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August 3, 1994 - Part 2
(11:35:50) Secretary BENTSEN. No, he did not. Senator FAIRCLOTH. Do you know of any evidence that Robert Fiske investigated to determine whether Roger Altman withheld information from Congress? Secretary BENTSEN. Senator Faircloth, I do not have that detailed information. Senator FAIRCLOTH. So the point being, so when Robert Fiske said evidence does not justify criminal prosecution of any Federal statute, have no reason to believe that he even investigated the possibility of criminal withholding information from Congress. So if he did not talk to you, he did not. That is all. I yield the rest of my time. The CHAIRMAN. Thank you. What I am going to do also, I have had a couple of Members ask me, unrelated to you, Senator Faircloth, it would be helpful to them because they get absorbed in a line of questioning, and they do not see the timing clock. If they could receive a note from a staff member as their time has expired, so they will know that so they can then stop in an orderly way themselves, rather than have to be interrupted, and I ,would prefer that as well. So we will endeavor to do that and pass a note to Members as the clock expires so they know that and that they can manage the time accordingly. Senator Kerry. OPENING COMMENTS OF SENATOR KERRY Senator KERRY. Thank you very much, Mr, Chairman. Mr. Secretary, welcome, and thank you for taking time to be with US. What was the date that the freeze was put into place when you began to collect Secretary BENTSEN. What? Senator KERRY. What was the date that you began to collect the information, a freeze on computers and documents was put in place? Do you recall approximately when that was? Secretary BENTSEN. I would say it was in March. I cannot give you the exact date. Senator KERRY. Early March, I think. I just wanted to take a moment to commend you for that. I think that our colleagues and the country ought to be aware of the meas- 33 ure, the full measure of compliance that has taken place here, even the safeguarding of documents. The reason we have a Josh Steiner diary, the reason we have these contradictory documents from people is because you saw your duty and understood that this was serious and that the Treasury Department was going to be beyond reproach with respect to that. I might say it is in direct contrast to prior experience up here. I think you and the Department are to be commended for that, and the Administration is to be commended. Last night, we received a document that had been previously redacted. The White House gave it to us. Pages of document outside of the scope but they unredacted it and made it available. I just want to commend you for it, Secretary BENTSEN. Thank you, sir. Senator KERRY. I want to ask you a few questions if I can in a couple of areas that I think are very important to the Committee, as we try to struggle to reconcile different recollections here and testimony. I also want to try to understand the standards we are dealing with. You and others have cited the report to you from the Office of Government Ethics and appropriately, you in your opening said, from this report, that there are many contacts that are troubling. You did not gloss over that, you mentioned it. There are also citations about problems between Treasury and RTC and you have mentioned those today. What still disturbs me is, I think it is a good report as far as it goes. I have read the analysis, I agree with most of the analysis, but it is a very strictly legal document, making judgments about the specific worst case scenarios of the Federal law as they apply. Let me give you an example. One of the areas they examined was the principle that employees shall act impartially and not give preferential treatment to any private organization or individual. I would assume you would agree that an employee of the Treasury Department should act impartially and not give preferential treatment to any public organization or individual where that individual might be affected by actions. Secretary BENTSEN. I think when you get into a situation that I cited earlier with the White House where, under certain conditions, it would be quite proper to give non-public information in order that their responsibilities can be discharged.
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August 3, 1994 - Part 2
(11:40:31) But I do not think the lines are clear enough on that. And I think the Office of Government Ethics makes a good point on that, and I think we ought to do a better job in defining that. And I think that is true not just for the law enforcement at Treasury, but also for every other Department. Senator KE RRY. The reason I ask it, Mr. Secretary is that at a later page of the report, page 10, it says, as a final note on the appearance issue, we should add that we recognize that having a public purpose for a disclosure does not preclude an employee from also having, as a purpose, the furtherance of a private interest. And as to Ms. Hanson, they found that she did not do anything with respect to a private interest. 34 But they also say in this report that it is unclear from the report what Mr. Altman's role in. the disclosure of September 29th may have been. And here we go to his memory about Ms. Hanson 7 and they specifically say that Ms. Hanson's memorandum-excuse me--we feel there is insufficient information to enable us to provide you with any further analysis of Mr. Altman's participation in this disclosure. Now that is why a very essential question for us here is Mr. Altman's relationship to Ms. Hanson, and Ms. Hanson's visit to the White House. And I just want to come back to it for a moment, if I can, so that we can analyze this other part of the report. You have talked earlier in your testimony about your office and the way you ran it. I recollect that you run a very tight ship, and I respect that. I think we all do. It is hard for me to imagine that your lawyer, the Counsel to the Treasury, would spontaneously contact the White House without some authorization from somebody or some notice to somebody, that she would just take it upon herself to go to the White House with a very unusual happening, a reference of a criminal referral mentioning the name of the President or Mrs. Clinton as a possible witness. I want to emphasize that. The word keeps getting thrown around here, criminal referral, Witness. And most Americans are not drawing that distinction. Can you help us with that, because we have really got to make some choice up here. Would she have gone, I mean, was she authorized, I do not want to ask your opinion, but was she authorized to contact the White House on her own in that kind of a situation? Secretary BENTSEN. Let me state that I have a better understanding of it just from what I have heard here this morning, because my understanding, I believe as Senator Dodd testified, that she went over for some other reason. And she was at the White House, and the occasion came up where she decided she could divulge that. Now that is what I was told. I did not know that before, and that makes it more easily understood. Senator KERRY. The evidence before the Committee, Mr. Secretary, is that she was directed. Well, there is conflicting evidence, but several people have indicated she was directed to call. She telephoned. The telephone logs indeed show that there was a call. They did not connect. And then she happened to be there a subsequent day and took advantage of that to relay the information she had intended to relay in the telephone call. But that she states she was doing this upon the specific instruction of Mr. Altman. Now the Committee's got to wrestle with this question. Would the lawyer for the Treasury have taken upon herself, this independent, or was she authorized to do this, or was this an unauthorized contact? Secretary BENTSEN. Let me say, Senator, that top officials in Treasury were often, often at the White House working with staff 35 at the White House and developed a relationship there. That it was not unusual for them to be there. I do not know any prohibition that would have been in place for her not to have done that. The CHAIRMAN. Senator Kerry, if you want to pursue that, 1 will yield you 2 minutes off my next round. Senator D'Amato's in agreement with doing that if you want to take a couple of minutes to finish this line of discussion.
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