[Congressional Record Volume 146, Number 47 (Thursday, April 13, 2000)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2788-S2789]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                     INDEPENDENT COUNSEL ROBERT RAY

  Mr. LEVIN. Mr. President, I rise tonight to speak in support of the 
remarks that were made earlier today by the distinguished Senator from 
Nevada, Mr. Reid. Senator Reid spoke eloquently about the need for 
Robert Ray, the independent counsel who assumed duties when Kenneth 
Starr resigned, to bring that investigation of the President to a 
close.
  The report earlier this week in the Washington Post that Mr. Ray is 
increasing his budget and his staff in contemplation of a possible 
indictment of the President after the President leaves office is 
chilling. Senator Reid is right to remind Mr. Ray that this is the 
United States and not a country such as the old Soviet Union where the 
abuse of the administration of law was used as a political weapon.
  Mr. Ray apparently justifies the continuation of his office and his 
consideration of an indictment of the President because of his 
commitment to the principle that no one is above the law.
  Certainly in this country that principle is fundamental. That was the 
theory behind establishing the independent counsel law in the first 
place. But that principle has two other equally important applications. 
One is that it means Mr. Ray himself is not above the law; and, two, 
while it is imperative that top Government officials be treated no 
better than private citizens, it is equally important that they should 
also be treated no worse.
  The independent counsel law requires that the independent counsel 
operate as a normal U.S. attorney and that the independent counsel 
comply with the policies and practices of the Department of Justice.
  We require this in the law because we do not want our top Government 
officials to be treated worse than a private citizen. Yes, we want to 
make sure our top Government officials do not get preferential 
treatment, but equally important, we do not want them to be treated 
unfairly either.
  Mr. Ray projects he is going to spend an additional $3.5 million in 
the next 6 months sifting through the evidence to determine whether or 
not he should indict the President for perjury in a civil case.
  Do any of us think that a U.S. attorney would spend 2 years and tens 
of millions of dollars investigating a possible perjury charge in a 
civil suit to begin with? Does anyone think a U.S. attorney would then 
ask for or receive six new attorneys, additional investigators and 
contractors, and an additional $3.5 million of taxpayers' money on top 
of the 40 staff people and above the $52 million that the office had 
already spent to investigate?
  The facts in the Lewinsky case have been sliced and diced and parsed 
and sifted through over and over again. They have been brutally 
revealed and thoroughly reviewed detail by detail.
  If Mr. Ray is not to be above the law himself, and if he is to abide 
by the principle he claims to hold dear, then he should do what a U.S. 
attorney would do in a case like this involving a private citizen--
bring it to a close.
  The purpose of the independent counsel law is to fairly investigate 
top Government officials so they are treated no better and no worse 
than a private citizen. It is, instead, being used to pillory.
  Nineteen months ago, Mr. Ray's predecessor, Kenneth Starr--surely a 
dogged independent counsel--represented to Congress that he was going 
to end the investigation ``soon.'' That was Mr. Starr's word, ``soon.''
  Mr. Starr represented the following to the House of Representatives 
on September 11, 1998:

       All phases of the investigation are now nearing completion. 
     This Office will soon make final decisions about what steps 
     to take, if any, with respect to the other information it has 
     gathered.

  Those were Mr. Starr's words 19 months ago when he made the 
representation to the Congress of the United States and the people of 
the United States that his office would soon make final decisions about 
what steps to take, if any.
  Mr. Ray's statement, as reported in the Washington Post, that this is 
still an open investigation and that he wants six new attorneys and 
$3.5 million more belies Mr. Starr's formal representation to the 
Congress and to the

[[Page S2789]]

people. In commenting on Mr. Ray's latest statements, Pulitzer Prize 
winning columnist Maureen Dowd noted that even Javert, the driven 
policeman in the book ``Les Miserables,'' who was singularly focused on 
capturing Jean Valjean ``jumped into the Seine at some point.''
  I am not urging Mr. Ray to jump into the Potomac. I am saying--and I 
am confident that this is the opinion of the majority of the people in 
our country--that Mr. Ray needs to bring this investigation to a close 
and to do it now.
  The Lewinsky matter is over. The Paula Jones case is over. They were 
traumatic times for the country. The public has suffered. The President 
has been punished. It is time to move on. To extend this investigation 
with new attorneys and more money and more time is to punish the 
country. The country doesn't deserve it.
  Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that today's editorial from 
the New York Times entitled ``Reining in Robert Ray'' and today's op-ed 
piece from the Washington Post by Richard Cohen entitled ``Independent 
Counsel Overkill'' be printed in the Record.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

                [From the New York Times, Apr. 13, 2000]

                         Reining In Robert Ray

       There are worrying signs that Robert Ray, the career 
     prosecutor who succeeded Kenneth Starr as independent counsel 
     investigating President Clinton, shares his clumsy 
     predecessor's problem in winding up an investigation. Mr. Ray 
     at this point should have a concise two-point agenda--to 
     deliver a report summing up the findings of his office, and 
     then go home. Instead he is beefing up his staff. Moreover, 
     he makes it no secret that he is actively considering 
     indicting Mr. Clinton after he leaves office in connection 
     with the same issues that were argued at the impeachment 
     trial last year.
       In other words, Mr. Ray intends to drag out his mandate 
     nine more months. ``It is an open investigation,'' he told 
     The Washington Post this week. ``There is a principle to be 
     vindicated, and that principle is that no person is above the 
     law, even the president of the United States.''
       Mr. Ray is right about that principle, and we have 
     consistently favored vigorous inquires into the president's 
     personal and campaign finances and his truthfulness under 
     oath.
       But respect for the rule of law does not require a 
     suspension of reasonable prosecutorial discretion.
       It would be a disservice to the Constitution to set a new 
     precedent of indicting former presidents over offenses 
     adjudicated in the context of impeachment that received an 
     adequate and punishing airing in the Senate trial. Responding 
     to the new stirrings in the independent counsel's office, 
     Vice President Gore said yesterday that Mr. Clinton had no 
     intention of pardoning himself should he be indicted while 
     president, or accepting a pardon from his successor. That is 
     laudable, if true. Yet the possibility of criminal charges 
     against the president should not be on the table at this late 
     date. The nation has moved on, and once he has completed his 
     overdue reports, so should Mr. Ray.
                                  ____


               [From the Washington Post, Apr. 13, 2000]

                      Independent Counsel Overkill

                           (By Richard Cohen)

       Something happens to an ordinary man when he becomes an 
     independent counsel. His chest must swell, his biceps must 
     bulge and he probably cannot pass a phone booth without 
     feeling the urge to change his clothes. Such a man is Robert 
     W. Ray, the successor to Ken Starr, who earlier this week 
     told The Post he just might indict Bill Clinton after the 
     president leaves office. Stay in that phone booth, Bob.
       Ray's warning is backed by a reconstitution of the office. 
     Six new lawyers have been hired. A new investigator has been 
     brought on board. An FBI agent has been detailed to the 
     staff, and Ray plans to spend even more money in the next six 
     months than he has in the last--for a total of $6.6 million. 
     From what he says and the way he has been acting, it seems 
     Ray might put the cuffs on Clinton just as the new president 
     says, ``So help me God.''
       Why? ``There is a principle to be vindicated,'' he told The 
     Post's David Vise, ``and that principle is that no person is 
     above the law, even the president of the United States.'' 
     This, of course, is the sort of thing you find chiseled over 
     courthouse doors, contradicted only by what transpires in the 
     courthouse itself. Some people are above the law. The 
     envelope, please.
       The first is Richard Nixon. Guilty of obstruction of 
     justice, of using our very government to cover up his crimes 
     and lying so often about so much that I don't think he spoke 
     the truth for his entire last year in office, he nonetheless 
     was given a deal: resign the presidency and you will not be 
     indicted. Just to make the deal sweeter, Gerald Ford, his 
     successor, pardoned him.
       Next comes Spiro T. Agnew, Nixon's first vice president. A 
     more mendacious fellow never occupied that office. He 
     extorted. He accepted bribes. He lied. Yet he too was allowed 
     to resign his office, pay a wee fine--and go his merry way. 
     An ordinary man would have gone to jail. Agnew too was above 
     the law.
       These are not happy facts, but they are true nevertheless. 
     They reflect a coming to terms with reality that, in the end, 
     persuaded prosecutors to abandon their plans to seek 
     indictments. The stakes were greater than the fate of a 
     single man and, besides, some felt Nixon and Agnew had been 
     punished enough. They were ruined men.
       The reality is that Clinton, too, has already paid a 
     penalty. He is only the second president to be impeached and 
     he has undergone the most mortifying and virtually molecular 
     examination of his private life. To most Americans, the 
     matter must seem closed. It sure seemed that way to Richard 
     Posner, the federal judge whose wisdom was recently enlisted 
     in a vain attempt to settle the government's case against 
     Microsoft.
       Posner is the author of a book about the Clinton 
     investigation, ``An Affair of State,'' for which he was 
     criticized by Ronald Dworkin, a New York University law 
     professor who is as eminent on the left as Posner is on the 
     right. Dworkin wrote recently in the New York Review of Books 
     that as a sitting judge, Posner should never have written 
     about an ``impending'' case.
       Nonsense, replied Posner in the current issue. ``A 
     prosecution of President Clinton, while conceivable as a 
     theoretical possibility, is not imminent and in fact will 
     almost certainly never happen.'' He even restated it by 
     saying, ``Almost no issue of policy has a smaller probability 
     of someday becoming a legal case.'' Clearly, Robert Ray has 
     not read Posner.
       But he should. We all know Clinton lied. We all believe he 
     perjured himself, and I, for one, do not excuse him for any 
     of it. A president, of all people, should not lie under oath. 
     Still, it has all been played out, talked to death in the 
     House and Senate, yakked to smithereens on television and 
     bound for posterity by Ken Starr.
       Ray can indict Clinton anywhere he has a grand jury. But 
     Washington's the town where the president works, where he 
     lives and where he was deposed. If there was a crime, 
     Washington's the crime scene. A trial there would mean a jury 
     pool drawn from a majority black city where, in most 
     neighborhoods, no one has seen a Republican since the 
     Garfield administration. But no matter where he was tried, it 
     likely would be by people who feel that a person who lies 
     about sex, while technically wrong, is guilty only of 
     committing common sense. A conviction is out of the question.
       Give it up Bob. Your best way of serving the country is to 
     close down your office, lock the door and put Clinton behind 
     you.
       Much of the country already has.

                          ____________________