Mr. MACK. Mr. President, we are here today primarily because the White House has not been dealing with the special committee in good faith. I know that there are those who would accuse this committee of conducting a political witch hunt in an election year. But I submit that there are legitimate and powerful reasons to be investigating Whitewater Development Corp. and all of the related matters.
At the outset, it should be made clear that the main reason this committee needs additional time is the abject failure of this administration to cooperate. Contrary to all of their public statements, I believe the White House has been actively engaged in a coverup. They have repeatedly refused to turn over relevant evidence and have often failed to remember key facts under oath.
To give just one example, Bruce Lindsey was asked on numerous occasions whether he had produced all relevant documents to the committee, and he insisted under oath that he had. In particular, the committee asked about any notes he might have taken during the November 5, 1994, meeting of the Whitewater defense team. That is the same meeting where William Kennedy took notes, and we almost had to go to court to obtain them. Last Friday--that is the very date the special committee's funding was set to expire--he turned over his clearly marked notes of the November 5 Whitewater defense team meeting.
The American people deserve better than that. Again, this is only one example--where Bruce Lindsey was asked over and over again whether he had taken notes during that November 5 meeting, and we were told over and over again that he had not. On the day this committee's funding expired, they turned over these notes of the meeting.
In my opinion, the White House has done everything in its power to hide the truth. That is why we are here asking for additional funds to continue the committee's work.
Mr. President, I suspect that over the next several hours we obviously will hear from both sides of the aisle on this. But on our side of the aisle, I expect that most of our Members who participated in these hearings will probably do as I have done; that is, to focus my attention on some specific areas where I focused my attention during the committee hearings. So my comments now will be somewhat focused on the behavior of the White House officials immediately after Vincent Foster's death.
The death of White House Deputy Counsel Vincent W. Foster, Jr., on July 20, 1993, marked the first time since Secretary of Defense James Forrestal died in 1949 that such a high-ranking U.S. official took his own life. Mr. Foster was a close friend of both the President and Mrs. Clinton, and provided legal counsel to them on a number of sensitive personal matters, including Whitewater. Given Mr. Foster's sensitive position within the administration and his close personal friendship with the Clinton's, there were legitimate questions to be asked about the way he died.
The reason I raise this is because I have a feeling that those who may have just casually been observing or watching these hearings may have asked the question, What is all the concern about how the White House handled the review of documents in Vince Foster's office? I have already indicated that he was a personal friend of the Clintons, but there are questions that would be raised about any suicide of an individual in this kind of position.
Questions, for example, could be: Was there blackmail involved? Was he a victim of a crime that had something to do with his position? Could he have been the subject of extortion? Was our national security compromised in any way? Officials would certainly be concerned with finding out the answers to these questions as soon as possible.
In the days following his death, White House officials--in particular, members of the White House counsel's office--searched the contents of Mr. Foster's office and at the same time prevented law enforcement officials from conducting a similar search. In doing this and later covering it up, they have come to look like the guiltiest bunch of people I have ever seen.
Section (1)(b)(1) of Senate Resolution 120 authorizes the committee to inquire 'whether improper conduct occurred regarding the way in which White House officials handled documents in the office of White House Deputy Counsel Vincent Foster following his death.'
Pursuant to this directive, the committee conducted 69 depositions and held 17 days of public hearings to investigate the actions of White House officials in the week following Mr. Foster's death. The committee's investigation revealed, among other things, the following facts.
Fact: Foster's office was never sealed the night of his death despite four separate official requests.
Fact: High-ranking White House officials searched it without supervision.
Fact: Maggie Williams was seen by an unbiased witness carrying a stack of documents out of Foster's office.
Fact: Nussbaum made an agreement for Justice Department officials to conduct a search of Foster's office.
Fact: Nussbaum told Stephen Neuwirth that the First Lady and Susan Thomases was concerned with the Justice officials having unfettered access to Foster's office.
Fact: A flurry of phone calls occurred at critical times--17 separate contacts in a 48-hour period among Hillary Clinton, Maggie Williams, Susan Thomases, and Nussbaum.
Fact: After those calls, Nussbaum reneged on the deal with the Department of Justice investigators. He insisted on searching the office himself.
Fact: Once the investigators left the scene, a real search occurred with Maggie Williams' help, and afterwards she took documents to the residence.
Mr. President, I am going to go back through those various facts that I have raised, and again I am focusing on a very, very small portion and limited area of this whole debate. The area that I will be focusing on again is the night of Foster's death and the few days following that death.
Seven different persons recalled four separate requests to White House officials to seal Vincent Foster's office on the evening of his death. This was not done until the next morning. Hillary Rodham Clinton called Maggie Williams, her chief of staff, at 10:13 p.m. immediately upon hearing of Mr. Foster's death on July 20, 1993. Right after talking with Mrs. Clinton, Ms. Williams proceeded to the White House to Mr. Foster's office. White House Counsel Bernie Nussbaum and Deputy Director of the White House Office of Administration, Patsy Thomasson, met her there and conducted a late-night search of Mr. Foster's office without law enforcement supervision.
Mrs. Clinton then called Susan Thomases, a close personal friend, in New York at 11:19 p.m. Secret Service officer Henry O'Neill testified that on the night of Mr. Foster's death, he saw Ms. Williams remove file folders 3 to 5 inches thick from the White House counsel's suite and place them in her office.
Now, why would this Secret Service individual lie about that? This could constitute obstruction of justice, particularly if the billing records were in those files. If this is true, there could be two possible separate counts, the first against Maggie Williams for knowingly taking relevant documents out of Foster's office with the intent to hide them from investigators, and the second for turning them over to someone else, possibly the Clintons, who then intentionally withheld them from us in violation of numerous document requests and subpoenas.
This is one of the central questions which the committee must resolve.
After searching Mr. Foster's office on the night of his death, Ms. Williams called Mrs. Clinton in Little Rock at 12:56 a.m. on July 21, 1993, and talked with her for 11 minutes. Again, this is 12:56 a.m., middle of the night. Once that call was concluded, only 3 minutes later, at 1:10 a.m., after her conversation with Mrs. Clinton, Ms. Williams called Ms. Thomases in New York and they talked for 20 minutes.
I wish to note here that when we first spoke to Ms. Williams, she categorically denied talking to Ms. Thomases that night. Imagine, that was a 20-minute conversation that took place at 1:10 in the morning and Ms. Williams categorically denied talking to Ms. Thomases. When the committee asked her for her phone records to prove her claim, she and her lawyer stated they were not available from the phone company. We asked the phone company for the records and, voila, 1 week later, we had them.
Susan Thomases, a New York lawyer, is a close personal friend of President and Mrs. Clinton. She has known the President for 25 years and Mrs. Clinton for almost 20 years. She was an adviser to the Clinton 1992 Presidential campaign and remained in the close circle of confidants to the Clintons after the election. One article referred to Ms. Thomases as the 'blunt force instrument' of enforcement for the First Lady. She was the one who got things done in a crunch. As my colleague, Senator Bennett, described her during the hearings, she was the 'go-to' guy on the Clinton team. If the First Lady wanted to make sure that her people got to Foster's files before outside law enforcement, Susan Thomases was just the person to get the job done.
Department of Justice officials testified that they agreed with Mr. Nussbaum on July 21, 1993, that they would jointly review documents in Mr. Foster's office. Let me just say that again. There was an agreement between the Justice Department and Bernie Nussbaum as to how the documents in Mr. Foster's office would be reviewed.
Then there is a flurry of phone calls that occurs at what I would call critical times. We then begin a period of time in which a multitude of calls took place involving Thomases, Williams, and the First Lady. I believe the purpose of these calls might have been to make sure that the agreement Bernie Nussbaum had made with the Justice Department concerning the search of Foster's office was not kept.
Call No. 1. At 6:44 a.m: fairly early in the morning. I am trying to think about how many phone calls I have actually placed at 6:44 a.m. Anyway, 6:44 a.m. Arkansas time on July 22, Maggie Williams called Mrs. Clinton--this is the day following--called Mrs. Clinton at her mother's house in Little Rock, and they talked for 7 minutes. Ms. Williams initially did not tell the special committee about her early-morning phone call to the Rodham residence.
After obtaining her residential telephone records documenting the call, the special committee voted unanimously to call Ms. Williams back for further testimony. When presented with these records, Ms. Williams testified, 'If I was calling the residence, it is likely that I was trying to reach Mrs. Clinton. If it was 6:44 in Arkansas, there's a possibility that she was not up. I don't remember who I talked to, but I don't find it unusual that the chief of staff to the First Lady might want to call her early in the morning for a number of reasons.'
Maggie Williams said, 'I don't recall' or 'I don't remember' so many times I lost count. According to one New York paper, as of last month, all of the Whitewater witnesses combined said this a total of 797 times during the hearings alone.
Call No. 2. This is a call that takes place now 6 minutes after the call that Maggie Williams forgot or just did not mention to the committee until we had records of the call. But 6 minutes after she apparently was willing to wake up the First Lady 6:44 Arkansas time, 6 minutes later Mrs. Clinton called the Mansion on O Street, a small hotel where Susan Thomases stayed in Washington, DC. The call lasted 3 minutes. Oddly enough, Ms. Thomases did not remember this call again until after the committee was provided with her phone records.
Call No. 3. Upon ending her conversation with Mrs. Clinton, Susan Thomases immediately paged Bernie Nussbaum at the White House, leaving her number at the Mansion on O Street. When Mr. Nussbaum answered the page, they talked about the upcoming review of documents in Mr. Foster's office. Ms. Thomases actually told the committee that these two phone calls had nothing to do with one another. After obtaining records documenting that she talked with Mrs. Clinton for 3 minutes immediately prior to paging Mr. Nussbaum, the special committee voted unanimously to call Ms. Thomases back for further testimony.
She maintained, however, that she called Nussbaum, because again, 'I was worried about my friend Bernie, and I was just about to go into a very, very busy day in my work, and I wanted to make sure that I got to talk to Bernie that day since I had not been lucky enough to speak with him the day before.'
I will come back to the busy day she was having later. At this point I will say that she was busy all right, but not with her private law practice.
Mr. Nussbaum has a different recollection of his conversations with Ms. Thomases. On July 22 he testified that Ms. Thomases initiated the discussion about the procedures that he intended to employ in reviewing documents in Mr. Foster's office.
'The conversation on the 22d'--this is a quote now-- 'The conversation on the 22d was that she asked me what was going on with respect to the examination of Mr. Foster's office.' 'She said people were concerned or disagreeing whether a correct procedure was being followed, whether it was proper to give people access to the office at all.'
According to Mr. Nussbaum, Ms. Thomases did not specify who these 'people' were to whom she was referring, nor did Mr. Nussbaum understand who they were. Mr. Nussbaum testified he resisted Ms. Thomases' overture, but he said, 'Susan I'm having discussions with various people,' which, by the way, we determined those various people were Hillary Clinton, Bill Clinton and Maggie Williams. Again quoting--'Susan I'm having discussions with various people. As far as the White House is concerned, I will make a decision as to how this is going to be conducted.'
He did decide to renege on his deal with the Department of Justice, but only after more phone calls from Maggie Williams and Susan Thomases. We have independent corroboration from Steve Neuwirth. Steve Neuwirth, a member of the White House counsel staff, testified under oath that Bernie Nussbaum told him Susan Thomases and the First Lady were concerned about giving the officials from Justice 'unfettered access' to Foster's office.
While the Justice Department officials were kept waiting outside, Nussbaum continued his discussions, as more phone calls ensued, presumably about how to search the office.
Call No. 4. We are back again to this series of phone calls I was describing a little earlier. This is the fourth phone call. This is 8:25 in the morning of July 22. Thomases called the Rodham residence and spoke for 4 minutes.
Call No. 5. At 9 a.m., Thomases called Maggie Williams and left the message 'call when you get in the office.'
Call No. 6. 10:48 a.m., Thomases calls Chief of Staff McLarty's offices, spoke with someone for 3 minutes.
A meeting involving numerous members of the White House staff was going on in McLarty's office at this time to decide how to handle the search of Foster's office. In the meantime, the officials from the Justice Department, Park Police, and other agencies were waiting around for the search to begin.
Call No. 7. 11:04 a.m., Thomases called Maggie Williams, spoke for 6 minutes.
Call No. 8. This is occurring 1 minute after the conclusion of the previous call--Thomases calls Chief of Staff McLarty's office, spoke with someone for 3 minutes.
Call No. 9, just a couple minutes later, Thomases calls Chief of Staff McLarty's office again; spoke with someone for 1 minute.
Call No. 10. 11:37 a.m., Thomases called Maggie Williams, spoke for 11 minutes. Three minutes after that call was completed, Thomases called Maggie Williams and spoke for 4 minutes. Do not forget, this is all taking place during the time that Ms. Thomases said she was going to be very, very busy on conference calls related to her private legal practice.
When we asked Ms. Williams about all these calls to her office from Susan Thomases, she denied talking to her, and told us it could have been anybody else in her office, could have been an intern, a volunteer, or another staffer. Her refusal to take responsibility for the calls resulted in 32 different staffers having to be interviewed about who might have spoken to Susan Thomases that day, and all said they do not remember talking to her.
By doing this, Maggie Williams asked the committee to believe that Susan Thomases regularly calls unpaid interns at the White House just to chat. Her testimony to the committee was frankly typical of her whole approach to the process. In my opinion, both Maggie Williams and Susan Thomases are openly contemptuous of the committee's work. Their attitude toward this inquiry has never been one of cooperation, but rather blatant hostility.
Their behavior, coupled with the documentary evidence we have acquired, lead me to no other reasonable conclusion than that Maggie Williams and Susan Thomases were involved or influenced the decision to breach the agreement with the Department of Justice. Their behavior, and what I believe to be the reasons behind it, are frankly an insult, not just to us, but to the credibility and integrity of the Presidency.
Call No. 12. At 12:47 p.m., Capricia, an individual who is Hillary Clinton's personal assistant, paged Maggie Williams from the Rodham residence.
Call No. 13. 12:55 p.m., Maggie Williams called the Rodham residence and spoke for 1 minute. The pressure on Nussbaum must have been too great. He broke his agreement with the Justice Department and conducted the search essentially unsupervised. After learning of Nussbaum's reversal, David Margolis, one of the seasoned DOJ officials sent over for the search, told Nussbaum, that he was making a big mistake. Once he heard this news, Philip Heymann, the Deputy Attorney General, later asked, 'Bernie, are you hiding something?"
Call No. 14. At 1:25 p.m., the White House phone call to Rodham residence. Conversation for 6 minutes. Was this to tell Mrs. Clinton the deal with the Justice Department had been reneged upon?
Then we move to the search which takes place in Foster's office from approximately 1 p.m. to 3 p.m. The Department of Justice officials again are kept at bay.
Call No. 15. 3:05 p.m., Bill Burton, McLarty's deputy, called Maggie Williams and left a message. He had been asked by Nussbaum, after the review of Foster's office, to locate Maggie Williams. This signals the attempt by Nussbaum, through his deputy, to get the real search of the office underway, but only with Ms. Williams' help.
Call No. 16. 3:08 p.m., Thomases called Maggie Williams. Spoke for 10 minutes.
Call No. 17. 3:25 p.m., Steve Neuwirth called Ms. Williams and left a message. They are still trying to find Ms. Williams.
Call No. 18. It occurred somewhere between 4 and 4:30 p.m. Bernie Nussbaum personally called Maggie Williams to summon her to Foster's office. They searched the office for about half an hour.
Call No. 19. Somewhere between 4:30 and 5 p.m. Maggie Williams phoned Hillary Clinton.
Call No. 20. 5:13 p.m., Thomases called Maggie Williams. Spoke for 9 minutes, 30 seconds.
Then Maggie Williams takes the documents to the residence. Although the public was initially told by the White House spokesperson that all the Clinton's personal documents were immediately turned over to their lawyers after Foster's death, once again, we later learned this was simply untrue.
Tom Castleton, a White House employee, spoke against his own interest and told us Maggie Williams asked him to take boxes of documents from Foster's office to the residence on July 22, 1993, so the First Lady and the President could review them.
I want to go back to this point again. This is Maggie Williams who again says that this did not occur. We have got testimony under oath from Tom Castleton that when he and Maggie Williams were taking these documents to the third floor of the White House, that Maggie Williams told Tom Castleton that the reason they were doing this is so that the First Lady and the President could review them.
What I see is a day that begins and ends with Maggie Williams, Susan Thomases and Hillary Clinton conversing. I think Maggie Williams started the day at 6:44 talking with the First Lady about the need to keep law enforcement out of Foster's office and to get certain documents into a safe place.
She ended the day with a conversation with Thomases and a conversation with Hillary Clinton to let them know--mission accomplished. Bernie Nussbaum was able to control the document review. Nothing was divulged to the Department of Justice investigators. The sensitive documents of the First Lady were whisked away to the private quarters where months later Carolyn Huber discovered critical billing records which had Foster's handwriting all over them.
Hubbell even told us he had last seen them in Foster's possession. I believe those records may have been among the files Maggie Williams took out of Foster's office.
The first time we talked to Ms. Williams and Ms. Thomases, we only had a record of 12 of these phone calls. They denied talking to each other, except maybe once or twice, during this period. We received the phone records in three separate installments and, in the end, we see their testimony was nothing but deception.
There were 17 separate contacts in a 48-hour period among Hillary Clinton, Maggie Williams, Susan Thomases and Bernie Nussbaum, which I believe were related to how to handle the documents in Foster's office. Thomases was on the phone to the White House for 28 out of 58 minutes when Nussbaum was trying to decide how to handle the search of Foster's office.
Again, this was on the day that, in her own words, again I quote, 'I was just about to go into a very, very busy day in my own work.' It now appears that her work was, in fact, the First Lady's work.
But that is not all. There is more deception about the suicide note and the documents removed from Foster's office. I want to reiterate, I have picked out one small segment of the investigation of the testimony that we reviewed, and it certainly ought to become obvious to people, as they listen to this, the lack of cooperation that we received from the witnesses, the lack of cooperation that we received from the White House. As I said earlier, I believe that the White House was actively involved in trying to cover up.
I am moving now to July 27, 1993. It is an important day. This is the day that the suicide note was turned over. Vince Foster's suicide note had been found the previous day. It was only turned over to the Park Police after a meeting with Janet Reno where she instructed the White House to do so. Attorney General Reno was very strong and decisive in her direction to the White House. I am paraphrasing, but basically the impression she left was, 'Why did you waste my time? Why did I have to come to the White House to tell you to turn these documents over?"
I raise the question, Why were the documents not turned over the same day they were found? If you think about it for a moment, what possible reason could the White House have for keeping that note overnight, 30 hours? Why?
In retrospect, it is stunning that the White House did not turn it over to the Park Police right away. Obviously, as we can see by their handling of the note, they had no real intention of cooperating. Prior to the note being turned over to the Justice Department or Park Police, Hillary Clinton and a horde of other White House officials saw it. From what it sounded like, there were a large number of people--again, what I am referring to is from the testimony. The note was found, taken to Nussbaum's office, and people were coming in and reviewing this note. The people who, in fact, had seen the note were asked to testify about that note and who else was in the room, who else saw the note.
Oddly enough, everyone who was later interviewed by the FBI about the circumstances of finding the note forgot about the First Lady having seen it. Only during our second round of hearings did we learn about this important fact.
As for the documents that Tom Castleton and Maggie Williams took up to the residence on the 22d, they were turned over to Bob Barnett, the Clinton's personal attorney, on this day, on the 27th. Susan Thomases has testified she did not recall seeing Mrs. Clinton on July 27 and that she was not involved in Ms. Williams' transfer of Whitewater files from the White House residence to Clinton's personal lawyer, Mr. Bob Barnett, this despite records showing that Susan Thomases entered the residence at the same time as Mr. Barnett.
Thomases spent 6 hours there, yet she does not remember anything about being in the White House that day. I mean, they are really asking us to stretch our willingness to understand how this could happen.
I want to go over that point again because I find this really--6 hours she was in the White House. It would be one thing if somehow or another she just happened to either bump into Maggie Williams or bump into Bob Barnett and forgot it, but to, in essence, have forgotten anything about the 6 hours at the White House, I just find that very, very, very hard to believe.
As recently as January 9, 1996, we received another phone record of a message from Mrs. Clinton to Susan Thomases from July 27, 1993 at 1:30 p.m., asking Thomases to please call Hillary. Ms. Thomases was in Washington, DC on that day when she would not normally have been in town, and she had received a message from Mrs. Clinton's scheduler the day before. This is also the first time Ms. Thomases saw the First Lady after Vince Foster committed suicide.
So that is two personal requests by the First Lady to speak to her, but Thomases has no memory of the occasion. Ironically enough, she was able to tell the committee in some detail the specific reasons why she happened to be in Washington on Tuesday instead of on Wednesday but has absolutely no memory of a White House visit when there. This type of memory loss is, first, unbelievable and, second, I believe a purposeful attempt to avoid giving the committee information that it is entitled to.
What I have gone over is just, again, one small portion of the body of evidence this committee has uncovered.
Here are some other items which form my view of the situation and explain why I have arrived at the conclusion that this White House has engaged in an attempt to completely stonewall the committee and the American public.
Unethical Treasury/White House contacts led to the resignation of Altman and Hanson and Steiner, saying he lied to his diary. You may recall that from earlier hearings we had. These contacts were a systematic effort to gain confidential information from Government sources and ultimately influence the criminal and civil investigations of Madison.
The President's refusal to turn over vital notes under the guise of attorney-client privilege--this kind of coordination among White House staff and personal lawyers resulted in a multimember Clinton defense team at taxpayers' expense.
Now we understand why they did not want to turn over those notes, because they contain phrases such as 'vacuum Rose law files.'
The coverup has now reached the third floor of the White House residence. It is difficult to construct a scenario where whoever left billing records on that table is not guilty of a felony. It is the most secure room in the world. Are we supposed to believe, as my colleague from North Carolina indicated during the hearing, that the butler did it?
Hillary Clinton has publicly floated the possibility that construction workers may have placed those billing records in the book room. After committee investigation, we now know that workers are under constant Secret Service supervision and they would be fired if they moved anything around.
The White House has seriously delayed document production from key White House players in the Whitewater legal defense team: Gearan, Ickes and Waldman--and, as I said earlier, just last week, Lindsey.
Even when documents were turned over, there were redactions which were just plain wrong. The notes Mr. Gearan produced to us of a series of meetings of the Whitewater legal defense team were so heavily redacted that the committee insisted on a review of the complete notes. As it turns out, the White House chose to redact highly relevant statements.
For example, one redacted portion--and I guess maybe I ought to stop for a minute, because some people may not understand what 'redaction' means. It would be, for example, if I were to take this page and make the determination that there were some things on here that were not relevant; I would just white them out and white out everything on the page I thought was irrelevant, leaving only, let us say, a note on here that says, 'Quality, not quantity of evidence' that is important.
So, for example, one of the redactions said that 'the First Lady was adamantly opposed to the appointment of a special counsel.' What I am saying to you is, when we first got the document, a lot of information that we believed was relevant was whited out, redacted. We could not see it. It was only after we demanded to see it, after they said to us, 'Do not worry, there is nothing else of any relevance on this document to what you are investigating.' This one redacted portion said, 'The First Lady was adamantly opposed to the appointment of a special counsel.'
I think that is relevant and it is another example of the White House's efforts to keep us from moving forward. I know that the White House, as well as Members on the other side of the aisle, keep hammering on the fact that over 40,000 pages of documents have been produced. But it is not the quantity of documents that matter. They could produce a million pages but deliberately withhold one key page. By telling us to be satisfied with what they have already given us, it is like telling us we can have everything but the 18-minute gap in the 4,000 plus hours of Watergate tapes. Plain and simple, in my opinion, this amounts to contempt of the Senate and obstruction of justice.
We in the Senate have a serious responsibility to investigate abuses of power in the executive branch. It is one of our constitutional obligations and is a responsibility which the people of Florida expect me to carry out.
The obligation of the legislative branch to hold the executive branch accountable goes back to the beginning of our American heritage. The Founding Fathers had this very role in mind when they debated ratification of the Constitution. In Federalist Paper No. 51, James Madison explained the need for checks and balances among the branches of Government:
"If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: You must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself."
The special committee's work is an attempt to ensure that we are controlling government in the way our Founding Fathers envisioned. We owe it to the American people. This is their Government, and we are accountable to them.
Now, the failure of Madison Guaranty cost the taxpayers $60 million. I have attended hearings day after day and heard some amazing incidences of wrongdoing, only to turn around and hear administration apologists proclaim, 'So what.' This is my reaction to the 'so what' response. In other words, what they are saying is, 'You have not proved anybody guilty of anything. There is no smoking gun. So what.' It is like saying that if somebody takes a gun and shoots at somebody and misses, no harm was done. I think, in fact, there is harm that has been done; and it has, in fact, been uncovered.
To those who insist that nothing wrong was done, I suggest you look to the results obtained so far from the independent counsel's work: Nine guilty pleas and indictments against seven others. That tells me that the issues we are pursuing are important.
In fact, in the most recent round of indictments, the President's 1990 gubernatorial campaign is specifically mentioned as the direct beneficiary of criminal behavior.
It is also interesting to note that the work of this committee has helped, not hindered or duplicated, the work of the independent counsel. The Albany Times Union observed that without the public demand in our hearings for the First Lady's billing records, the special prosecutor might still be waiting for them.
The public has a right to know the truth about this administration. On February 25, the Washington Post ran an editorial favoring an extension of the special committee. The main reason stated for needing additional time was the failure of the White House to cooperate. This is what the Washington Post said: 'Clinton officials have done their share to extend the committee's life.'
A January 25 editorial in the New York Times said, 'Given the White House's failure to address many unanswered questions, there is . . . a strong public interest in keeping the committee alive.'
One Florida newspaper, the St. Petersburg Times said, 'Forget election year politics. The American people deserve to know whether the Clinton administration is guilty of misusing its power and orchestrating a coverup. For that reason--and that reason alone--the Senate Whitewater hearings should go on.'
Further, they cited the most important and most democratic reason to continue these hearings was, 'Ordinary citizens need to learn what all this Whitewater talk is about. Americans deserve a President they can trust, someone who embraces questions about integrity instead of running from them. If the answers make Clinton's campaigning more difficult, so be it.'
Wrongdoing should not go unpunished just because it was discovered during an election year. 'The search for answers cannot stop now.'
I agree wholeheartedly with the St. Petersburg Times. This committee's work must continue in order to preserve the future integrity of the office of the President. The Presidency of the United States is an office which should be looked to as a beacon of trust. Our President should be honest and forthright, and so should his staff. Our duty is to ensure that the President upholds this basic standard, abides by the laws of the land, and avoids any abuse of his sacred office.
Apologists for the administration's behavior have complained this investigation is costing taxpayers too much money. I agree with my colleague, again, from North Carolina, who said, 'You cannot put a price tag on the integrity of the Presidency.'
For those of my colleagues who may still be deciding how to vote on this matter, I suggest they ask themselves a few basic questions. Have all the White House staffers been forthcoming, candid, helpful, and informative in their testimony and conduct? Did the career employees of key agencies who contradicted White House staff lie when they told us of White House interference? Has the President fulfilled his pledge to cooperate fully with the committee? If you answer one or more of these questions with a no, do as I will, and support the resolution so that we might finally learn the truth.
This document is an unofficial version of the Congressional Record. The printed Congressional Record produced by the Government Printing Office is the only official version.