[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 30, Number 10 (Monday, March 14, 1994)]
[Pages 462-470]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
Remarks Announcing the Appointment of Lloyd Cutler as Special Counsel to 
the President and an Exchange With Reporters

March 8, 1994

    The President. Ladies and gentlemen, I am honored to announce the 
appointment of Lloyd Cutler as Special Counsel to the President, a 
position I know he will fill with distinction.
    Lloyd Cutler is a fitting person to fill this important role. He was 
Counsel to President Carter, a leading member of the American bar, one 
of our foremost experts on issues of governance, ethics, and the 
Presidency, a person who has demonstrated throughout his career an 
abiding commitment to the values and to the ethic of public service.
    In Lloyd Cutler, the White House has secured the service of a man of 
seasoned judgment, impeccable professional credentials, and the highest 
ethical standards. He'll provide a firm, uncompromising, and steady hand 
in a position of the utmost importance to me and to my administration.
    In selecting a new Counsel, the criterion of greatest importance to 
me was that we find an eminent lawyer who could step into the role 
immediately and bring to the job the stature, the standards, and the 
experience that the American people expect. In short, I wanted a Lloyd 
Cutler-type of lawyer, so I just decided I would go to the original 
first and see how I could do.
    There is nothing more important to me or to this administration or 
to our ability to carry out the agenda of change and renewal that 
brought us here than to secure, maintain, and deserve the trust of the 
American people. Throughout my career, I have been committed to the 
highest standards of public service, and so has Lloyd Cutler. I'm glad 
he has been willing to answer the call to service once again.
    In welcoming him to the White House, I also want to again express my 
deep gratitude for the service that Bernie Nussbaum rendered this 
administration. His leadership contributed markedly to the appointments 
of Judge Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Attorney General Janet Reno, the FBI 
Director, Louie Freeh, and, I believe, the best qualified and clearly 
the most diverse group of American Federal judges in our history. I will 
always be grateful for that service and for his friendship.
    While Lloyd Cutler will play an important role in maintaining the 
highest ethical conduct in this administration, let me emphasize this 
point: On ethics, as with every other issue, it is the President who 
must set the standard. At this stage in his career, a stage at which no 
one would have blamed him for resting on his laurels and resisting this 
entreaty, Lloyd Cutler has chosen once again to roll up his sleeves and 
to serve his country. And for that, I thank him.
    Welcome back to the White House.
    Lloyd Cutler. Mr. President, I am honored by this appointment, and I 
will do my best to serve you and the country. And I am especially 
honored to have the opportunity to serve under this President who has 
already accomplished so much in just a short year and has so much 
promise of achievements to come.
    This is hardly the way I expected to spend the spring of 1994. I am 
a senior citizen, you can see, and from direct experience, I know the 
intensity and the rigors of this job. And I have, therefore, limited my 
commitment with the President's permission--I had to negotiate hard for 
it--to a period of months.
    The role of White House Counsel has many aspects, but I intend to 
concentrate on what the President just told you is his goal, that the 
procedures and the actions necessary to maintain public confidence in 
the integrity and the openness of the Presidency. In Government, as in 
other aspects of life, trust is the coin of the realm. And Mr. 
President, I pledge myself to do what I can to assure that that trust is 
maintained.

Whitewater Investigation

    Q. Mr. President, can you tell us about other contacts that your 
aides have acknowl- 

[[Page 463]]

edged now that emerged through the document search, and the interviewing 
that had apparently taken place between regulators and White House 
officials, and what you know about it? And secondly, can you tell us 
whether you will agree to Mr. Leach's request that your Chief of Staff 
and other top officials testify before the House Banking Committee?
    The President. First, let me say that based on what we know, based 
on what we know now--and remember I asked everybody to go find out 
everything they could find out--any contacts were incidental and were 
followup conversations which had nothing to do with the substance of the 
RTC investigations. This, like everything else, is an issue on which we 
intend to cooperate fully with the Special Counsel. We welcome his 
inquiry. We want to clear the air, and we will do that.
    With regard to the question of hearings, maybe I ought to let Mr. 
Cutler respond to that since it's the first thing we'll be dealing with. 
But we have discussed it, and I am fully in accord with his 
recommendations. So maybe I should let him----
    Q. [Inaudible]--recommendations?
    Mr. Cutler. Well, as I understand it, at this point, the Special 
Counsel has requested the congressional committees not to hold hearings, 
and that request is still under consideration by the House Banking 
Committee. But if the House Banking Committee should decide to ask the 
list of people who Mr. Leach has identified to testify, it would be my 
recommendation that everyone in the White House cooperate.
    Q. How will you handle your own personal divestiture from your law 
firm, conflict of interest issues for yourself? Are you going to go 
through the usual recusal that a White House Counsel who would stay a 
long time would go through?
    Mr. Cutler. Yes, I am, Rita [Rita Braver, CBS News].
    Q. Mr. President, do you think you made a mistake by not bringing in 
Washington insiders into your administration in the first place, since 
you obviously, every time there's a crisis, you'll fall back on them? 
And while I have the floor, Senator Dole has said that congressional 
Republicans will campaign against Democrats if you don't go along with 
holding hearings. I know that won't come as a surprise, but----
    The President. Let me answer the first question first. I think that 
when we started out this administration, we had a lot of Washington 
experience in the Cabinet and not as much in the White House. And I 
think that the culture here and the whole procedures here are quite 
different than they are in most any other place in the country. And I 
think it's something we have to be very sensitive to.
    I also think, as I said before and I'll say again, it's important 
for me that I have a high level of confidence in the procedures, that 
the way we're operating is the right way to operate, and that you have a 
high level of confidence in the procedures. Because I can tell you, I'm 
not going to do anything to abuse my authority. I'm not going to 
knowingly ever do anything to undermine the respect of the American 
people for the Presidency. And I think Lloyd Cutler can help us to do 
that.
    Now, on the question of what Senator Dole said, I will just remind 
all of you one more time that it was all the Republicans who were 
clamoring for a Special Counsel--clamoring, saying this is all we want. 
And then all of you wanted it. And all I've tried to do is to cooperate 
fully with the Special Counsel and to let the Special Counsel do his 
job. If the Republicans are finally being honest that they want to make 
political hay out of this and that that's their real concern, I think 
the American people have noticed that a long time ago. I think it is 
obvious to them. And I think that it's not for me to give them political 
advice, but I do not believe that the politics of personal destruction 
is what the American people are interested in.
    I am cooperating. I am not doing what some people have done in the 
past. I am cooperating. I am being open. I'm going to work to make this 
whole process a success, and I'm going to let the other people do and 
say whatever they want to do.
    Q. Mr. President, does your recruitment of a Lloyd Cutler say 
something about at least the perception of a lapse of ethical judgment?
    The President. Well, I think, you know, maybe I ought to let, again, 
Mr. Cutler say

[[Page 464]]

something about that. I do not have any information that anyone has done 
anything wrong, that anyone has tried to use the authority of the White 
House in any way, shape, or form. And I can tell you for darned sure, I 
haven't. And I would--there's a difference in perception and--perception 
is something like beauty; it's in the eye of the beholder. And as I 
said, one of the things that I want to do is to make sure that we have 
procedures here where there will be no doubt of that. I think we've 
already done that by constructing a firewall so that we can't have 
information even coming in to us, even if our people are passive 
recipients of it, unless it is an appropriate thing to do. And I think 
Mr. Cutler agrees that it was the right thing to do.
    Q. The First Lady is quoted in a magazine interview today as 
ascribing the Whitewater matter to what she calls a, quote, ``well-
organized and well-financed attempt to undermine my husband and by 
extension myself.'' She isn't any more specific than that. Would it now 
be appropriate, sir, for her to hold a news conference to explain what 
she means by that and to answer questions about her role in this and 
other matters, sir?
    The President. I think I'll let her speak for herself, but I think 
surely it has not escaped you that this is not a disorganized set of 
comments we're getting out of the Republicans, that this happened over a 
long period of time, and that the nature of that has not been looked 
into with anything like the intensity or longevity of the matter itself. 
But no, I think her words speak for themselves. She's perfectly capable 
of speaking for herself.
    Q. Well, could I follow up by asking Mr. Cutler if that's what he 
thinks is behind this whole matter, and that's the problem he's trying 
to rectify?
    Mr. Cutler. I think I'll stick to giving legal advice.
    Q. Mr. President.
    The President. Yes.
    Q. Mr. President, the Senator from New York, D'Amato, was on the 
Senate floor this morning, and despite your passionate defense of the 
First Lady yesterday, he said, specifically referring to Mrs. Clinton, 
quote, ``Were you briefed by your Chief of Staff, Maggie Williams, about 
her meeting with Roger Altman, the Deputy Secretary of the Treasury, and 
did you know it was wrong?'' Do you know if Mrs. Clinton was briefed by 
Maggie Williams about that meeting that Roger Altman had here at the 
White House?
    The President. Is Senator D'Amato aware that there was an ethics 
council opinion that the meeting was not improper? Maybe the ethics 
council was wrong. Look, the Republicans have decided that Senator 
D'Amato will be the ethical spokesman for the Republican Party in the 
Congress. That is their right to do that. I'm not in the business of 
answering his questions. I am cooperating with the Special Counsel.
    Gwen [Gwen Ifill, New York Times].
    Q. Mr. President, when Bernie Nussbaum gave you his letter of 
resignation, he said that he felt that he was the victim of an unfair 
standard in Washington about what a lawyer should be to a President. I 
would like to ask you and Mr. Cutler whether you agree with Mr. 
Nussbaum's assessment.
    The President. I think there is--I think all of us recognize--I saw 
where one of the Washington lawyers the other day said there was a 
curious navigation in this community between law and politics and the 
press about what is perceived to be ethical or not ethical. I think it 
is clear that I don't think Bernie Nussbaum thought for a minute he was 
doing anything wrong or thought for a minute he was doing anything other 
than trying to represent the President in a perfectly appropriate way.
    We are looking into and the Special Counsel is going to look into 
the facts here. I don't want to comment about that. I can say that I do 
not believe that he thought that he was doing anything amiss.
    Mr. Cutler. I've been a personal friend of Bernie Nussbaum's for 
quite a while. I talked to him when he first came down as Counsel. I 
agree with the President that Bernie has never had an unethical or 
improper thought or bone in his body. He must have believed that 
everything he did was entirely correct. And at least based on what I've 
read in the newspapers, it isn't at all clear that any of these meetings 
were called by him.
    Q. I didn't hear----
    Q. If I could just follow up----
    Mr. Cutler. I said it is not clear that any of these meetings were 
initiated by him.

[[Page 465]]

    Q. Speaking more generally about the role of the Counsel, and 
whether the Counsel is supposed to be--whether the Counsel is unfairly 
held to a standard, when he says he's supposed to represent the 
President no matter what?
    Mr. Cutler. The Counsel is supposed to be Counsel for the President 
in office and for the Office of the Presidency, as many people have 
said. Most of the time those two standards coincide. Almost always the 
advice you would give the President is advice that is in the interest of 
the Office of the Presidency. I don't think there is much of a dichotomy 
between the two. When it comes to a President's private affairs, 
particularly private affairs that occurred before he took office, those 
should be handled by his own personal private counsel and, in my view, 
not by the White House Counsel.
    Q. May I follow up on that, sir? Without the benefit of hindsight, 
let's consider hypothetically, had you been White House Counsel, would 
you have raised some kind of flag about the meetings to which Mr. 
Nussbaum was privy? Do you think you would have?
    Mr. Cutler. That's like, would you have passed on third down or 
would you have had a draw play. I don't want to get into that.
    Q. Would that be clear in your mind? You would not know if it were 
clear in your mind?
    Mr. Cutler. I'd have to know the facts and the circumstances, and I 
think Bernie Nussbaum had a lot of bad luck.
    Q. Will you let such meetings go forward in the future then? Are you 
saying that this would be appropriate in the future?
    Mr. Cutler. Steps have been taken to be sure that any such meeting 
in the future would be a meeting that the White House Counsel would 
decide whether to hold or not, and that is what has been done.
    The President. Let me explain that, if I might. If you'll note that 
there was--I think the problem here, and this may go to the questions 
that all of you are asking, including the question Helen [Helen Thomas, 
United Press International] asked, is that there was a certain--and your 
perception of it, I think, may be rooted in the fact that there was a 
certain kind of ad hoc quality to it. That is, what we should have had 
and what we now have is an organized firewall, so that an advance 
judgment would have to be made before every meeting and every telephone 
conversation by someone charged with the responsibility for making that 
judgment and someone with the requisite knowledge to make it. That, I 
think, is the problem, so that these things that don't just happen by 
happenstance in an area which is highly charged and of great public 
interest. I think that is the issue, is setting up a system.
    We believe we now have a system that will work. So that if in the 
future you come to us and say, ``Was there a meeting? Was there a 
conversation?'' we'll be able to say, ``No, there wasn't,'' or, ``Yes, 
there was. Here's what happened. Here's who approved it. Here's why it 
occurred.'' Boom. And instead of having what happened happen, where 
everybody tries to go back and reconstitute, in effect, a set of things 
that just sort of occurred in serial fashion where there was no 
organized dealing with this, I think we have dealt with it now in an 
appropriate way. I don't think we will have this problem again.
    Q. Mr. President, there have been any one of a number of aides or 
officials who have blamed a lot of the, whatever you want to call it, 
mess that we're dealing with here, as you've said, not on any sort of 
allegation of wrongdoing or criminal admission of a sort but on the way 
things were handled. You've talked about how this issue is going to be 
handled from here on out. Is anything going to change in the way the 
operation is done here that would guard against the way the White House 
handles issues of this sort so as to prevent another Whitewater from 
coming up?
    The President. First of all, let's just talk about this. Now, 
remember, be careful when you use language. This White House has not 
initiated any effort to do anything improper. This White House has not 
attempted to cover up any information. We are uncovering information and 
making extraordinary efforts to do so. What we are trying to do is to 
have some daily procedures here that will--and systems that will guard 
against any misunderstandings of this kind in the future. Do we need 
some changes in the system? Is Lloyd Cutler the person to help us do 
that? I think the answer is yes. I think he understands how to strike 
the proper balance in what kind of

[[Page 466]]

institutional changes we might have to undertake and just in the way we 
operate here so that the Office of the President and the President in 
office can both be properly represented.
    Q. Could I follow that, sir? You have not even been accused of doing 
anything improper, and yet, look at the cost: diversion from your 
policies, from your message for weeks, if not months. Are you bitter 
about this, sir? And are we wrong for pursuing it the way we have? The 
press corps, I'm talking about.
    The President. The answer is--am I bitter about it? No.
    Q. Why not?
    The President. Because I think as you grow older, bitterness is 
something you have to learn to put aside. As you strive to be more 
mature, one of the things you have to give up in life is your bitterness 
about everything. You have to work through that. That's part of my 
personal mission in life. It has nothing to do with being President, 
really.
    I also think you can't be a very good President if you're consumed 
with bitterness. If I wake up every day all agitated about this, then I 
can't deal with the problems of the people. If I'm thinking about me, I 
can't be thinking about them. The American people hired me.
    Now, you will have to make a judgment. The only thing I have--I will 
just reiterate what you said. I've still not been accused of anything 
wrong, because I haven't done anything wrong. And I'm not going to do 
anything wrong. I revere the responsibility that I have been given, and 
I am not going to abuse it.
    Do I expect to learn something out of this? Do I expect Lloyd Cutler 
to bring something special to this White House and help us to then have 
a procedure that has the confidence of you and the American people? Yes, 
I do. I think we'll do better.
    Do I think we're in danger of spending too much time on it? That's 
why I wanted the Special Counsel. If you'll go back, when I had said--I 
said, I'm for the Special Counsel. Let him do the job. Let us do that. 
Let's don't fill the airwaves talking about something that we need to 
draw definitive conclusions about, and that's what the Special Counsel 
will do. And I hope earnestly that we can go back to doing just that. 
That's what is in the public interest, to let the Special Counsel do the 
job and not clutter up the public life of this country with something 
that's going to be clearly and firmly resolved, eventually.
    Q. I'm a little bit confused with the procedures that have been in 
place since the start of your administration. They were reiterated after 
these meetings were discovered. I'm a little confused about what exactly 
in the next 6 months you expect Mr. Cutler to do, and maybe both you and 
he could talk about what you think he'll bring, other than the symbolism 
of his presence.
    The President. First of all, the procedures have not been in place. 
We never had any--if you go back to the facts as we know them and based 
on what I know, based on what you know, based on what's been reported, 
we did not have a centralized system for saying, hey, all these issues, 
before there is any contact, even if all we're doing is responding to 
somebody else, there needs to be some central vetting point. That is a 
significant firewall that we have created that did not exist beforehand.
    Maybe you want to say something else.
    Mr. Cutler. In the future--and many of these processes have already 
been put into effect by the Deputy Counsel--in the future, whenever a 
question arises as to whether a particular meeting should be held or a 
communication should be made or received, relating to an investigation 
or an enforcement action concerning what we might call a high political 
person, someone in the White House or high in one of the Cabinet 
Departments, it will be the White House Counsel who will after careful 
reflection decide whether there should be such a meeting or a 
communication. And he will make a careful record of what happens so that 
it will be available if questions are raised later on.
    There are many, many communications between the President and the 
President's lawyer. After all, the President is the enforcement official 
of the Executive branch. It is his constitutional duty to take care that 
the laws be faithfully executed. And there are many entirely proper 
communications with the enforcement authorities about policy,

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about cases being brought against third parties--about cases being 
brought, for example, against, let's say, a Republican Member of 
Congress--where the President might need a heads-up because it may be a 
big news event. All of those things are perfectly normal and perfectly 
proper and have always existed.
    There are other cases where a meeting or a communication, either 
because no record is made--even though the communication was innocent, 
nobody can really prove what happened--there are many cases where it is 
inadvisable to have that kind of communication. And the decision will 
have to be made, and it will be made by the White House Counsel and the 
Deputy Counsel as to whether there should be a communication or not.
    Q. Mr. President, to follow up on a question from yesterday that 
perhaps you've had a chance----
    The President. Wait, let him go first.
    Q. All right, I'm sorry.
    Q. Mr. Cutler, you said that you will remain aboard for 130 days. 
But the special prosecutor seems to have taken rent out in Little Rock 
for a longer period of time. Would you reconsider, sir, staying longer 
if the case merits your presence here?
    Mr. Cutler. I've put a limit on how long I would stay in part 
because I know how tough a job this is and I know how old I am, in part 
because I'm married fairly recently to a very young and peppy wife and I 
want to spend some more time with her. If something happens, I'll decide 
when the event comes. [Laughter]
    The President. I can't compete with that. [Laughter]
    Peter [Peter Maer, Westwood One Radio], go ahead.
    Q. Thank you, sir. To follow up on a question that came up yesterday 
that perhaps you've had a chance to discuss with Mr. Cutler, have you 
decided whether you're going to be able to preclude invoking executive 
privilege and the lawyer-client relationship in response to all of these 
inquiries?
    The President. Well, let me say this. I don't know that--obviously, 
I have no way of knowing what will come up. But it is hard for me to 
imagine a case in which I would invoke it. In other words--again, I 
can't imagine everything that--it's difficult for me--I thought about it 
a little bit, and we've talked about it a little bit. My interest in 
here is to get the facts out, fix the procedures for the future, get the 
facts out about what was known here and what happened, and cooperate 
with the Special Counsel. So I can't--it's hard for me to imagine a 
circumstance in which that would be an appropriate thing for me to do.
    Go ahead, Karen [Karen Ball, New York Daily News].
    Q. You were covered by the subpoena for documents. Did you have any 
notes or memos or anything that you had to give to--to pass on to Mr. 
Fiske?
    The President. I didn't in my possession. I told them that any notes 
I have--if I make any handwritten notes about any kind of conversations 
that occur to me, I give them all to--I would have given them to Mr. 
Podesta or someone in the White House to file in an appropriate way, so 
they can go look and see. I don't remember any that I have.
    Q. You didn't search----
    The President. I didn't because I don't have any in my briefcase 
that I take home at night or anything like that. I have no such 
documents.
    Q. Are you saying, Mr. President, that you don't keep a diary?
    The President. That's correct, I do not. I do not. We keep regular--
we keep very detailed records, obviously, of people I meet with, 
telephone calls I make. Sometimes I make extra notes on meetings and 
extra notes on phone conversations, and when I do, I put those in a 
file. But I don't keep a regular diary in the sense you mean that, no, I 
don't.
    Q. Are there any tape recordings of conversations made in the Oval 
Office?
    The President. To the best of my knowledge, there are not. If there 
are, someone else made them, not the President.
    Q. Mr. President, it's been 2 years since this story first emerged 
on the scene, almost exactly, I think, to the day. And since then, of 
course, it's gone out of public view, and then it's come back several 
times, now apparently bigger than ever. To what degree do you think that 
you and your White House

[[Page 468]]

are responsible for the fact that this has now emerged bigger than ever?
    The President. I don't know, because--I've done what I could to 
answer what I know about this. I don't know that--what I know about 
this--I don't know that anything new has happened in terms of the facts, 
except that there was the--whatever was happening about other people 
involving the S&L issue. But it's still what it always was; it's a real 
estate investment I made 15 years ago that I didn't make money on.
    Q. But you don't think your staff and your White House bears any 
responsibility for the fact that this matter hasn't been put to rest?
    The President. I don't know how we could put it to rest except--
because no one has produced any credible evidence of any wrongdoing on 
our part. I don't know what we could do. I've tried to answer the 
questions that were asked.
    Now, in this last flurry around what meetings were held or 
communications or conversations were held, that's a different issue, 
Carl [Carl Leubsdorf, Dallas Morning News]. That's--obviously, that 
raised a lot of flags for a lot of you, anyway. And we're trying to 
resolve that. But quite apart from that, we've tried to do what we 
could. We've given what records we had, first up to a Republican 
prosecutor who was appointed by the Attorney General, and then to the 
special prosecutor; we have pledged to fully cooperate. I simply don't 
know what else we could do. But I'm willing to try to do anything I can 
to be cooperative with the special prosecutor, and I will continue to do 
it.
    Q. Mr. President, to follow up on the question from yesterday, 
someone asked you yesterday whether you had ever been briefed after the 
fact about these two meetings in question in the White House. You said 
you had not. Bruce Lindsey is one of your----
    The President. No, no, wait a minute. Someone asked me if I had been 
briefed about--I think there were three issues, weren't there? There was 
a meeting about a press matter. Then there was the Altman meeting. Then 
there was a--I think there was a telephone call or something that said--
about the RTC referral dealing with the question of whether my campaign 
might have been the beneficiary of a fundraiser where the checks came 
out of an S&L. I think those were the three issues.
    And I said that I had not been briefed on that. I did not know about 
the Altman meeting until he testified about it. I did not know about the 
press meeting until that whole discussion, until it became public. Some 
time in October, I do not remember when, I learned about the RTC 
referral. My clear--I don't even remember when or exactly how I learned 
about it, but my clear impression was that the RTC had made a referral 
on this, and I understood the issue, and I just absorbed it. I did 
nothing about it. I ordered no action to be taken. And I honestly don't 
remember what date it occurred.
    Q. I didn't mean to be misleading on that question. The question I'd 
like to ask is, in one of these meetings that's become part of the 
controversy here, Bruce Lindsey attended one of those meetings. He is a 
longtime personal friend of yours and an adviser. What I'd like to know 
is whether Mr. Lindsey ever briefed you personally about any of those 
sessions?
    The President. Which one was that?
    Q. I believe it was the first one, but I cannot swear--the second 
one. It was the second meeting.
    The President. The only thing that Bruce--Bruce is the person who--
he might have--he probably is the person who told me about the RTC 
referral at some point in October. I say ``probably''; I literally don't 
remember. All I remember is at some point in October I heard about it. 
And my clear impression was that that was an action the RTC had taken to 
make this referral, and it didn't seem--it was just something that I 
knew and absorbed. I didn't discuss it or ask anybody to do anything or 
take any action. That never occurred to me. It was just something that I 
was being given as a matter of information. And I didn't make any notes 
at the time about when I learned it. It was just something that I was 
told. And I'm sorry I can't remember more about it.
    Q. Mr. President, are you doing, you or the White House doing 
anything to discourage the House Banking Committee from holding these 
hearings on March 24th that are planned? It's part of their semiannual 
re- 

[[Page 469]]

view into the RTC, and it's that plan that Representative Leach----
    The President. That's a decision that the House Banking Committee 
and others in the House will have to make. It's not up to me.
    Q. You're not----
    The President. No, I--the only thing I will say is, again, I'm 
trying to cooperate with the Special Counsel. The whole idea was that we 
would lodge all this whole inquiry into the Special Counsel so that the 
rest of us here in Washington could go on with our business. The Special 
Counsel requested yesterday that hearings not be held. I think that is a 
request entitled to respect. If the Congress decides to ignore that 
request and to proceed, then I think that's something we would have to 
take very seriously. My inclination would be to obviously participate.
    Q. Can you tell us how much time this investigation is taking of 
yours and to what extent this might be distracting from other----
    The President. It's costing the taxpayers a fortune, of course, in 
terms of the Special Counsel as opposed to letting the Justice 
Department go forward. And it's costing all of you more, probably. But I 
have--obviously, I took a little time to prepare for this press 
conference, and I had discussed these matters in some detail. But I'm 
trying very hard to minimize how much time I have to spend on this. This 
is not what I was hired to do. I was hired to be President. And this 
relates to things that happened years ago, all the legal questions that 
are raised, and I'm just trying to cooperate. And I hope that the people 
who pushed so hard for the Special Counsel, principally the media and 
the Republicans, will also do the same thing, will let the Special 
Counsel do his job. That's what I think we ought to do. I don't need----
    Q. But is it distracting?
    The President. Is it distracting? Well, in the sense that I'm 
standing here talking to you about this instead of something else, it 
is. But you have to understand, I am very relaxed about this. I did not 
do anything wrong. There is nothing here. I made an investment, and I 
lost money, like a lot of other Americans. And that's all there is. I've 
never had anything to do with any kind of savings and loan. I didn't 
borrow any money. I didn't invest in it. I didn't have anything to do 
with the decisions on it.
    So I am perfectly at ease with this. I just want it to go on. I 
mean, the longer it goes on and the more money it costs and the more 
delay it is, the more it just has static--to go back to the question the 
gentleman asked earlier. But I just--my only position is, I want to 
cooperate. I want to be fully forthcoming. I want the American people to 
see that this White House is different. If there's a question here about 
conduct, we're open, not closed. There's no bunker mentality. But I 
think it's very important for the public interest that we let the 
process that has been established through the Special Counsel work.
    Thank you very much.
    Q. Can you clarify whether Mr. Cutler will be here 4 months or 6 
months? How does that all work?
    Q. And what's his salary?
    The President. Let me answer--I think--first of all, we have not 
decided that you can add 130 work days and come up with 6 months and a 
half if you work a 5-day week and less if you work a 6-day week. But he 
has not used this--I want to emphasize what he said--he has not used 
this to evade the compliance with the ethics law. He's fully complying 
with all of them.
    What we have agreed is that we would work real hard to make sure 
that we had the Counsel's office up and going and working in an 
appropriate way and that the procedures were working fine and that this 
matter and others were being handled in the best possible way and that 
at some point on the outer range, or a little bit closer to now, that he 
would consider his job done. But we don't have a fixed view of the time.
    Q. So you'll look for a full-time Counsel during this period that he 
serves as the interim Special Counsel?
    The President. Actually, we will look for someone to succeed him at 
the end of this tenure.
    Q. Is he on full salary here? Are you on full salary?
    The President. I don't know what he's--I haven't asked him. I mean, 
I haven't asked anybody. I assume we're paying him full salary.

[[Page 470]]

    Q. We were told that you might be waiving a salary.
    Mr. Cutler. I wanted to serve without compensation. It's been 
suggested that I consider accepting the salary and donating it to the 
Treasury Deficit Fund, and we're considering that right now.
    And on your other question, remember that the difficult we do 
immediately, the impossible takes a little longer. And I hope that very 
soon we can get on and get a fine, new, younger Counsel like Bob 
Strauss. [Laughter]

Note: The President spoke at 4:15 p.m. in the Briefing Room at the White 
House. In his remarks, he referred to Representative James A. Leach, 
House Banking, Finance and Urban Affairs Committee member; John D. 
Podesta, Assistant to the President and Staff Secretary; and Bruce R. 
Lindsey, Assistant to the President and Senior Adviser.