Contempt of Congress

...their total stayed around that level for most of the Reagan and Bush years...

...Thompson faced a virtually united front...

...And before the hearings even started they won a key victory, forcing Republicans to agree to a time limit for the investigation...

...Things went downhill from there, and might sink further still...

...In Travelgate, "they would hem and haw and say they didn't want to give them to us," says Clinger...

...Looking back, Michael Chertoff believes that was perhaps the most important factor in the committee's losing battle to capture public interest...

...We laid out the scheme," Thompson says...

...If administration spokesmen yelled, screamed, and changed the subject, and got Democrats on the committee to yell, scream, and change the subject, and in turn provoked Republicans to yell, scream, and change the subject, the whole affair would look like a pointless food fight, regardless of how much useful evidence was being uncovered...

...Once someone learns that something works, they're going to use it...

...Republicans first sent the White House letters requesting information...

...They canceled the contempt vote...

...The White House used all the techniques it had perfected in previous congressional probes...

...I don't know if you can put that genie back in the bottle...

...You get the idea that hearings are an opportunity for people to yell at each other, and that turns people off...

...One need only look at the White House to see how seriously they were taking it...

...This might be the Big One, some believed, the major scandal that would really hurt the Clinton administration...

...the Dingell model worked after all...

...We showed the money coming in from abroad, that Chinese agents were contributing money to the DNC...

...They also prepared to begin their own investigations, and in the process started what would become the most frustrating experience in their political lives...

...he held few hearings and attracted relatively little press attention...

...It took a while, but Mr...

...Then she pulled a bait-andswitch on Congress that poisoned—perhaps permanently—her relations with the legislators who oversee her department...

...But Thompson perhaps expected too much...

...So when a president ignores a congressional subpoena, he is in effect daring lawmakers to take one of those actions...

...So we said, 'Fine, if you don't want to turn them over, just claim executive privilege.'" But the White House refused...

...unlike Travelgate, which was a sleazy affair but not big enough to do the White House much harm, and Whitewater, which was an amorphous scandal that defied easy presentation, and Filegate, which remained muddy even after extensive investigation, campaign finance might be the scandal that crippled the Clinton administration...

...Instead, the Justice Depai [went was, in effect, encouraging witnesses not to cooperate...

...At this moment, congressional investigations on Waco and the Puerto Rican clemency controversy are beginning in the House and Senate...

...The Travelgate investigation, one of the Republicans' first, was a clone of the Democrats' work...

...Then—long after the hearings were over—the department made no-jail, wrist-slap plea agreements with both Huang and Trie in which neither man admitted any wrongdoing in connection with the 1996 election or the Clinton/Gore campaign...

...With the record established, they planned to move in for the kill —just like John Dingell...

...It didn't work...

...The Washington Post and New York Times ignored it, as did all the major TV networks...

...During the second half of 1 99 5, the investigation that did attract notice—at least at the beginning— was that of the Senate's special committee on Whitewater, chaired by Alfonse D'Amato...

...for example, committee pressure played a role in the White House's November 1999 • The American Spectator This is the background image for an unknown creator of an OCR page with image plus hidden text...

...Setting a pattern that would be repeated over and over in the years to come, the White House gave Congress only enough to put off the contempt vote...

...I'll go to jail before we give them to you...

...now they're down to 222, barely a majority at all...

...It was the politics of personal destruction...

...Wehr said that at the beginning of the probe, the head of the department's task force told him and other FBI agents that they were "not to pursue any matter related to solicitation of funds for access to the president," which was, of course, one of the main elements of the campaign finance scandal...

...Critical information—like the memo that definitively established the involvement of First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton in the Travel Office firings—remained hidden from investigators...

...the newspaper in essence argued that the hearings were irrelevant because nobody in the press was interested...

...Other agents told of the department refusing them permission to search Charlie Trie's home in Little Rock, even after agents watched him throw away documents that were under subpoena...

...And it's not a matter of party...

...Then, with the pressure off, they resumed their resistance more strongly than ever...

...Too many echoes of Watergate, they feared...

...There seems no reason to believe the White House will be any more cooperative in those probes than it has in the past...

...The investigation was old news...

...D'Amato took on the whole of Whitewater: the so-called "Arkansas phase," meaning the Clintons' business dealings that were the original focus of the investigation...

...Whenever we did anything we always had a Democratic model "fi-JLI I IAD " for it...

...A lot of people were disappointed 'cause we didn't nail Clinton's hide to the wall," Fred Thompson says...

...As galling as that might be to Republicans, the most troubling legacy of the campaign finance probe was not the public relations war but the behavior of the Justice Department...

...But he plowed ahead—and discovered an enormous amount of information...

...Then letters demanding information...

...the "Washington phase," meaning the Clintons' attempts to keep tabs on—and in some cases influence—the federal regulators who investigated Madison Guaranty Savings and Loan...

...Fret, A few months after the release of the Whitewater report, a number of news stories began to appear revealing irregular and possibly illegal contributions to President Clinton's 1 996 re-election campaign...

...With that single page, a new scandal, Filegate, was born...

...Although it seems hard to remember now, in the early days of dealing with Congress, the administration was extremely reluctant to assert executive privilege...

...Chung and others have personally verified that...

...If we'd had a decent prosecution effort, the way we did with Watergate, we would have had a lot of people making deals and appearing before our committee," he says...

...November 1 9 99 • The American Spectator...

...I knew we were under severe time limitations and people were going to take the Fifth Amendment and they were circling the wagons," Thompson says today...

...The administration answered virtually every new revelation from the committee with an accusation about D'Amato's real and alleged ethical failings, so much so that D'Amato's past became almost part of Whitewater...

...If the president refuses to give Congress information it demands, Congress has few options: It can impeach the president, rule him in contempt, cut off his money, or refuse to confirm his nominees...

...As the hearings approached it also became increasingly clear that major figures in the scandal, people like John Huang, Charlie Trie, Johnny Chung, Mark Middleton, and many others, had either fled the country to avoid testifying or were planning to invoke the Fifth Amendment to refuse to testify...

...The campaign finance scandal was born...

...And Nussbaum said he could not remember at least 71 times...

...Some were combative...

...J by John Dingell, one of J the toughest of the old Democratic overseers...

...Back in 1991, when John Dingell was wreaking havoc and Jack Brooks wanted to shut down the Justice Department, Democrats held 26 7 seats in the House...

...Spokesmen were spinning furiously, accusing Republicans of breaking the campaign laws, too, and at the same time trying to change the subject to campaign finance The American Spectator • November 1999 reform...

...A huge sense of anticipation rose up among Republicans on the Hill...

...I tried every way in the world to reach out to him and be fair to him...

...And this president has proved that he is always ready to fight, even as new battles begin...

...No doubt future revelations will receive the same treatment...

...Then subpoenas...

...He expected much of it...

...In their euphoria over winning control of Congress, they did not fully appreciate that a majority is not always enough...

...The Clinton State Department declined to help the Senate reach those who were abroad and the Clinton Justice Department declined to help them reach those who were resisting...

...Some were weepy...

...Which does not bode well for the future...

...If you want to beat up on the White House, you need a big majority...

...But he still found himself surprised by the actions of some of his colleagues in the Senate, particularly John Glenn, the ranking Democrat who opposed Thompson at every turn...

...The mere ability to make a lot of noise tends to turn people off and reduce the effectiveness of hearings," he says...

...I think Congress for the first time had to face the situation of a totally obstinate executive branch," Thompson says...

...It also clued in witnesses as to what was out there," says Michael Chertoff, who was chief Republican counsel for the committee...

...In a larger sense, the White House realized it could win by trashing the whole process...

...So he pulled back...

...A record, in other words...

...So that is perhaps the ultimate, corrosive legacy of Bill Clinton: His tactics reduced the natural conflicts between the White House and Congress to their rawest, state-of-nature level...

...But even that wasn't the biggest Republican misjudgment...

...Just downright obstinate...

...By then, of course, the public's attention was elsewhere...

...Republicans rejoiced...

...So Clinger went back to the Dingell model...

...Quinn had changed his mind about going to jail, and the administration would turn over the documents...

...Although the Constitution gives Congress ultimate power over the president, lawmakers are often in a poor political position to exercise anything less than that ultimate power...

...But Republicans also found themselves losing the spin wars when the White House unveiled its technique of preemptively leaking information that it knew the Senate was about to reveal...

...sional Research Service and asked for all the letters and memos from the investigations conducted .1/1,C)11.5,2...

...Clinton's old Rose Law Firm billing records that had long been under subpoena...

...A Scandal Falls Victim to Its Own Irrelevance," the headline read...

...First the attorney general refused the advice of her two top prosecutors who urged her to call for an independent counsel...

...Then letters threatening subpoenas...

...If they are unwilling or unable to act, the president wins...

...I see now how I could never make any progress with him...

...and the events surrounding the suicide of deputy White House counsel Vincent Foster...

...Margaret Williams, then the first lady's chief of staff, said she couldn't recall at least 3o times...

...And the Democratic Party survived...

...They just don't have the numbers to impose their will...

...While that diluted press coverage —the administration could claim that each new committee revelation was in fact "old news"—its effects went beyond spin...

...Some of those guys were from the House and they're used to partisan squabbling...

...What is to prevent the next administration, when faced with hostile congressional investigators, from following the Clinton model...

...But there was more to the Clinton strategy than just trashing Al D'Amato...

...But Republicans had missed something...

...Their testimony seemed to confirm that top Justice officials sandbagged the investigation from the very start...

...Susan Thomases, Hillary Clinton's New York confidante, was unable to recall significant facts and events a total of 41 times...

...Was I disappointed...

...Following a now well-established pattern, Republicans in Congress demanded an independent counsel investigation...

...The GOP realized that the game was going to be much tougher than they had imagined...

...Within five minutes, there wasn't a bombshell and everybody was disappointed," Thompson says...

...If I were called upon to advise a future Republican president," says one former Bush administration official, "I would say he can be much more aggressive in dealing with Congress...

...Ethically Chaileopeo Clinger's investigation consisted mostly of gathering documents and depositions...

...But the Justice Depat iient resisted, telling Thompson that hying to get their testimony would interfere with the department's very sensitive campaign finance probe...

...Thompson wanted testimony from John Huang, Charlie Trie, and other major figures in the investigation...

...We went back and read everything they did and _,=:1.1 JD j followed the model," says one staffer...

...They promised big things for Travelgate, Filegate, Whitewater, and campaign finance, but in doing so set a standard under which anything less than a knockout blow was a letdown...

...They viewed this as the life or death of the Democratic Party...

...Thompson asks...

...It appeared that the money came from somewhere else and that the donors themselves were simply conduits for illegal foreign contributions to American political campaigns...

...A lot of evidence that Bill Clinton is a fundamentally corrupt president...

...Instead of using executive privilege to hold on to the documents, the administration said the material might be subject to a claim of executive privilege—and refused to give up the documents...

...In late September, Thompson's committee heard testimony from an FBI agent named Daniel Wehr, who worked in the Justice Department's campaign finance investigation...

...It was partisan bickering...

...He now acknowledges he didn't understand how strongly Democrats were pushing Glenn to contain and impede the investigation...

...Senator D'Amato is one of the most ethically challenged senators in history...

...There was only one problem...

...discovery" of Mrs...

...It is hard to overstate the sense of anticipation that ran through Republican circles as the hearings headed by Senate Government Affairs Committee Chairman Fred Thompson began in July 1997 . This really could be the Big One, some thought...

...And Republican miscalculations didn't stop there...

...It's probably safe to say that the committee's 769-page final report contains most of the material that will ultimately be in the final report of Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr...

...The biggest question is: Were you able to get the record out...

...The standoff dragged through all of 1995, reaching a low point in April 1996 when Jack Quinn, the third in a long line of White House counsels, told Clinger that "We're not going to give them to you...

...But the most extraordinary thing about their performance was the across-the-board memory failure that struck witnesses when confronted with tough questions...

...The reports revealed how a number of donors, mostly Asian, made large contributions that seemed well beyond their ability to give...

...While the administration appeared to surrender on the Travelgate subpoena, it did not in fact turn over all the evidence the House demanded...

...Who could disagree, after everything that has happened...

...The memory loss, added to the White House's usual recalcitrance on document production, was a major obstacle for the D'Amato committee...

...One could see how well the White House program was working when, after just two days of hearings, the New York Times published a piece that more or less declared the investigation over...

...The investigation was over...

...But John Glenn was an American hero...

...Yes, they were—and the record keeps coming out...

...The White House also enlisted Senate Democrats to make sure Thompson would run into stiff resistance...

...I'm pretty confident this experience is going to be recycled," says Michael Chertoff...

...Truth Fatigue So what is left after almost five years of nearly non-stop investigation of the Clinton administration...

...It was—perhaps worst of all — boring...

...Despite those impediments, the D'Amato hearings, like Clinger's Travelgate investigation, uncovered an impressive amount of information...

...When the committee released its final report in June 1996, White House scandal manager Mark Fabiani simply declared, "It's all tainted...

...One of the documents turned over by the White House was a counsel's office request for the FBI file of fired Travel Office director Billy Dale...

...That's about it...

...It impeded the process of an orderly laying-out of the facts...

...Similarly, in the Senate, Republicans have drifted between 52 and 55 votes since taking power...

...The White House called at eleven...

...In the end, they failed to understand the limits of their own strength versus that of the White House...

...Our role was to get the truth out, whether or not anyone wanted to hear it," says one Capitol Hill lawyer...

...And as much as they might rail against the press, Republicans share some of the blame...

...Republicans, on the other hand, held 23o seats when they took office in 1995...

...Major prosecutions might be endangered, they told Thompson...

...The White House didn't follow the Republican response model," says the lawyer, meaning that, unlike the Bush administration, the Clintons didn't cave when they saw a subpoena in the mailbox...

...A new investigation was born, and new document requests were sent to the White House...

...But the investigation also gave the White House an opportunity to practice the attacks it would later use on Starr...

...But that's not what it's all about...

...I didn't realize until I read Elizabeth Drew's book [The Corruption ofAmerican Politics] how much pressure was being put on John, from the White House, from Daschle, from the party," Thompson says...

...I don't have to give you that information and you can't make me give you that information," Bernard Nussbaum said at the beginning of the long, ugly process...

...Why, the GOP asked, was the White House getting raw FBI files on officials who had worked for Republican administrations...

...For years they fell under the spell of hoping for the Big One, the scandal that would topple the Clinton administration...

...It was a compelling story—and nobody much noticed...

...And some were slick...

...Yeah...

...The hearings gave the public its first opportunity to see highranking Clinton administration officials questioned about Whitewater...

...A vote in the full House was scheduled for May 3o at 2 p.m...

...Thompson was left sputtering in frustration...

...And D'Amato also pushed events along...

...It was very old news...

...In early May the committee passed a motion finding Quinn in contempt of Congress...