August 2, 1994 - Part 4
August 2, 1994 - Part 4
(11:45:40) This is vitally important, because here is a record written by a person who clearly was involved, who was doing more than listening, he was feeling. He cared about the people involved. He was in- volved in making great decisions at a relatively young age, and he reports it in his diary. It is powerful and it is, I think, the best evidence we have here. Nothing that could be said today could in any, way undo that, and I think that's basically your problem, The people who taught you how to write all those years in all those great schools were simply better teachers than the people who taught you politics in Washington on, DC. Second, Id like to say this, Mr. Devore, because I bad an opportunity to work with you in Congress for many years, You always worked for my colleague in the Senate and sometimes worked at cross-purposes with me, but I'm struck by the fact that if our President and if the Treasury Department surrounded itself with people like you, we wouldn't be here. Instead, we are here because of directed idealism and an ethic that anything goes, that all you've got to do is say there might be a press leak, and you can tell anybody anything, By that logic, the Justice Department could 395 told John Dean that President Nixon was mentioned in criminal referrals, if it might possibly be leaked to the media. And it seems to me that once you start down this road of anything goes, you create a lot more problems than you solve. One thing is very clear here, and I'll conclude-I don't need to ask a question. It is clear that this Administration, at least this little peephole we have into it, is driven totally by the media. Does it strike you that everything we have heard that has been done was driven by the fact that the media was asking a question, that something was going to be in the newspaper tomorrow, that there might be a media leak? It's as if-and again, we're only looking through one little peephole here, we have a chance to look at 2 or 3 percent of Whitewater, but I have to say having seen this much of it, I'm just stunned by the fact that every action we have heard about so far in these bearings was driven, not by any underlying principle, not by any political agenda, but at least the way you tell the story, it was driven by what was going to be in the media. I think it is a very interesting observation about this little piece of the Administration that we see, and I suspect it is probably true throughout the whole Administration. I would yield the rest of my time to Senator Bond. The CHAIRMAN. Senator Bond. Senator BOND. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Let me ask Mr. Steiner sort of a procedural question. There was a story in the July 31 edition of The Washington Post, and we have more information on it from our House Banking colleagues, that approximately 20 interview transcripts from the Treasury Inspector General's report for the ethics investigation were turned over to White House Counsel, Mr. Cutler, approximately a week before they were issued. The list of those interview transcripts that we have in front of us shows the depositions from all four of you and of all of the people we beard from yesterday, with the exception of Mr. Ryan; from the RTC, Mr. Aboussie, Mr. Curtis, Mr. Katsanos, and Ms. Kulka. Now, are you familiar with the turning over of the transcripts to Mr. Cutler?