August 3, 1994 - Part 6
August 3, 1994 - Part 6
(17:50:42) Senator BENNETT. I accept that. I think you're right as a general rule and I think that's proper, I don't think that was the circumstance here. As I say, I think Mr. Altman clearly should have and virtually everyone who has looked at it in hindsight has come to the same conclusion including, from his testimony last night, Mr. Altman. May I just ask one purely informational quick question? How many of you are there, how big is the President-is the Office of the Counsel to the President? How many Associate Counsels, et cetera, are there? Mr. KLEIN. There is a Counsel to the President which is now in effect, I hate to say de facto, but it is Mr. Cutler, Deputy Counsel to the President, 7 Associate Counsels on the staff and 3 Assistant Counsels. So that's 12 full-time lawyers. We have in addition some detailees who are assisting us in the hearing, sir. Senator BENNETT. I can remember when there was only one. The CHAIRMAN. Senator Bryan. Senator BRYAN. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I want to associate myself with an observation of Senator Kerry made just a moment ago. I have been enormously impressed and very pleased with the candor of the witnesses today in responding to questions. I have to say, it has been in the course of 4 days of hearings but those of you who have had the chance to respond to this panel and one may not agree with your responses, but they have been direct and to the point. And frankly, I've had a sense of frustration in talking to some of our witnesses previously. The thing that I find most troublesome is the testimony of Mr. Altman on February 24th. I think by any standard, given its most charitable interpretation, it was incomplete, and misleading and notwithstanding an opportunity to correct that testimony, it took a series of some four letters subsequent to his testimony, I think that you have served the President well by sensing immediately, as you did, Mr. Eggleston, from your testimony, literally leaving the hearing, as I understood it, and saying wait a minute, we may have a problem here. That, I don't believe is complete. Mr. Klein, you've indicated that although you weren't privy to the meetings that you from what you had been told, also shared a concern. So I think that both your instincts and your judgment were quite correct and I applaud and compliment you for that. Help me to understand, not notwithstanding the good advice-and essentially from your presentation here today both of you are extremely articulate and persuasive men in advocating your causehow did it come to be, as you understand it, that this testimony 125 was not clarified on the March 2nd or at least the letter that followed that. I believe that would have been on the March 11th, I believe-March 3rd, excuse me. March 3rd, I'm greatly troubled by that and somewhat perplexed because you were on top of it. You recognized it. Mr. Eggleston, you called the day before to say, look, is Mr. Altman prepared to answer that. Please share with me what you know from your own knowledge and what you have learned since. Mr. EGGLESTON. Sir, from my own knowledge, I really know "about the activities in the White House starting on the 24th and then through the call that Mr. Podesta made on March 1st. I will tell you that there was a lot of discussion about that call, how to make it. We recognized that the fact that the White House was calling Mr. Altman about his testimony was, in and of itself, a newsworthy event, that that was an event of consequence for the White House to call a Deputy Secretary of the Treasury and suggest that there were aspects of his testimony that he might want to supplement. And in some sense that's a reason it took us a while. We wanted to be careful about how we did it. We wanted to be deliberate about how we did it, but I think we did it fairly quickly, actually, under the circumstances. That call was made, but I just can't help you much [beyond that]. Mr. Altman did not-as far as I know, and maybe he did through others, but as far as I know, he did not consult back with us. I don't think he then sent us the March 2nd letter for our review and say to us, you're the ones who called us. This is what we're going to send back. Is this now OK? I don't recall that he ever communicated back to us to ask whether we thought that he had covered all the issues that we had concern about.