Paul Sarbanes

Mr. SARBANES

Mr. SARBANES. I just want to put on the record, because I think it is important to keep it accurate if we can, that the GAO did a financial audit. It does periodic financial audit reports. The audit report for the period January 1994, which is when Fiske began, to March 1995, by the GAO, was $14,600,000. In addition, an estimate has been made from the period subsequent to March 1995. In other words, April 1995 to January 1996. Based on the level that they were following at the end of the previous period--and, of course, the independent counsel has, in fact, intensified his efforts, but that is not taken into account--that figure would be $11 million, which would give you a total of $25,600,000.

Mr. SARBANES. I wish to point out to the Senator from New Mexico that this committee held 1 day of hearings in the last 9 days leading up to the end of our time. The Iran-Contra Committee held hearings in 8 of the last 9 days leading up to the end of its time. Your leader, Senator Dole, with respect to the Iran-Contra Committee, insisted that it have a timeframe because, he said, it would not be fair to run that inquiry into the 1988 political year. The Democrats in the Congress, led by Chairman Hamilton and Chairman Inouye from the Senate, agreed with that. They provided a time limit, and then they met almost around the clock over the last month. They held 21 days of hearings in the last month in order to complete their work. Now, it was your leader who pressed that case very hard. And the Democrats responded to it, in all fairness. Now, this situation is in complete contrast.

Mr. SARBANES. First, the Senator indicated, as I understood it, the costs of the independent counsel were $12 million, is that correct?

Mr. SARBANES. Will the Senator yield for some questions?

Mr. SARBANES. That is not accurate, I say to the Senator.

Mr. SARBANES. I understand. In January and February, when we urged the committee to do an intensified schedule, when the Senate was not holding floor sessions and not voting, over that 2-month period we held only 15 hearings. The Iran-Contra Committee in a month's time held 21 hearings. So during that period, January and February--in other words, the last 2 months of this committee's existence--

Mr. SARBANES. The schedule ground down. It did not intensify. And over the last 10 days we have only had 1 day of hearings.

Mr. SARBANES. One of the things that is happening--and I think this needs to be understood--is that we get notes and testimony, and then it is treated as though it is some new discovery. ``Oh, we found out something that no one knew anything about.'' For example, when Mr. Ickes came in, a lot of focus was on the fact that there was this damage control squad to deal with the Whitewater matter set up in early 1994 and that he was the head of it. So this is treated in the hearings--and it has been done here on the floor as well today--as a major revelation, a new sort of breakthrough in discovery of facts that has been made. This is from the Washington Post, January 7, 1994: With the start of the new year, the White House launched a major internal effort to fight back against mounting criticism of the way it has handled inquiries into President Clinton's Arkansas land investments. A high-powered damage control squad was appointed under the direction of new Deputy Chief of Staff, Harold Ickes, and daily strategy sessions began. This article was in January 1994, reporting on this matter. Then we hold a hearing, we get these notes, and this is treated as though some major revelation has been discovered. Actually the report on February 16, 1996, reads: Four days into the new year of 1994, top White House aides gathered in the office of then Chief of Staff Thomas F. ``Mack'' McLarty for the first meeting of the Whitewater response team. You could take the story from January 1994 and the story written after our hearing, and they are virtually the same. Yet this is portrayed as though something new has been revealed or discovered. This sort of process is going on all the time. Members need to understand that. I thank the Senator for yielding.

Mr. SARBANES. When was that hearing on Steiner?

Mr. SARBANES

Mr. SARBANES. This committee spent what was available to them. That was the $950,000.

Mr. SARBANES. If the Senator will yield?

Mr. SARBANES. If the Senator would prefer that I wait, I will be happy to do that.

Mr. SARBANES. If the Senator would prefer that I wait, I will be happy to.

Mr. SARBANES

Mr. SARBANES. Would the Senator yield for a question?

Mr. SARBANES. I say to the distinguished minority leader, when this resolution was enacted under which the special committee has been operated with the February 29 deadline, was it not the recognized intention at the time that this was in an effort to keep it out of the political season? In fact, the chairman of the committee, Senator D'Amato, stated when we were before the Rules Committee--and I quote him--``We wanted to keep it out of that political arena. That is why we decided to come forth with just the 1-year request.'' And I, in appearing with him before the Rules Committee, stated, ``I think it is important to try to finish this inquiry, to be very candid about it, and not take it into an election year with the appearance and the aspect that it is an election-year political effort.'' I say to the leader, was it not the understanding at the time that we wished to keep it out of the political season, a view expressed by both Republicans and Democrats?

Mr. SARBANES. This issue that we are facing now has been prompted, has it not, by the request by the chairman of the committee, the distinguished Senator from New York, Senator D'Amato, for an additional $600,000 to carry on the inquiry for an unlimited period of time? The distinguished minority leader put forward a proposition to allow the committee to continue until the 3rd of April with hearings and a little over a month thereafter to file the report with additional funding of $185,000, which would enable the committee to go on to do the last set of hearings but not involve us in an open-ended inquiry that could carry right through the entire political year. Is that not correct?

Mr. SARBANES. Let me just make the further point to the leader, in these months of January and February, the Senate was not in session voting on the floor. We urged the chairman of the committee to have an intense hearing schedule, which would be made easier by the fact that it would not be interrupted for votes, that we would be able to really begin early in the morning and go late into the day. Many of these hearings that were held began at 10:30 or 11 o'clock and ran until 1:30 or 2 o'clock in the afternoon. Not all of them; some extended through the day. But once again, the comparison between this hearing schedule and what occurred in the last month of Iran-Contra is absolutely dramatic. In spite of the fact that we did not have intensified hearings, the minority leader said, ``Well, we'll provide some additional time.'' That was the alternative that was offered. In other words, Chairman D'Amato said, ``Well, we want the $600,000, and we want an unlimited time period to carry on this inquiry,'' right straight through 1996, I assume, until the eve of the election. My distinguished colleague from Illinois commented in the committee one day. He said, ``There will be no more hearings after November 5.'' He said, ``I can guarantee you that,'' if he will recall making that statement. That would obviously make it political--the very thing that Senator Dole spoke about in 1987 when we were considering the Iran- Contra, and the very thing that was spoken about here last year when we were considering this committee, on both sides of the aisle. Then at least there was a recognition of the desirability of keeping it out of the political year, not politicizing the inquiry, and not leading to a public perception that what was going on was a straight political exercise. Now, the minority leader, in order to try to accommodate, I thought, made a very reasonable proposal. That is the one that we offered in the committee and, unfortunately, it was rejected on a straight partisan vote. A straight partisan vote rejected the proposition for a further extension until the 3d of April, and some time beyond that, to do the report. And so the proposition now that moved out of our committee, and is pending in the Rules Committee, is for an indefinite extension and $600,000 worth of additional money. I say to the distinguished leader that, in my perception, he has offered a very reasonable proposition. My own strong view, obviously, is that it should have been accepted. I do not think that we ought to undertake an indefinite extension. I think that is an unreasonable proposal on its face, and that is the issue that is now joined, that we are now contending with here on the floor of the Senate. But the contrast between Iran-Contra and how that was handled by a Democratic Congress with a Republican administration could not be sharper.

Mr. SARBANES. I yield to the Senator for a question. I do have a statement I want to complete.

Mr. SARBANES. Mr. President, I want to take a few minutes to recapitulate where we are. On May 17 of last year, the Senate adopted Senate Resolution 120 which provided for the establishment of the Special Committee to Investigate Whitewater Development Corporation and Related Matters. That resolution provided $950,000 to conduct the investigation. That funding expires on February 29, 1996, which is today. From the beginning, it was and remains my strong intention that this investigation be carried out in a fair, thorough, and impartial manner, and that it be completed before the country enters into the Presidential campaign. By authorizing funding only through February 29, 1996, Senate Resolution 120 accomplished this objective. In fact, that resolution states that the purposes of the committee are ``to expedite the thorough conduct of this investigation, study, and hearings,'' and ``to engender a high degree of confidence on the part of the public regarding the conduct of such investigation, study, and hearings.'' Indeed, Chairman D'Amato himself, when he went before the Rules Committee in the first part of last year in seeking funding for the investigation, stated, ``We wanted to keep it out of that political arena, and that is why we decided to come forward with a 1-year request.'' The funding deadline has now been reached. The investigation has not been completed. I will discuss, in a moment, the reasons I believe the committee failed to complete the investigation by the cutoff date. The Senate must decide now whether to continue the investigation and, if so, what additional funding and what additional time to provide. I want this clearly understood. We passed a resolution last year by an overwhelming bipartisan vote to carry out an inquiry through February 29 of 1996. In my judgment, as I will indicate shortly, that was more than adequate to complete the inquiry. It has not been completed, and the chairman of the committee, Senator D'Amato, is now proposing a resolution for an additional $600,000 in funding and an unlimited extension of time to continue the Senate's inquiry into the so-called Whitewater matter. Unlike S. Res. 120, which we passed last year, this proposal now for an unlimited extension completely disregards concerns about extending the investigation deep into a Presidential election year. In my view, it seriously undermines the credibility of this investigation and creates the public perception that this investigation is being conducted for political purposes. As my distinguished colleague from Connecticut, Senator Dodd, indicated earlier, there is no precedent that I am aware of for the Senate to conduct an open-ended investigation of a sitting President during a Presidential election year. In fact, as I understand it, there is no precedent to carry on an open-ended inquiry. All of the various investigations--and, as I understand it, the Senator put a list into the Record--placed a defined timeframe. As I indicated earlier in my quotes, this is a matter on which Senator Dole, now the majority leader, has spoken repeatedly in the past in very strong terms, with respect to the need to have a defined time period. Now, this proposed additional funding for this committee, another $600,000, would bring Senate expenditures on the investigation of Whitewater to $2 million. It is $1,950,000, just under $2 million. It needs to be understood that this is not the only money that is being spent on Whitewater. There is a tendency to say we are spending this $2 million. Then you can say, what about all the other expenditures that are being made? This is not the only inquiry taking place. There is the RTC commission of Pillsbury, Madison, and Sutro, a distinguished San Francisco law firm, to carry on a civil investigation with respect to these matters involving Madison, and other related matters. They have now issued their final report, in which they find no actionable conduct. They have concluded that no legal actions should be taken. The cost of that inquiry is just under $4 million. So we add the amounts of $2 million and $4 million on the Pillsbury Madison. The independent counsel has spent, to date, we are informed, over $25 million and is spending at the rate of a million dollars a month. Of course, regarding the House committees, we do not know what the cost of their inquiry is. So over $30 million in direct costs have been spent by the Federal Government on the Whitewater investigation, and millions more have been spent by Federal agencies assisting with or responding to these investigations. This Whitewater committee made a very broad request to the White House for e-mails. It was so broad that it was eventually clear that this really was not workable. It was an onerous request. When it was finally narrowed down, we got a response from the White House. They have now provided 7 of the 9 weeks of e-mails, and the other 2 weeks are about to come up. Of course, the committee keeps sending further requests. I want that understood. This is a rolling game, and further requests are made. It has cost the White House hundreds of thousands of dollars to retrieve those e-mails because the Bush administration put in a system that made it very difficult to retrieve the e-mails. The Clinton administration changed that system back. From the date when the system was changed back, they were able to give us the e-mails after that date immediately. But the previous e-mails, under the Bush system, were extraordinarily difficult to retrieve. We are now in the process of receiving those, and we hope to complete it soon. They have had to bring in a contractor from outside, lay on a lot of extra staff, and spend hundreds of thousands of dollars in order to do that. Now, the proposal of Chairman D'Amato was first put forward for $600,000 and an unlimited time period. In the majority report on the progress of the Whitewater investigation, which was submitted to the Senate on January 22 by the special committee, the minority argued very strongly in its report that the committee, instead of seeking an extension of time and more money, should undertake an intensified hearing schedule in the final 6 weeks to complete its investigation by the February 29 deadline. I want this very clearly understood. In mid- January, we urged an intensified hearing schedule in order to complete the responsibilities that were before us. I want to point out that in the last 9 days remaining to this committee under S. Res. 120 to conduct hearings, only 1 day of hearings was held--in the last 9 days of that time period. In the last 9 days of the Iran-Contra committee, when it was coming up against its deadline, they held hearings on 8 of the 9 days. This committee held 1 day of hearings over the last 9 days. No hearings this week. One day of hearings last week. On the 23d of January, Senator Daschle wrote to Senator Dole, stating, It is well within the special committee's ability to complete its inquiry by February 29. The committee can and should adopt a hearing schedule over the next 6 weeks that will enable it to meet the Senate's designated timetable. Senator Daschle was absolutely correct. Unfortunately, there was no serious effort to intensify the hearing schedule in order to meet the February 29 deadline. In fact, sadly, to the contrary. As I indicated last week, the committee held one hearing with one witness. This week, one hearing was scheduled, but it was canceled. In other weeks, 2 or 3 days of hearings were held. Never were there 4 or 5, as was done with Iran-Contra. Indeed, as this committee did itself earlier in the year-- this committee itself, back in the summer, held hearings 4 and 5 days a week. We have not done that once, during 1 week, in the January to February period, even though there was no Senate business, there was no business on the floor of the Senate, and therefore we were free from those interruptions. Some of the witnesses had nothing to add. I just want to give two examples of this, which really in some ways is distressing. Susan Strayhorn, a former secretary, came in. A hearing started at about 10:30, finished at 1:00 or 1:30, and many of the questions at the hearing were so long-winded, at one point in the hearing Mrs. Strayhorn stated, ``I am sorry, Mr. Chairman, could we have a short break? I am nodding off here.'' There are other examples I mentioned. We have taken over 200 depositions. There is no selectivity and focus on the work of this committee. We took a deposition from a Mr. Charles Scalera. This should never have happened. If the majority counsel cannot call him up and find out whether there is anything there--the deposition began. He was brought in. He had to be sworn. He had a lawyer. We had to get the reporter to record it and go through that expense. The deposition began at 2:15, finished at 2:30. Mr. President, 15 minutes, and these were the last questions in the deposition: Question: Do you have any other information other than what you have gleaned from newspaper and media reports that you can give to the special committee regarding Mr. Foster's death? Answer: No, none whatever. Question: Any information other than what is reported in the media or the newspaper regarding Whitewater Development Corporation? Answer: None whatever. Question: Madison Guaranty Savings and Loan Association? Answer: None whatever. Question: Capital Management Services? Answer: None whatever. Question: Seth Ward? Answer: No. Question: David Hale? Answer: No. Finally, counsel says, ``Thank you very much for your time. I have nothing further.''

Mr. SARBANES. I think the public is increasingly coming to ask those questions. They are asking the question, ``Why do you now seek another $600,000, bringing the cost of this to just under $2 million, and why are you projecting it further into the President election year?'' As I indicated, I think the extending of--indefinitely--the proposal of Chairman D'Amato and his colleagues undermines the credibility of this investigation and would obviously contribute to a growing public perception that is being conducted for political purposes.

Mr. SARBANES. That is the current state of affairs. The Senator is correct.

Mr. SARBANES. Will the Senator yield?

Mr. SARBANES. One of the strongest----

Mr. SARBANES. Yes.

Mr. SARBANES

Mr. SARBANES. Mr. President, today I am introducing legislation to designate the Lower Eastern Shore of Maryland as a National Heritage Area. The purpose of this legislation is to help conserve and promote the resources of the region's communities and their unique contribution to the fabric of the Nation, while revitalizing its local economies and improving its overall quality of life. The Lower Eastern Shore is a very special place. It contains an unrivaled combination of resources and history which represent a unique and integral piece of the diverse tapestry of our national character. Situated on the Delmarva Peninsula between the Atlantic Ocean and the Chesapeake Bay--the largest and most productive estuary in North America, its nationally significant natural resources also include the Coastal Bays--Chincoteague, Sinepuxent, Isle of Wright, and Assawoman; the Wild and Scenic Pocomoke River; and one of the few relatively undisturbed strands of barriers islands on the east coast--to name only a few. Its unique land and water resources contain an extraordinary variety of habitat types--from old growth forests to cypress swamps-- and a tremendous diversity of flora and fauna. The Lower Eastern Shore has played an important role in the history and culture of our Nation from the earliest native American, African- American, and European-American settlements. Evidence of the Lower Shore's past is featured prominently in its daily life--including its watermen who for centuries have sailed the Bay's waters in the legendary Skipjacks--the last commercial sailing fleet left in North America--Bugeyes, and other vessels harvesting oysters, crabs, and fish. The area is recognized as the country's original historic and cultural center for the shell fishing industry. It holds the birth rights to the uniquely American art form of decoy carving through the internationally-recognized work of Lemuel and Steve Ward. The agriculture and water-related industries which flourished throughout the 1700's and 1800's, still contribute heavily to the regional economy. Many of the towns and communities on the Lower Shore including Crisfield, Deal Island, Smith Island, Snow Hill, and Princess Anne look much the same today as they did almost two centuries ago--and their numerous buildings and sites on the National Register of Historic Places still serve as important reminders of the history of the area. The Lower Eastern Shore also boasts a wide array of national recreational amenities including: Ocean City, one of the Nation's premier ocean resorts; the Assateague Island National Seashore, one of the few pristine and unspoiled seashores remaining on the east coast; the Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge, home to the largest population of bald eagles east of the Mississippi River; and the Beach to Bay Indian National Recreational Trail. Over 10 million tourists visit the area each year to enjoy not only the scenic waterways and recreational draws, but also the historic sites and cultural attractions. Five years ago, State and local government officials, area residents, the National Park Service, the Environmental Protection Agency, the University of Maryland-Eastern Shore, businesses, and other private organizations joined together to harness and at the same time protect this area's distinctive potential. This was one of the early efforts in a growing national movement of concerned individuals, organizations, and governments working together to develop a vision for the future of an area distinguished by its resources, communities, and ways of life. Through that effort, a regional public-private partnership was formed and the Lower Eastern Shore Heritage Committee has prepared and begun to implement a plan which is already showing results in the conservation, preservation, and the revitalization of the Lower Shore counties. The bill which I have introduced will provide further impetus for the successful implementation of a heritage conservation and development plan, while providing the Lower Eastern Shore with the important national recognition it deserves. This legislation is not designed to create a new national park or in any way change existing authorities of Federal, State and local governments to regulate the use of land as provided for by current law or regulations. Rather, it provides Federal technical assistance and grants and seed moneys at the grassroots level to foster Federal, State, and local partnerships, and promote and protect the unique characteristics of the area. The Lower Eastern Shore Heritage initiative has been endorsed by a number of communities and organizations including the town of Berlin, the city of Crisfield, Pocomoke City, the town of Princess Anne, the town of Snow Hill, the Beach to Bay Indian Trail Committee, the Pocomoke River Alliance, the Greater Crisfield Marketing Authority, the Jenkins Creek Environmental Research Center, Wicomico, Worcester, and Somerest County tourism offices, and local chambers of commerce. I ask unanimous consent that the full text of the bill and a section- by-section analysis be included in the Record. It is my hope that this bill can be included as part of the broader National Heritage Area legislation which is working its way through the Congress.