Tuesday, 4/8/97
hello
By David E. Rosenbaum
New York Times
WASHINGTON — The Senate and House committees gearing up to
investigate campaign finance abuses seem to be on a collision
course.
As they expand their staffs of lawyers and investigators and
plan for televised hearings to begin probably in late May or June,
the two committees are issuing subpoenas to the same people for the
same documents and intending to interrogate the same witnesses
about the same circumstances.
The lawmakers and their counsels say that some coordination will
eventually be essential. But there has been none so far, and the
committees’ personalities and goals are so different that no one on
either side has even suggested an arrangement that would be
mutually satisfactory.
This is the first time in the age of television that the House
and Senate have separately conducted such high-profile
investigations of a potential scandal simultaneously.
Senate and House committees joined forces 10 years ago to
conduct joint hearings into the Iran-Contra affair. A special
Senate committee investigated the Watergate case in 1973. The next
year, the House Judiciary Committee conducted a separate inquiry
into whether President Richard Nixon should be impeached.
This time, senators seem determined to have a methodical,
bipartisan inquiry into the American campaign finance system. "We
don’t mean this as a game of gotcha,” one of the Senate’s
investigators said last week.
In the House, by contrast, the Republicans who control the
investigation seem to be most interested in developing information
that will at least be embarrassing to President Clinton and
possibly bring him down. The Democrats on the House committee are
bound to fight the Republicans at every turn.
The different tones of the committees reflect their
chairmen.
The Senate chairman, Fred Thompson, is a former prosecutor and
trial lawyer in Tennessee who first came to Washington in 1973 as
the chief Republican counsel for the Senate Watergate committee
under Sen. Howard Baker Jr. It was Thompson’s questioning of
Alexander Butterfield, a Nixon aide, that led to the public
disclosure of the central taping system in the Nixon White
House.
In his three years in the Senate, Thompson, who is 54, has
developed the reputation of being one of the least partisan and
doctrinaire Republicans. He is one of only two Republican senators
(John McCain of Arizona is the other) who are firmly committed to
overhauling the campaign finance system.
He has also been mentioned as a possible Republican candidate
for president in 2000, an ambition that will doubtless be furthered
if the public perceives his conduct during the campaign finance
hearings as responsible and judicious.
In his most recent speech to the Senate about the investigation,
Thompson said, ”It is important not only that we be fair but that
we are perceived to be fair as we proceed.”
The House chairman, Dan Burton of Indiana, who is not a lawyer,
is one of the most combative Republican representatives. In the
years when Democrats controlled the House, Burton, now in his
eighth term, specialized in irritating them. He questioned, for
instance, the use of public money to answer mail sent to the
Clintons’ cat, Socks.
In the last Congress, Burton challenged the Clinton
administration regularly on Whitewater issues. Long after
law-enforcement authorities had decided otherwise, he continued to
insist that Vincent Foster Jr., the Clinton friend and adviser, had
been murdered.
Burton, 58, also promised a fair investigation in his last floor
speech on the subject before Congress left for a two-week spring
break. But there was an edge to his words that Thompson did not
have.
"I want to tell my colleagues this,” Burton declared. "As long
as I can stand on my own two legs, I am going to do my dead level
best to get to the bottom of these scandals — make no mistake
about it.”
The senior Democrats on the two committees also have different
styles. Sen. John Glenn of Ohio, who is retiring at the end of this
Congress, has always worked well with Republicans. Rep. Henry
Waxman of California is aggressively partisan.
The staffs are a study in contrast, reflecting the men who hired
them.
For his chief counsel, Thompson chose Michael J. Madigan, who
was his assistant on the Watergate committee and who has been
involved in several congressional investigations since then.
Madigan, an experienced litigator, is a partner in the
Washington law firm Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer & Feld, whose
other partners include prominent Democrats like Robert Strauss, the
former party chairman, and Vernon Jordan Jr., Clinton’s close
friend.
The dominant staff member of the House committee is its chief
investigator, David N. Bossie. He reports directly to Burton and
not through the general counsel. Bossie has spent the last several
years searching for derogatory information about Clinton. He was an
investigator in last year’s Whitewater inquiry conducted by Sen.
Alfonse D’Amato, R-N.Y. Before that, he helped start an
anti-Clinton newsletter and worked with Floyd G. Brown, the
conservative gadfly responsible for the Willie Horton advertisement
in the 1988 election.
Both committees face organizational battles after Congress
reconvenes this week.
Just before the spring recess, Burton was forced to cancel a
meeting of his committee — the Committee on Government Reform and
Oversight — because he was not sure he had the votes he needed to
prevail on matters like the scope of the hearings and the
procedures for issuing subpoenas and releasing documents
publicly.
Burton wants to limit his investigation to activities of the
Clinton administration, and he asserts he has the authority to
issue subpoenas and release documents without consulting other
members. Democrats want to expand the investigation to include
abuses in congressional fund raising, and they want a voice in
dealing with subpoenas and documents.
Burton will surely prevail for the most part, but he may have to
make some small concessions. His problem is that a few Republicans
on the committee want the investigation to appear less partisan
than seems to be the chairman’s intention. His majority on the
committee is so small that if the Democrats stick together and two
or three Republicans vote against him on a particular point, he
could lose.
The House committee has a budget of $3.8 million for its
investigation this year and may also tap its $11.7 million regular
budget and a reserve fund of $7.9 million. Its investigation has no
deadline.
In the Senate, the fight is over 11 subpoenas that the Democrats
want to issue for the records of tax-exempt organizations with
Republican ties, including the Christian Coalition and the National
Right to Life Committee. Thompson, according to his spokesman, Paul
S. Clark, is reluctant to put people and organizations through the
expense and inconvenience of answering subpoenas if the material
sought is not directly related to the inquiry.
Lawyers for the two parties have been negotiating during the
recess, and both sides said they thought an accommodation would be
reached.
The mandate of the Senate committee — the Committee on
Governmental Affairs — involves campaign finance abuses in
Congress as well as the White House. It has a budget of $4.35
million and is supposed to wrap up its inquiry by the end of the
year.Tom Hayden