August 4, 1994 - Part 3
August 4, 1994 - Part 3
(11:20:35) From your deposition, you said it was 5 minutes. Stick with the 5 minutes, because that is closer to the 10 seconds, and that helps us narrow it, I am willing to stipulate, from all the conversation, that it was 5 minutes or less. That does not concern me. What concerns me is not the briefness of the meeting but the, if I may use the phrase, the high octane of the meeting. You have got yourself, you have got Mr. Ickes, you have got Mr. Stephanopoulos, and you have got someone from the White House Counsel. You do not convene a meeting with that level of people unless either the person asking for the meeting has a lot of octane connected with him or her, or the subject is a subject of intense interest, no matter how long the meeting lasts. Busy people like yourself and Mr. Ickes and Mr. Stephanopoulos and a member of the White House Counsel's Office do not come together casually. You all, as Mr. McLarty has so eloquently stated, had lots of other important things to do. So Mr. Altman is passing through. He has an important appointment on the Hill. He gives his report very quickly and then moves on to his meeting, and you do not even have time to sit down. Somebody, either Mr. Altman or you as the one who assembled the group, felt it was very important to get the message to the White House that Roger Altman had changed his mind, Now do you think that somebody was likely to be Mr. Altman? That he felt it was very important to get that message out? Or did YOU, as the one who convened the meeting, feel it was very important to get that message to the White House? MS. WILLIAMS. Sir, I do not know what it was Mr. Altman was thinking at the time that he called me and asked me to assemble some people. I do know that I did not place him coming to the White House to say this very high on my chart. I must confess that I did not think about it in a very engaged way, other than the fact that Mr. Altman had asked me to gather a few people and I did it, Senator BENNETT. Thank you. My time is gone. But if I might just summarize my reaction, it seems to me that it was far more important to Mr. Altman that the group be gathered to hear his decision than it was to the people in the group that they were looking forward to hear his decision. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The CHAIRMAN. Thank you, Senator Bennett, Senator Shelby. OPENING COMMENTS OF SENATOR SHELBY Senator SHELBY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mrs. Williams, I want to again go back to the scrap book, or the diary, or whatever-I think Mr. Altman called it a scrap book but it looks like a diary to me- -that you are very familiar with. We are all familiar with it, and that you have been asked about. 308 This has caught my attention and a lot of the other people's. It says that on 1-11-94, the entry, "on Whitewater Maggie told me that HRC" that is Hillary Rodham Clinton "was 'paralyzed' " that was a descriptive word "paralyzed by it. If we don't solve this within the next two days, you don't have to worry about her schedule on Health Care." And then down a little further: "HRC" Hillary Rodham Clinton, "doesn't want the Counsel poking into 20 years of public life in Arkansas." Let's go back to the word "paralyzed." That is a strong word. It is descriptive. You have known Roger Altman how long? MS. WILLIAMS. When I came to the White House in January of 1994. 1 don't remember meeting Roger right away, and maybe in February or March of-- I'm sorry, of 1993, excuse me.