August 4, 1994 - Part 1
August 4, 1994 - Part 1
(09:20:24) As all of you know, the President introduced major health and welfare reform legislation that our country so badly needs, and after getting the Brady Bill passed, we are on the threshold of passing a sweeping and a meaningful crime bill. And our 1995 budget and related appropriations bills are moving forward in an orderly and a timely manner. I also want to emphasize, and to say very sincerely, that the people who work in the White House are some of the finest people that I have ever known. They are dedicated public servants and represent our Nation's very best, as they should. It was a privilege for me to be their Chief of Staff and it continues to be a privilege for me to work with them on a daily basis. If there were errors, they were made in good faith. None of US are perfect and none of us ought to assert that we are. And I am confident that this Committee, like the Special Counsel, the Office of Government Ethics, and the White House Counsel will conclude that no one did anything wrong, that we served our President and our country well, and that now it is time for us to get back to work. Mr. Chairman, thank you very much. The CHAIRMAN. Thank you, Mr. McLarty. Ms. Williams, we would like your statement now please. TESTIMONY OF MARGARET A. WILLIAMS, ASSISTANT TO THE PRESIDENT AND CHIEF OF STAFF TO THE FIRST LADY, WASHINGTON, DC MS. WILLIAMS. I am Margaret Ann Williams, Assistant to the President and Chief of Staff to the First Lady. I am grateful to Chairman Riegle and the Members of the Senate Banking Committee for the opportunity to address you concerning my very limited contact with the Treasury Department in connec. tion with the work of the Resolution Trust Corporation. That contact was confined to a meeting on February 2nd of this year, and an encounter with Deputy Treasury Secretary Roger Altman several days later. But prior to my testimony, I think the Committee might find it useful to know a little about my professional background and my duties and responsibilities as Assistant to the President and Chief of Staff to the First Lady. My appointment to President Clinton's staff came after a brief stint with the Clinton-Gore campaign, where I served as Mrs. Clinton 's communications director. I joined the staff of the Children's Defense Fund in 1985, as a senior media analyst responsible for developing and overseeing an advertising campaign on teen pregnancy prevention. In 1988, 1 became CDS director of media affairs and served on CDS's six member management committee. Prior to CDS, I worked for the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, developing a media relations program for that organization. I have served as a campaign press secretary and a national and congressional campaign secretary and held a number of media-related jobs. I hold a master's degree from the Annenberg School of Communications at the University of Pennsylvania. As one of seventeen Assistants to the President, I participate, as directed by the Chief of Staff to the President, in management issues and communications meetings and work groups. As Chief of Staff to the First Lady, I manage, direct, and advise a staff of thirteen who support the activities of the First Lady. Those areas include policy, press relations, White House events and social activities, scheduling and correspondence. Because of Mrs. Clinton's involvement in Health Care policy., spend a good deal of time facilitating selective Health Care admin- istrative and policy issues across White House departments and the Cabinet. Late last year, the number of Whitewater press inquiries began to increase and my staff was required to spend more and more time answering these questions. Let me make it clear that I was not involved in the legal representation of the President or Mrs. Clinton. My activities with regard to Whitewater generally involved addressing management and information concerns related to overwhelming media interest in the matter. I made a conscious decision that I and other members of the First Lady's staff would not use our time with her discussing Whitewater unless we were trying to obtain facts to answer press inquiries, facts which could not be found elsewhere. I believed that our priority, and it was my job to keep us focused on our priority, was health care, and that we could keep our focus and help Mrs. Clinton to keep her focus by using the time we had with her on health care and on her many official and social obligations. Let me now address my involvement in the meeting of February 2, 1994.