July 18, 1995 - Part 1
July 18, 1995 - Part 1
(10:35:29) We must ask whether the transfer of the documents to the President's Private Counsel violates the requirements that the documents remain in the custody and control of the United States. At least one court has plainly held that the Presidential Records Act "leaves no room for any governmental official to enter into agreements conferring ownership or control of Presidential records to any person or entity other than the United States." That's American Historical Association v. Peterson, and that was a 1995 case. Third, the President, through his lawyers, refused to release several of the documents retained by the White House on the basis of attorney-client privilege. Why? Why should the President claim attorney-client privilege over State documents ostensibly worked on by Mr. Foster? Perhaps an even more important consideration must also be raised, In light of the fact that the President released a number of the documents in his possession and in the possession of his private lawyers to the news media, has he not, in effect, waived any right to assert a privilege of any type? The entire Whitewater investigation has been plagued by Presidential declarations that everything relevant to Whitewater had been released, only to be followed by the discovery of additional unreleased documents. Finally, as documents trickled out of the White House, they have in large part been redacted. I question whether this is the type of openness the President promised the American people, and I look forward to ascertaining the answers to these troubling questions over the next few weeks. 17 Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The CHAIRMAN. Senator Sarbanes, we have some more time, but let's keep it moving back and forth, so we'll yield to you. OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR JOHN F. KERRY Senator KERRY. Thank you, Senator Sarbanes, Mr. Chairman. Almost a year ago today we began these hearings and, at that time, we examined the death of Vince Foster and determined in our wisdom, as each inquiry before us had, that his untimely and tragic death was indeed a suicide. Now, after millions of dollars, thousands of hours of Special Prosecutor interrogation, and thousands of hours of FBI inquiries and hundreds of FBI agents, hundreds of news stories and investigations, we are about to examine a second phase of events, the handling of documents. Clearly, the first round of hearings titillated and provided opportunity for the political joke and rumor mill. Conspiratorial lists were served up a full plate of fare for every paranoid theory imaginable to take flight, but the bottom line is- and the record shows-that no evidence came before this Committee to alter the sad conclusion regarding Vince Foster's death and none have yet surfaced, though still one inquiry continues. I have no doubt that the next days will serve as more grist for the mill. There will be embarrassments, and there will be contradictions, contradictions of memory, There will certainly be additional speculation and considerable questioning of how some in high positions made some of the judgments or acted the way they did. In the end, though, it is my hope that we, and much more, importantly the American people, will fairly judge these actions and this record in the light of the very difficult human moment the witnesses found themselves in, which both Senator Sarbanes and Senator Dodd have described. I believe that this Committee acquitted itself well in the first round of hearings chaired by Senator Riegle. Our fellow citizens don't want these hearings to be a partisan circus. They don't want us wasting money on a political witch hunt or creating theories out of whole cloth, They want a fair and politically neutral search for the truth, and all of us who are spending so much time rhetorically dealing with Government waste certainly don't want to spend taxpayers' dollars scoring points against each other. That's not what the hearing process is supposed to be about, it's not what the United States Senate is supposed to be about, and it's certainly not what the American people want. They want and they deserve the truth.