July 29, 1994 - Part 4
July 29, 1994 - Part 4
(15:50:53) Senator Mack Let me go to the scene at the park because what I have implied here, with Ms. Braun, is that there was a loss of control at the house. Did you have a sense that you had lost control at the scene? 85 Ms. BRAUN. At the scene, no. Mr. ROLLA. No, no. Senator MACK. How about at the house? Mr. ROLLA. Control was not a factor. Going in to make the death notification we would like to do it our way. yeah, I guess if you want to call it control or whatever, we bad a certain way we would have liked to do it, but all those people showed up and, it was a terrible notification, terrible grief, and everything else going on. Yes, at that point we waited, that is why we were there so long, we waited until things calmed down and people seperated and we started to talk to certain people as much as we could, pretty much in bits and pieces. Senator MACK. Let me just take you to the issue that we discussed this morning, a pager. Mr. ROLLA. Please, please. Senator MACK. I am concerned about the pager being turned over to the White House, Mr. ROLLA. I am aware of that. Senator MACK. Is that normal procedure? Mr, ROLLA. Well, let me explain it to you. You go on the scene, you observe the facts that are there, and the facts that are there was that this was an apparent suicide. Not one fact then or has ever come forward since then to this day to say it was anything other, anything sinister, anything other than a suicide. With that in mind, a pager, the White House credentials on the pager were recorded, at least the pager was. I do not remember if I recorded the White House credentials because obviously I am going to give them back to the Secret Service. They may have been xeroxed. The pager brand was recorded, the name brand, the serial number was recorded, the pager was turned off. As far as any information on the pager, be could have turned it off at any time, and if anybody paged him while it was off, that does not tell me anything. If they paged him after be killed himself, it does not tell me anything. It does not tell me what time he turned it off because he could have had his last page 20 to 30 minutes before be turned it off, If it turned out something crazy, that it was a homicide, the FBI could have taken my report and the serial number to the pager company and subpoenaed the pager records and got all the calls that were paged to him that date. We turned it over to the Secret Service, yes, any property that belongs to the White House United States Government, the credentials and the pager, a matter of security, yes, it is proper procedure. I called them up, they wanted to come down and get it, and I turned it over to them after I recorded the information that I needed to get from it. I bad no further use for it, because there was nothing to say that this was anything other than a suicide. Senator MACK. So it is your opinion, then, when you gave up this pager that it was really unimportant? Mr. ROLLA. Right. At that time, I had the information I needed that if something important came up, the pager records could be 86 subpoenaed. Again, the pager was turned off. I did not believe there was anything on there. I have a pager, I turn it off, there's nothing, there's no memory on my pager. You know, possibly some pagers have memories. I did, not think of it, to be honest, and why, again this was a suicide investigation. What it could tell me we found out. Of course, family members and many other people were looking for him, he was a high White House official, they were paging him. My feeling was that was part of his suicide note. He turned his pager off. He was not going to receive any more messages, No, at that time I did not need it, and if I did need it, I could subpoena the records. The CHAiRmAN. Thank you. Senator Kerry,