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“REGARDING RELEASE OF CONFIDENTIAL INFORMATION PROVIDED BY MR. AND MRS. HUBBELL” mentioning the U.S. Dept. of Justice was published in the House of Representatives section on pages H2779-H2780 on May 5, 1998.
The publication is reproduced in full below:
REGARDING RELEASE OF CONFIDENTIAL INFORMATION PROVIDED BY MR. AND MRS.
HUBBELL
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Conyers) is recognized for 5 minutes.
Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Speaker, it would be useful for us to reflect on some of the matters that have transpired over the last several days in this political thunderstorm that is the continuing efforts by independent counsel Kenneth Starr to get the President.
I find most troublesome the recent conduct of the distinguished chairman of the committee I once chaired, the old Government Operations Committee. I refer to none other than the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Burton) and his actions on the day the grand jury returned the indictments against Mr. and Mrs. Webster Hubbell.
Chairman Burton released private and confidential conversations of Mr. and Mrs. Hubbell, and Mr. Hubbell's attorney, carefully selecting those portions that he believed would be most damaging to the First Lady. This release was designed and calculated to embarrass the Hubbells and, in the bargain, to conceal those portions of the conversation that contradicted the tenor and content of the selected portions of the conversations that were disclosed. In addition, it has been reported that Chairman Burton and his staff not only withheld information, but they also made mistakes, serious mistakes, in transcription.
At a minimum, these disclosures violated the spirit and, I believe, the letter of the law of the Privacy Act and the privilege any person enjoys when he or she speaks with a spouse or an attorney. The Department of Justice forwarded this information to this Congress with the understanding that any disclosure would be handled with discretion.
I wish I could say that happened here. There has been no shortage of critical commentary about the scope, the timing, and the techniques Mr. Starr has used. By the same token, we in the House of Representatives must carefully consider our responsibilities while we await any report Mr. Starr may be preparing and guard against mimicking his excessive practices.
Clearly, we must guard against bias or inappropriate procedures, including premature and indiscreet disclosures of sensitive information. To do less is to lack the discipline and the judgment necessary to meet this important responsibility.
According to public accounts, the Speaker may well ask the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Burton) to participate and consider the product of Mr. Starr's $40 million so-called ``independent investigation.'' The recent actions of the gentleman from Indiana do not bode well for how he might handle secret grand jury information.
Obviously, we already have a barometer of how this senior Republican Member of the House will approach his responsibilities. I cite this as further evidence of the plea I have issued more than once that the Committee on the Judiciary and not Chairman Burton or any special committee is the only appropriate forum to consider any report if one is ever to be submitted by Mr. Starr. Any effort to assign this task to a special committee should be seen for what it is, an ill-disguised, politically motivated effort to get the President and to protect the majority in the House of Representatives.
As chairman of the former Government Operations Committee, the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Burton) is in the singular position of representing and embodying the integrity of his committee's review, as well as the integrity of the process by which it does its work. And while I am confident that he would disagree, I am sure that many of my colleagues on both sides of the aisle have been troubled by disclosures of information which we know to be selective, incomplete and wrong.
We can only hope that any product that might be issued by his committee is not similarly flawed.
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