Читать книгу 1997 Special Investigation in Connection with 1996 Federal Election Campaigns - United States Senate Committee - Страница 7

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As the Committee started to hire staff, it also began in earnest to pursue the investigation into illegal and improper campaign fund-raising and spending activities during the 1996 election cycle. In addition to the first 54 subpoenas issued in February, the Committee issued nine subpoenas on March 26, 1997.

Two weeks later, on April 9, 1997, the Committee issued another 10 subpoenas, including the first six requested by the minority. In doing so, the Committee demonstrated its willingness to follow the Chairman’s commitment to proceed in a bipartisan manner to investigate illegal and improper activities that may have been committed by supporters of either political party.

Also on April 9, the Committee sent its initial request for documents, video and audio tapes, e-mail, and other records to the White House. This request had been discussed in advance with the Counsel to the President and his staff to ensure prompt compliance. It contained the first 28 specific document requests the Committee would make of the White House. Unfortunately, it also led the White House to begin in earnest its efforts to obstruct and delay the investigation so as to run the Committee up against the deadline imposed by the Senate. The White House’s production of records was so poor from the earliest stages of the investigation that on May 13, about one month after the first request was sent, Chairman Thompson called Erskine Bowles, Chief of Staff to the President, to express his concern over the slow pace of White House document production. Although Bowles promised improved performance, the White House’s responses to the Committee’s document requests remained so poor as to force the Committee to issue a subpoena to the White House on July 31 by unanimous vote. Even after it received the Committee’s subpoena, however, the White House’s production remained untimely and laggard, culminating in the belated production in October of relevant videotapes responsive to the Committee’s April document request. The White House’s obstructionism in this investigation brought discredit on the President and his staff.

The Committee issued its first 17 subpoenas for bank records to seek to trace the source of political contributions on April 15 and April 17, 1997. On May 22, 1997, the Committee voted to issue 43 additional subpoenas, including one to the American Federation of Labor-Congress of Industrial Organizations (“AFL-CIO”) and several to individuals associated with the National Policy Forum (“NPF”), a think-tank founded by the Republican National Committee (“RNC”). An additional 26 subpoenas, 23 of which were for bank records, were issued on June 3, 1997. The final subpoenas for documents and records issued by the Committee prior to the start of its public hearings were approved on June 12, when the Committee voted to issue 24 subpoenas.

The votes on May 22 to issue subpoenas marked the first participation in the investigation by Senator Bob Smith (R-NH) and Senator Robert Bennett (R-UT), who had been selected to 13 replace Senator Ted Stevens (R-AK) and Senator William Roth (R-DE) on the Committee for the duration of the investigation.13

At the Committee business meeting on June 22, Chairman Thompson announced that the public hearings would begin on July 8, despite the fact that the investigation had been ongoing in earnest only for a little over three months. Nonetheless, the existence of the December 31 deadline to complete the investigation demanded the start of hearings this early, particularly in the face of the upcoming August recess.

From the time the investigation was authorized, the Committee was issuing subpoenas and receiving a large number of documents from many parties. The Committee had also started interviewing and deposing witnesses during the spring. The investigation was proceeding with a broad focus because of the large number of disparate allegations that had been raised concerning possibly illegal or improper activities during the 1996 federal elections.

To conduct a thorough and comprehensive inquiry into both illegal and improper activities, including the role of non-profit groups in influencing federal elections, Chairman Thompson indicated during the spring that the Committee’s inquiry would proceed in two phases. The first phase would focus on illegal activities engaged in by candidates and political parties. The emphasis of this first phase would be on trying to determine the amount of foreign money contributed to candidates and parties during the 1996 elections. An additional area of focus of the first phase of the inquiry would be the laundering of campaign contributions, as related to foreign contributions, which were often laundered through those who could lawfully contribute. Other areas of inquiry that would be covered by the first phase were the sale of access and policy decisions in return for political contributions. The second phase of the investigation would focus on the role of non-profit and issue advocacy groups and labor unions in the 1996 elections, particularly the issue of whether these groups illegally coordinated their expenditures with the White House, the parties, or particular candidates or otherwise engaged in improper activity.

As the investigation proceeded and the Committee sought to prepare for the start of public hearings, it encountered significant obstruction to its inquiry from several sources. Despite promises of cooperation, the White House continued to produce little information, slowly, and what the White House did produce to the Committee was often released first to the news media, especially if the information was deemed embarrassing to the President. The DNC, whose 1996 campaign fundraising and spending practices had led directly to the Senate authorizing the investigation, was similarly recalcitrant in producing relevant documents in a timely manner. Both the White House and the DNC, which acknowledged acting in concert in formulating a strategy to respond to the 1996 campaign fundraising improprieties,14 appeared to have developed a shared strategy based on the Senate’s decision to impose a deadline on the investigation: they would produce information slowly, make any conceivable objection to its production, and then produce only a portion of it after requiring great exertion by the Committee in an effort to delay the inquiry until it ran out of time.

Despite the delaying tactics of the White House and DNC, the Committee developed a great deal of information in a relatively short period of time. Large numbers of documents had been received from many sources, and depositions and interviews were being conducted. In addition, on June 6, 1997, three members of the majority staff, two detailed FBI agents, and one member of the minority staff undertook an investigative trip to Hong Kong, Taiwan, Macao, and Indonesia to collect information and interview witnesses.15

Of perhaps equal importance to the information the Committee was gathering, however, was the information the Committee was unable to obtain. Thirty-five witnesses with information relevant to the Committee’s investigation asserted the Fifth Amendment right against selfincrimination and refused to testify and/or produce documents in response to a Committee subpoena. In late June, the Committee began considering whether to grant immunity to some of the witnesses who had invoked their Fifth Amendment right. On June 27, the Committee voted to confer immunity on four witnesses. On July 23, the Committee voted to immunize another five witnesses. Thus, the Committee voted to immunize nine witnesses, five of whom eventually testified in open session during the Committee’s hearings. An additional ten potential witnesses fled the country and were beyond the Committee’s ability to issue legal process. The Committee was unable to contact any of these individuals during the staff’s foreign trip. While the Committee was able to interview a number of foreign witnesses during that trip, 12 potential foreign witnesses who were contacted refused requests for interviews, among whom were some of the most important, including James Riady and Ng Lap Seng.

In addition to Committee’s struggle with the obstructionist tactics of the White House and the DNC, it encountered resistance from a number of non-profit organizations that received subpoenas in July, when the Committee started planning to conduct the second phase of its investigation. Many of the non-profit organizations that refused to comply had reportedly played significant roles in the 1996 elections. The Committee was interested particularly in seeking to determine whether these organizations, which had primarily engaged in making allegedly independent expenditures to broadcast so-called issue advocacy advertisements, had coordinated their activities with candidates or political parties in violation of the Federal Election Campaign Act. The Committee subpoenaed a total of 31 such organizations. Of these, a number refused to produce documents to the Committee, asserting a variety of constitutional objections, most of which were without any legal foundation.