July 25, 1995 - Part 5
July 25, 1995 - Part 5
(15:25:16) The CHAIRMAN. I think it's unfortunate and, of course, hindsight is very useful. People say why didn't you do X, Y, or Z. You don't think of all these things at the particular time, what the ramification is, that you'd be here 2 years from now. But certainly I think reasonable people would suggest that you might have told some- body whether it's Secret Service or the Park Police, what you had done. Did you tell anybody there, any of your colleagues, that you had asked Patsy Thomasson to look for this note? Mr. WATKINS. I told Mr. McLarty. The CHAIRMAN. OK. We have no further questions. Senator SARBANES. Are we all finished here? The CHAIRMAN. Does anybody else have any further questions Of this witness? I want to thank the whole panel. 309 Senator SARBANES, As this panel departs I do want to make one point, in all fairness, particularly to Ms. Mathews and also to underscore the point I made earlier in the day about these leaks that are occurring and the danger connected with the leaks. One of the problems of the leaks is that the press gets inaccurate information. I mentioned earlier the Margolis memo that had the top of it apparently not present so it wasn't clear that these were simply moot court questions, and they were written as though they represented Mr. Margolis' own thinking. This morning there was a story in the press which in effect said Sylvia Mathews said in a deposition that she was aware that some of the documents in the bag were from the Foster office and then went ahead and had that bag burned. Her testimony here has been very clear that that was not the case. She, in fact, just to the contrary, had the initiative to save the trash and, with respect to the burn bag, operated on the premise that there was no material in the burn bag out of Foster's office when it was then went ahead and processed. Now, she was caught in a difficult situation. In fact, in this very same story, she declined comment yesterday pending the hearing which is, of course, what witnesses ought to do. But they're placed in an extremely difficult position obviously as a consequence of these leaks which in many instances are putting out erroneous information. Then, of course, in this instance she has to suffer with this until she gets here today and has the opportunity to really put her testimony out on the public record. So I think we need to make a renewed effort to try to see what we can do about these leaks and let the story unfold here in front of the Committee. We've got plenty of Members and counsel that will question. We want to find out what happened. We want to lay it all out. But I would hope we could do it here in the public light in an orderly way, working together as we have tried to do. So I hope we can renew our efforts in this regard. The CHAIRMAN. I assure the Ranking Member that I share this concern, and I say to the press-not that I believe it's going to do much good-that you really take this information-portions of depositions, for example-at your own peril because often it is erroneous or out of context, and that you can do great damage to the person. I'm glad, Senator Sarbanes, that you took the time particularly to mention Sylvia Mathews. No one has told a clearer story and demonstrated greater concern than she has with regard to taking appropriate action and responded, given her position in the hierarchy, in a more exemplary fashion. If others had demonstrated her care and concern we wouldn't be here today. No doubt in my mind. So, wait for it to fold out because sometimes you just-we're going to have a person there who can explain the circumstances of his or her arrival or their particular actions in such a way that you'd say, they did exactly what should have been done in that circumstance. I will say that her testimony was very convincing as it relates to that, not only convincing but clarifying, et cetera, and I think it indicated, even to the Committee, things that we heretofore had not known because she put it all together. 310 We do a great disservice if we just take some bit, some little piece, it may be titillating but, in the long run, it's going to lead us astray. I want to thank all of the witnesses and we'll proceed to Our next witness. Thank you.