[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 52 (Friday, May 1, 1998)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E739-E740]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                       KEY PRINCIPLES OF FREEDOM

                                 ______
                                 

                           HON. NEWT GINGRICH

                               of georgia

                    in the house of representatives

                        Thursday, April 30, 1998

  Mr. GINGRICH. Mr. Speaker, I believe that there are two key 
principles at the root of our freedoms. The first is the right of 
America's people to know the truth if a crime was committed, and the 
second is the principle that under the United States Constitution, no 
one is above the law.
  When 19 Democrats voted to deny immunity for four witnesses on 
illegal campaign contributions, they blocked the people's right to 
know. Michael Kelly's column explains the dangers facing Democrats if 
they decide that cover-up is a party principle. I commend this article 
to my colleagues.

               [From the Washington Post, Apr. 29, 1998]

                     The Case Against the Clintons

                           (By Michael Kelly)

       As we head into what is either going to be a summer dog 
     days or the summer when the last dog dies, the party line 
     among those who man President Clinton's high stone wall 
     against impeachment is that there is not any there here. 
     Tellingly, no one seriously makes the public argument that 
     Clinton is not guilty of at least some of the offenses of 
     which he has been accused--say, at least, perjury in the 
     Lewinsky matter.
       Instead, the liberals' defense goes like this: Okay, our 
     boy did a few things he maybe shouldna. But who amongst us is 
     poifect? And, anyway, these things weren't crimes, or they 
     shouldn't be. And, also anyway, the president's persecutors 
     are the real danger to the republic; their partisan, out-of-
     control witch hunt is far worse than any of the allegations 
     they are investigating. And so on, fortissimo, con allegro, 
     ad infinitum.
       There is one truffle of truth buried in all this: Clinton 
     certainly has enemies who seek to ruin his presidency. No 
     fair-minded person can impute fair-mindedness to Richard 
     Mellon Scaife, who has bankrolled years of anti-Clinton 
     scandal-mongering on several fronts, or to Congressman Dan 
     Burton, the chairman of the House Government Reform and 
     Oversight Committee investigation into Clinton's conduct 
     whose mask of magisterial impartiality slipped a wee bit 
     recently when he called the president a ``scumbag.''
       But it is always the case with politicians who are accused 
     of scandalous behavior that

[[Page E740]]

     at least some of their accusers are motivated by partisan 
     animus. That is the way it is in politics; that is the way it 
     was for Richard Nixon. Partisanship is relevant only when it 
     is corrupting--when the prosecutors are running not a fair 
     investigation but a railroad job. Is that the case here?
       First, to the accusation that Starr is, as Hillary Rodman 
     Clinton has said, ``scratching for dirt . . . doing 
     everything possible to try to make some accusation against my 
     husband.'' It is true that Starr repeatedly has expanded his 
     investigation from his original task of probing the 
     Whitewater land deal. But these expansions--into the death of 
     Vincent Foster, travelgate, the Lewinsky matter and other 
     areas--were undertaken at the request of, and with the 
     approval of, Clinton's own attorney general, Janet Reno, who 
     decided in each case that there was enough ``serious and 
     credible evidence'' of wrongdoing to mandate investigation.
       Was Reno right? Did these accusations merit investigation, 
     or do they represent, as the Clinton defense argues, the 
     criminalization of the ordinary business of politics and the 
     ordinary affairs of life?
       Here is the essence of the allegations: that a small group 
     of politically connected Arkansans, including the governor of 
     the state and his wife, abused power and privilege to 
     conspire in a series of thefts that ultimately caused the 
     failure of a savings and loan at a cost to taxpayers of $58 
     million; that, facing exposure, these political insiders 
     engaged in a long campaign of obstruction of justice, perjury 
     and intimidation of witnesses; that this behavior is part of 
     a pattern of abuse of power and that it extends to other 
     areas: for instance, in the president's sexual exploitation 
     of women who worked for him.
       Perhaps these allegations are false. Perhaps the officials 
     of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. were wrong when they 
     testified that a legal document drafted by Hillary Clinton 
     and Webster Hubbell in 1986 was used ``to deceive 
     regulators'' about the financing of the Castle Grande real 
     estate development, a project that the federal insurance 
     investigators have called ``a sham'' intended as a vehicle 
     for the insiders' fraud scheme. Perhaps Mrs. Clinton did not 
     commit perjury when she testified under oath that she did not 
     remember doing any legal work on the Castle Grande matter.
       Perhaps there is nothing criminal in the fact that friends, 
     aides and political benefactors of the president worked to 
     funnel $600,000 in make-work ``consulting fees'' to Hubbell 
     after he resigned in disgrace from the Justice Department and 
     while he was negotiating a plea bargain with Starr, a bargain 
     which Starr's prosecutors believe he reneged upon. Perhaps 
     the $600,000 was not hush money to the sole witness who 
     could, perhaps personally implicate Mrs. Clinton for 
     involvement in a fraud and for perjury.
       And perhaps the president did not have sex in the workplace 
     with a young female employee and perhaps he did not lie under 
     oath about this, nor encourage others to lie, nor otherwise 
     seek to obstruct justice. And perhaps he did not abuse his 
     position of privilege to make crude sexual advance to a woman 
     seeking employment, and perhaps he or his agents did not 
     encourage this woman and others to lie about this.
       Perhaps the truth will exonerate Clinton. But until then, 
     is it really liberalism's position that the truth isn't worth 
     finding out?

     

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