[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 146 (2000), Part 9]
[Senate]
[Page 12977]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]



            SEPARATING THE FACTS FROM THE PARTISAN RHETORIC

  Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, this statement is part of my continuing 
effort to bring clarity to the facts underlying the oversight 
investigations on campaign finance being pursued by Senator Specter 
within the Subcommittee on Administrative Oversight and the Courts. 
Staying focused on the facts becomes even more important as the volume 
of the political rhetoric continues to increase.
  Although oversight is an important function, there are obvious 
dangers of conducting oversight of pending matters. Applying, or 
seeming to apply, political pressure to pending matters has real 
consequences, which we are now seeing first-hand. Recently, the 
Judiciary Committee received requests for information from the defense 
attorney for Wen Ho Lee, a criminal defendant facing charges of 
improperly downloading classified information from computers at Los 
Alamos Nuclear Laboratory. Mr. Lee's defense attorney wants the 
Republican report on this matter, as well as other documents gathered 
during oversight, presumably to aid his defense or at least to get 
potential impeachment materials for prospective government witnesses.
  Just today we learned that the Committee has now also been dragged 
into the pending case of Maria Hsia, a criminal defendant who was 
recently convicted of campaign finance violations and is awaiting 
sentencing. Ms. Hsia's attorney apparently found the questioning of the 
Justice Department prosecutor in charge of her case at last week's 
hearing so offensive that it is now the basis for a claim that Ms. 
Hsia's sentencing should be delayed because to set a sentencing date 
now would only serve political purposes.
  Indeed, at a hearing of the Specter investigation on June 21, 2000, a 
Republican member of the Judiciary Committee queried Robert Conrad, the 
current head of the Justice Department Campaign Financing Task Force 
about the Hsia sentencing, despite Conrad's statements that he could 
not properly discuss pending matters. The Republican member stated that 
he expected Conrad to pursue Hsia's sentencing vigorously, and asked 
whether the government had filed a sentencing memorandum. After Conrad 
explained that the sentencing submissions had not yet been made, the 
Republican member stated: ``I would expect that you would pursue 
vigorously the sentencing phase of that case and that you personally 
would oversee it . . . I have seen some cases previously involving 
these very matters in which I believe the Department of Justice was not 
sufficiently aggressive toward sentencing.'' He then expounded his view 
that the ``only way'' a person convicted at trial could get a downward 
departure at sentencing is to cooperate fully and stated ``I would 
expect that you would treat this like any other case, that unless the 
defendant was prepared to testify fully and completely and provide 
information that you can verify, that you would not accept a 
recommendation of any downward departure.'' These comments clearly 
conveyed the Republican member's view that Maria Hsia should be treated 
harshly at sentencing,
  The Specter investigation has broken long-standing precedent and 
routinely demanded documents and testimony involving ongoing criminal 
matters. I have warned repeatedly that such interference risks that 
prosecutions may be compromised, more work will be generated for 
prosecutors, and political agendas will appear to take precedence over 
effective and fair law enforcement. Nevertheless, at Senator Specter's 
request, the majority on the Judiciary Committee has approved subpoenas 
in a number of ongoing criminal cases, including Wen Ho Lee, Peter Lee, 
who remains on probation and under court supervision, multiple campaign 
finance cases and investigations, and the Loral/Hughes matter.
  With respect to the Loral/Hughes matter, the Judiciary Committee 
approved issuance of a subpoena on May 11, 2000, to the Justice 
Department for ``any and all'' Loral and Hughes documents, over the 
objection of Wilma Lewis, the United States Attorney in D.C., which is 
conducting the investigation. Ms. Lewis explained that the United 
States Attorney's Office has ``an open active investigation'' into 
allegations of the unlicensed export of defense services and that 
thousands of documents in the possession of her office could be 
responsive to the pending requests from this Committee. Ms. Lewis 
explained that her office is at an ``important point'' in the 
investigation and will be making ``critical prosecutorial decisions and 
recommendations'' in the near future. She noted that if this Committee 
were to subpoena responsive documents from her office, not only would 
we adversely affect the investigation from a litigation standpoint, we 
also would be diverting the attention of the key prosecutors in that 
case. Instead of working diligently to conclude their investigation, 
these prosecutors would now be required to sift through thousands of 
documents and to redact those documents to protect grand jury material. 
The majority on the Senate Judiciary Committee refused to honor the 
U.S. Attorney's request and approved the subpoena.
  The subject of the Vice President's attendance at coffees was the 
focus of inquiry at the Judiciary Committee's recent hearing with the 
Attorney General this week. In summary, the Vice President indicated in 
response to general questions during an interview with Justice 
Department prosecutors on April 18, 2000, that he had no concrete 
recollection of attending the coffees though may have attended one 
briefly. He fully acknowledged the fact that coffees took place and 
explained his understanding of their purpose.
  Two days after the interview, on April 20th, the Vice President's 
attorney, James Neal, sent a letter to Conrad clarifying the Vice 
President's recollection since he had not been advised before the 
interview that this subject matter would come up. Neal explained that 
the Vice President ``understood your questions about Coffees to concern 
the Coffees hosted by the President in the White House.'' Based upon a 
record review, the Vice President ``was designated to attend four White 
House Coffees. The Vice President hosted approximately twenty-one 
Coffees in the Old Executive Office Building. He did not understand 
your questions to include the OEOB Coffees.'' Indeed, Conrad refers 
repeatedly in his questions on this subject to ``White House coffees'' 
or ``White House hosted . . . coffees''.
  There is absolutely nothing unusual about witnesses in depositions or 
even in testimony at Congressional hearings supplementing or clarifying 
the record after the completion of their testimony. In fact, this 
common practice is embodied in Rule 30 of the Federal Rules of Civil 
Procedure, which grants deponent thirty days after the transcript is 
available to review the transcript and recite any changes in the 
testimony given. The same rules apply to depositions taken in criminal 
matters, under Rule 15(d) of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure.
  At the June 27th Judiciary Committee hearing, one Republican member 
asserted that ``there is a question of the coffees,'' without 
identifying the question. To the extent this implies that there is 
something wrong with clarifying a record with a letter shortly after 
providing testimony, this can be summed up as just more partisan haze.

                          ____________________