August 4, 1994 - Part 9
August 4, 1994 - Part 9
(18:50:45) Now, I do not remember whether I got all that information from Mr. Lyons or whether, once Mr. Lyons made reference to the criminal referrals, I used information that Mr. Sloan had given me before that there were referrals, that they expected leaks of those referrals and that the referrals mentioned the President. Mr. LINDSEY. I must tell you that after I talked to Mr. Lyons and he indicated that he and others had had calls from the press, I was frankly surprised it was a month until the story was written. I expected there to be stories shortly thereafter. I did not believe that if the press had that information that they would sit on it for a month. Senator GRAMM. Mr. Podesta, I have got one final question for you. We have gone all around the Altman letter of March 2nd, and we know of your good work in trying to communicate to Mr. Altman that there were at least three deficiencies in that letter. There is something that I have not heard, and I don't believe it's been asked. You were the person who actually called Roger Altman to give him the heads-up that the White House had looked at the testimony or the actual tape of the hearings and that you were concerned about these three deficiencies. We all know that and we all respect that. We know from the letter that Roger Altman did not follow your advice and your counsel in the letter he sent on March 2nd. What we have not heard is what did Roger---could you, to the best of Your recollection, give us the other end of the conversation? What did Roger Altman say when you told him about these three deficiencies what was his reaction? I'm interested in trying to understand his state of mind as to Why he sent us a letter that clearly, in terms of full disclosure, violated that standard, particularly in view of what you had told him that you knew and that he either knew or should have known or should have been expected to know. What did he say oil the other end of the line? PODESTA. Senator, I hate the use of the words "heads-up." So I cannot tell you that I didn't go beyond what Jim Lyons told me. I may well have gone beyond what Mr. Lyons told me. But I do not believe it was improper to do so. Senator GRAMM. What I was trying to determine is to what extent the fact that you heard it from Lyons had been the conduit of the information, or whether the fact that you heard it from the Treasury was the basis of your notification to the President. What you are saying is that it was a confluence of the two. Mr. LINDSEY. The reason I understood I was being told the information was that they expected press leaks. At that point I was unaware of any-no inquiries had been made directly to us. Senator GRAMM. It would be a month in fact before the first article came out from the 410 Senator GRAMM. A perfectly legitimate "heads-up." If you were working for me and I had done that, I would have expected a "heads-up." Mr. PODESTA. Let me try to give you my best recollection which is that I raised the issue of how the meeting had been set up. Heand I think-again, I think I had the transcript in front of me, and I have it in front of me today so I want to refer to it. He says I requested a meeting with Mr. Nussbaum, and I said that Mr. Nussbaum did not believe that the meeting had been requested with him and he said that's right, I think I talked to Mack McLarty and asked for the meeting and he said who should be there and Mr. Altman said Mr. Nussbaum. And I think we had a very brief discussion about that in which we both concluded that the record as it stood was fine and didn't need to be corrected on that point. You may disagree with that but we thought it was not misleading. Senator GRAMM. Let's get to the three points, though, before my time Mr. PODESTA. That's one. Second, on recusal, I raised the issue of-that he had not mentioned recusal. I believe that he said to me that it had been raised with him at Treasury, that it had been in his talking points and that he had inadvertently forgotten to mention it. I said earlier in response to Senator Bryan's question that we thought that it was a judgment call and I want to explain that. I think it was our view, and I think I expressed this, that it should be disclosed, but that it was a judgment call, that the four corners of the answer included in a description of the procedures of entering a tolling agreement included a description of recusing oneself in the context of a tolling agreement.