August 5, 1994 - Part 4
August 5, 1994 - Part 4
(14:15:28) I want to say also, in that same vein of trying to make some sense out of what looks like a process that takes an awfully long time, it can look like we're browbeating witnesses. I don't think any of us here have a desire to do that. I know I certainly don't, nor am I prepared, as Chairman, to tolerate the browbeating of witnesses. There are times when witnesses do not give straight answers and if you don't press them again and again you don't get the answers you need as in the illustration that I just mentioned with Senator Sarbanes. There's a fine balance between the degree to which you press a witness and, oftentimes, witnesses will finally say that they don't have a memory of something. If so, then that's their judgment. They can say that. We'll leave it there and try to make a judgment based on other information and evidence that we have. But I should say again, for the record, we took 37 witness depositions. That meant that before those witnesses came in here to testify, they had to first go and sit down with these two attorneys in 798 a room somewhere and, under oath, be subjected to questions and give answers to them in preparation for gathering the facts we could then come here with those deposition documents them further questions to compare the testimony in the statements of one witness against another. That's the process goes on. It takes a lot of time and it's demanding but that's what's required when you are trying to get the facts and sort them out. We reviewed over 10,000 pages of documents Now you think about it, a 10,000 page book, it's a big book. A lot of the documents were handwritten notes or they were things that were hard make sense out of. They came from different people at different times and you not only had to analyze all those, but You had to I cross-relate them one to the other. It takes a long time to do it. We took evidence from several branches of the Government , the Park Police as well as the Department of the Treasury, the RTC., the White House, and the Department of the Interior. I want, to say, again, we got absolute cooperation from the White House; and to their great credit and to the President's great credit, everything we asked for we got in terms of both witnesses, in an unrestrained and unfettered way, as well as access to all of the documents that are within the scope of our resolution. I don't know of any other time in the history of this country when any Chief Executive has released his people, his documents, and their documents and came in here in a setting like this in as full a way. The President deserves credit for that, It's what he should do but it's the first time it's happened in such a full way as that, to my historical knowl- edge. That should be acknowledged and I want to say I appreciate that cooperation. I want to thank the Members also and I want to say, again, particularly with respect to Senator Faircloth, on the scope issue. We were told by the Senate that we could only look at certain things within a certain set of boundaries so that we would not interfere with the outside investigation going on by Special Counsel Robert Fiske, And that was an absolutely appropriate request by him, in my view, and the instruction by the Senate was that we not go over those boundary lines and interfere with his work and perhaps jeopardize future prosecutors and financial recoveries, for example, that he might pursue. It's always a judgment call as to whether something is in or out of the bounds of the scope of our resolution. I will say, with Senator D'Amato, we resolved every single one of those differences, disputes, and questions in a manner that was agreeable to both sides. And for that, I'm very grateful. Senator Faircloth, who had an intense interest of wanting to go as far as he possibly could, did so, but at the point at which I bad to interject to say that we were up against the scope limits, as we call them, he had the grace and cooperative willingness to stop. I want to say, even though he's not here at the moment, that I'm very grateful for that because be could have been contentious about it. I know he has a strong feeling about it. He worked within the process and I appreciate that and want to acknowledge it. We're not here today, at least I don't feel we are, to draw final conclusions and to say exactly, I mean, each Member is free to speak for themselves, but in terms of a Committee statement, and I'm thinking of myself as Chairman now of the Committee, we're 799 obviously not at, a point where we can render sweeping judgments as a Committee. We are charged with generating a report to the Senate, in addition to laying all these facts out in the light of day and, of course, we will do that. We will make recommendations for changes in the law and in administrative practices that we think are necessary.