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“WHITE HOUSE CLAIM OF EXECUTIVE PRIVILEGE” mentioning the U.S. Dept. of Justice was published in the House of Representatives section on pages H4885 on May 10, 1996.
The publication is reproduced in full below:
WHITE HOUSE CLAIM OF EXECUTIVE PRIVILEGE
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the gentleman from Minnesota [Mr. Gutknecht] is recognized for 5 minutes.
Mr. GUTKNECHT. Mr. Speaker, I rise today with no sense of pride, with actually a sense of trepidation to a certain degree, because I want to talk about something that has been happening and developing over the last year, actually, which culminated yesterday in a vote in the Committee on Government Reform and Oversight on some of the actions taken by this administration by the committee.
I think the American people need to understand what has happened and why. Yesterday the Committee on Government Reform and Oversight voted out a resolution to hold several high ranking members of this White House in contempt of Congress. This is an action which has happened only a handful of times in this century. I do not think anyone who serves on that committee wanted to see events lead to that.
But I think that the people need to understand and I think the Members need to understand how patient Chairman Clinger and the committee have been with the administration in terms of getting to the bottom of this matter, and I am referring to the White House Travel Office and the scandal that has surrounded that issue since 6 innocent Federal employees were terminated and ultimately humiliated in public for actions which they were later found to be not guilty of.
The story is a seamy story that involves abuse of power. It probably involves the abuse of the FBI, the IRS, and perhaps even the Justice Department. All we really want to do is get the facts and all of the documents out on the table and try to bring this matter to a final conclusion.
Chairman Clinger has been after this for over 3 years. In fact, after finally saying that, after hearing again and again that the White House would cooperate, the committee issued a subpoena back in January, and let me just read for you what some of the President's words were and what some of the actions have been. And not only in our words, because I think now that folks on the other side of the aisle are framing this only as a partisan political witchhunt. Frankly, I think most of us would have preferred to have this whole matter put behind us many months ago.
But early on in this investigation the President said, and I quote,
``the Attorney General is in the process of reviewing any matters related to the travel office and you can be assured that the Attorney General will have the administration's full cooperation in investigating those matters which the department wishes to review.''
That is a letter that the President sent to the former chairman of the Government Operations Committee. Here is what he said just this year in January, January 12, 1996, he said, and I quote, ``We have told everybody, we are in the cooperation business. That is what we want to do. We want to get this over with.''
That is what the President said in January. But I think people need to compare that with what has actually happened. Not what I am saying, not what Republican staffers are saying, but, for example, here is what Nancy Kingsbury of the General Accounting Office said, July 2, 1993, when she testified before our committee. She said, and I quote ``As a practical matter, we depend on and usually receive the candor and cooperation of agency officials and other important parties and have access to all their records. In candor, I can't say that there was quite the generous outpouring of cooperation in this case as might have been desirable.''
Let me just read a quote from Michael Shaheen, who heads the Office of Professional Responsibility for the President's own Justice Department, when he learned that there was a notebook that had been concealed for over 2 years that Vince Foster had put together that had extensive notes on the whole White House travel office affair. This is what Mr. Shaheen said, and I quote, ``We were stunned to learn of the existence of this document since it so obviously bears directly upon the inquiry we were directed to undertake in late July and August of 1993. We believe that our repeated requests to the White House personnel and counsel for any information that could shed light on Mr. Foster's statement regarding the FBI clearly covered the notebook and that even a minimum level of cooperation by the White House should have resulted in its disclosure to us at the outset of our investigation.''
Again, that is not a Republican staffer saying that. That is somebody from Clinton's own Justice Department.
Later on one of the other officials that testified before us, Jack Keeney, who is reporting to the Acting Criminal Division Director, he said, and I quote, ``At this point we are not confident that the White House has produced to us all the documents in its possession relating to the Thomason allegations. The White House's incomplete production greatly concerns us because the integrity of our review is entirely dependent upon our securing all relevant documents.''
Mr. Speaker, let me close by saying this: Seldom in the course of American history have so many in the White House done so much to provide so little. Sunshine is the best antiseptic. Let us get all the documents on the table and let us get this matter behind us.
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