In response to concerns raised by two members of the minority at the
committee mark-up, I want to set the record straight regarding the
extensive majority efforts to cooperate with the minority throughout the
entire investigative process.
First, the subcommittees made an unprecedented attempt at genuine
accommodation in holding 10 days of investigative hearings. In a
concession that had no apparent precedent during prior Congresses, the
majority accepted 90% of the witnesses suggested by the Democrats.
Second, minority members were invited on key fact-finding trips, such as to Waco itself.
Third, the majority shared all available documents, set up a
document room accessible to all staff, and shared all indexes received
to those documents; by contrast the majority subsequently learned that
the minority staff received and intentionally withheld from majority
staff the key Treasury Department index to tens of thousands of
documents. This minority tactic led to the unnecessary expenditure of
tens of hours of indexing by the majority prior to being able to use the
documents they received. As another indication of the difficulties the
majority facted, two Democrat staffers apparently met secretly with the
Texas Rangers and told them that they should not or did not need to
honor subpoenas issued by the majority; these kinds of obfuscatory
tactics during and prior to the hearings did not enhance majority-
minority cooperation.
Fourth, the appendix to this report consists largely of documents
that are in the public domain from the hearings, or are otherwise
available to the minority; we have never had a request to see these
documents, and we know that most were separately sent to the minority
staff by the departments themselves; accordingly, complaints about not
seeing the appendix ring hollow.
Fifth, the 10 footnotes missing from the distributed draft are
either in documents the minority already have or are merely ids or ibids
to documents already once cited elsewhere in the report's other 600
footnotes.
Sixth, the post-hearing investigation consisted largely of asking
for documents that the majority had already asked for on June 5, 1995, and never received from the departments; interrogatories that pertained to unanswered hearing questions; and issues first raised at the hearings or interviews. There were no surprises in these requests.
Seventh, the press conference held on the day the report was
distributed to Members simply made available the recommendations of the
two subcommittee chairmen to the respective subcommittees and
committees, and the summary--well within the House Rules--was made
available to the minority at the same time. Ironically, the week prior
to the business meeting, one of my staffers received a call from the
Justice Department in which the Department indicated that they had
received--presumably from a minority staff member or member--a copy of
the whole Waco report. For the record, that is a clear and unequivocal
violation of Rule 4, if any majority member had wished raise it--and
when asked for a chance to correct facts that might be unclear or wrong, the department made no such proffer. In fact, they never sent any corrections whatsoever, despite five follow-up telephone calls to get fact corrections.
Eighth, cooperation with the departments was, frankly, an exercise
in extreme patience; the majority even had to suffer having the
Secretary of Treasury calling Democrats and telling them not to ask any
embarrassing questions at the hearings. Surely, that is not the proper
reaction to congressional oversight, and it is not consistent with
President Clinton's promises of full cooperation. In a further example
of unjustifiable manipulation, the Treasury Department also flew the
Texas Rangers who were going to testify to Washington ahead of time and
at taxpayer expense--to brief them for 2 days on what they should say. In my view, there can be little question that that action was patently offensive to both the word and spirit of cooperation.