys, like international drug 
dealers and terrorists, from finding out about how we learn about them. 
But good people die to protect secret information, and if the Clinton 
administration truly disregarded all this just to avoid a bad headline 
in the next morning's paper, it is even worse than anything that we 
have heard yet.
  But I think the bigger question is, when will it end? Every day, 
every week there is something new. When will this administration level 
with the American people? When will the President of the United States 
stand before the American people and tell them the truth about what has 
happened in his administration over the last 4-plus years?
  When will the President stand before the American people and tell 
them the truth about the travel office firings of seven civil service 
employees at the White House? When will the President stand before the 
American people and tell them the truth about Whitewater? When will he 
tell them the truth about how 900 FBI files found their way into the 
White House, and more importantly, what was done with that information?
  Why will the President not stand up and tell us about Webster Hubbell 
and the $400,000-plus that was paid to him after he resigned his 
administration position with disgrace, and before he went to jail and 
were hired by friends of the President? Why will the President not tell 
us about the orchestrated effort to subvert American laws about 
campaign finance and bring foreign money into our campaign system? How 
about White House coffees that were used for fundraising purposes, 
phone calls by the President and others from the White House to raise 
money to systematically try to buy the last election?
  The American people have a right to know what happens in their 
Government. They have a right to know what happens in their White 
House. I think the American people want to have confidence that the 
person they selected as President of the United States is willing to 
stand before them and tell them the truth about what has happened in 
his administration.
  Mr. Speaker and my colleagues, I think the American people are 
getting impatient. They want to know the truth and they want to know it 
now.

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