Packwood Papers Open, Not Hearings

An irrevocably divided Senate Ethics Committee voted along party lines late Monday not to hold public hearings on the sexual misconduct charges against Sen. Bob Packwood, R-Ore., setting up what may be a volatile debate on the Senate floor, possibly as early as today.

The committee split between three Republicans who opposed public hearings and three Democrats who favored them. The committee did agree, in a 6-0 vote, to disclose virtually all information it has gathered in the case over the past 30 months.

Committee members described the materials as thousands of pages of documents, including all depositions, affidavits, witness statements and even relevant excerpts from Packwood’s own diaries, as well as his private testimony before the committee a month ago.

But the committee’s most vocal critic, Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., said Monday night she was not satisfied with the promised release of documents and that, as she has threatened, she intends to take the issue to the full Senate by offering a resolution on the floor calling for public hearings.

She said Packwood’s accusers were being denied the same opportunity that he had to tell his story to the committee.

Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D., in a statement Monday night, praised the pending release of the documents, but said it was “no substitute for full and open hearings on this matter.”

Among the charges against Packwood, the influential chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, are that he made unwanted sexual advances toward at least 17 women between 1969 and 1990, and then sought to destroy evidence by altering his private diaries before they were subpoenaed by the Ethics Committee.