[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 122 (Tuesday, September 15, 1998)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E1721-E1722]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




    A BIPARTISAN PROCESS SHOULD BE FUNDAMENTALLY FAIR TO ALL PARTIES

                                 ______
                                 

                         HON. JOHN CONYERS, JR.

                              of michigan

                    in the house of representatives

                      Tuesday, September 15, 1998

  Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Speaker, there was much discussion, in the media and 
in the halls of Congress, about how Congress would handle Independent 
Counsel Kenneth W. Starr's report on President Clinton. While members 
on both sides of the aisle agreed to work on a bipartisan basis, there 
remained an important area of contention. The failure to resolve that 
issue resulted in a process that is fundamentally unfair to the subject 
of the report, the President.
  The President's private attorney, David Kendall, requested from Mr. 
Starr that he allow the President's legal team to see a copy of the 
report before transmitting it to Congress. Mr. Starr denied Mr. 
Kendall's request and delivered the report to Congress without 
including the President's views. There was, however, another 
opportunity for the President to be given a chance to read the report 
and submit any additional views. Speaker Gingrich claimed repeatedly 
that there was no precedent for letting the President review the report 
even before it is released to the public. I respectfully disagree. 
There are several precedents for granting the targets such a period of 
review.
  First, in August of 1993, the judges who supervised Special 
Prosecutor Lawrence Walsh's Iran-Contra investigation gave the targets 
of the investigation 30 days to read the report and submit comments. 
After releasing to the public in unclassified portions of the report 
and the subjects' comments, the court

[[Page E1722]]

sent the classified portions of the report and the comments to 
Congress. The subjects' rebuttals to the allegations in Mr. Walsh's 
report were, in fact, twice as long as the report itself.
  Second, when the Speaker was charged with filing inaccurate and 
misleading information that resulted in his paying a fine of $300,000, 
he received an advance copy of the statement of allegations. In 
addition, the Speaker was quoted as saying that Investigator Cole's 
report should be made public only after the Speaker had time to review 
it.
  Also, in 1985, during the Judiciary Committee's investigation into 
the Justice Department's withholding of EPA agency documents from 
Congress, the Committee permitted the persons whose conduct was being 
investigated to review the draft and submit rebuttal information.
  Even in Watergate the Judiciary Committee received grand jury 
evidence in closed-door hearings for seven weeks with the President's 
lawyer in the same room. The materials received by the Committee were 
not released to the public until the conclusion of this evidentiary 
presentation, well after the White House had full knowledge of the 
material being considered by the Committee.
  Three of the examples above concerned matters of a magnitude far less 
than an impeachment inquiry. Even in those instances, the subjects were 
given the opportunity to include their comments in the report before 
the report went to Congress. I find it highly objectionable that the 
President would not be given rights that were given to other targets in 
less historic investigations. I urge my colleagues to be fundamentally 
fair to all of the parties involved in this matter, including the 
target.

                          ____________________