July 18, 1995 - Part 1
July 18, 1995 - Part 1
(10:25:27) We now have in our possession some 2,400 pages of White House documents, and we have reviewed 8,500 more. Twenty-eight present and former White House staff members have appeared voluntarily to provide testimony to Committee staff. Nearly all of these staffers have also been interviewed, some of them multiple times, by other investigators. This is all on top of last year's hearings, during which we heard from 30 witnesses, printed 2,600 pages of testimony and deposed 38 witnesses, It is important, Mr. Chairman, I think, to remember that those hearings found absolutely, absolutely no illegal or unethical activity on the part of anyone at the White House. Throughout our investigation, Mr. Chairman, we've had the complete cooperation of the President, Many of us, of course, can remember instances in times not that long ago when this Congress had to fight tooth and nail to secure a minimum level of cooperation from the Executive Branch. That has not happened in this case at all. Serious questions have been raised, and they have to be answered in a serious way. But we should get the job done and then move on, in my view, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, let me mention to you briefly-and I'm sure my case is not substantially different than other Members of this Committee--I asked my office to go back and review in the past 61/2 months how many inquiries from my constituents I had received about this matter, To date, we have been able to find a total of phone calls and letters in my office on this matter totaling four inquiries in 6 1/2 months. Having said that, I suspect I'll receive dozens of calls and letters here this morning, but I wanted to place it in context of terms of 14 public interest. Now, public interest ought not to be the criteria by which we decide whether or not to pursue a matter that is serious, but I do hope we can get this ' job done and move on to what I know all of my colleagues share are the far more vital, important issues of this Congress, and that is, of course, dealing with our deficit is- sues and the problems of Medicare and Medicaid and the like, all of which deserve our attention. So, Mr. Chairman, I conclude where I began, and that is to commend you for how you set up and planned these hearings and to compliment my colleague from Maryland as well who has represented the Minority side on this issue and planned for our days ahead. But, again, I would hope sincerely, as Senator Sarbanes has said, that we keep in mind the context in which this specific part of our hearings will be conducted, and that is the highly charged emotional tragedy of a human being, an individual who attended kindergarten with the President of the United States and people in the White House, who had known each other, literally, all their lives. As we look at human reactions and human actions in the context of the hours immediately following that event, it is important that that be kept in mind as we examine this issue. I thank you, Mr. Chairman. The CHAIRMAN. Thank you, Senator Dodd. We'll now turn to Senator Hatch. OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR ORRIN G. HATCH Senator HATCH. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The Senator has named me as a Member of this Special Committee for the express purpose of considering matters within the jurisdiction of the Judiciary Committee, Consistent with this mandate, I intend to focus my inquiry to matters related to the Department of Justice's involvement in Whitewater. I also hope to address some of the legal issues surrounding the withholding of information by the President. I would like, first, to thank Chairman D'Amato for giving me this opportunity to attend this hearing. I look forward to working with him and Senator Sarbanes and other Members of the Banking Committee as we exercise our oversight responsibility with regard to this important matter. Before delving into the legal questions that are at the center of this hearing, let me extend my sympathies to the Foster family. We are often tempted to forget in our role as an oversight body that at the center of this investigation is the tragic death of a man who sought to serve his country and his President. There's simply no question that Mr. Foster's death was a tragedy. His family and friends have suffered terribly, and my heart personally goes out to them. We must remember, however, that Mr. Foster's suicide was the first of a high- ranking governmental official in the United States in almost 50 years. He was close to the President. As a Deputy White House Counsel, he was privy to the innermost workings of the White House. His death, therefore, was of great importance to our Nation. It cannot be classified as a routine suicide and, given the scope of the Whitewater investigation, demands congressional oversight. 15 Most troubling are the questions pertaining to whether the White House obstructed the Justice Department's investigation into Mr. Foster's death. It seems clear that certain White House officials entered Mr. Foster's office before law enforcement investigators could examine it and after Associate Attorney General Webster Hubbell and Chief of Staff Mack McLarty had ordered the office sealed for the Park Police investigation.