First Lady Puts Faith In Public

In 1992, in the midst of the presidential campaign, a story was reported about land in Arkansas that my husband and I invested in during the late 1970s.

Now, four years later, the “Whitewater” matter has been investigated by two congressional committees, two independent counsels, the Resolution Trust Corp. and scores of reporters. There have been 45 days of hearings in the Senate and House. The White House and our lawyers have turned over 50,000 pages of documents, and the president and I have answered every question put before us. I personally have been interviewed by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. and the independent counsel, and have answered questions in writing submitted by the RTC and Sen. Alfonse D’Amato’s committee.

Close to $30 million in taxpayer money has been spent investigating Whitewater. But none of these exhaustive inquiries has turned up evidence that we did anything illegal, unethical or wrong.

Still, the questions keep coming. And so do the allegations and insinuations, even though we continually knock them down.

I want to assure the American public that we will continue to cooperate with all reasonable inquiries, as we have in the past. Nobody wants to end this controversy more than we do.

But it becomes increasingly difficult to do so when the facts are lost in a blizzard of innuendo and shifting accusations. Let me give you an example of what I mean.

An independent inquiry, completed last month, found no evidence of wrongdoing on our part and called for an end to the RTC’s investigation of Whitewater. But weeks passed before congressional investigators were willing to release these findings to the public. They did so only after heavy pressure from Democratic members of the Senate committee.

So much for a search for the truth.

Since most Americans never heard about this report, let me fill you in. It was conducted for the RTC by one of the nation’s leading law firms, Pillsbury, Madison & Sutro. It took more than two years to complete and cost nearly $4 million. A prominent Republican, former U.S. Attorney Jay Stephens, headed the inquiry.

It concluded that the president and I were passive investors in a failed land transaction and lost more than $40,000 on Whitewater, as we have said all along. It also concluded that we had little knowledge and no control over the Whitewater project.

Further, it affirmed what we have said from day one: that we had no knowledge of any money flowing from Madison Guaranty Savings & Loan to Whitewater, and that we did not receive any loans or dividends from the savings and loan. (Madison Guaranty was acquired by our partner in Whitewater, James B. McDougal, some years after we invested in the project.)

As for matters relating to Madison, the report found no evidence that I had any knowledge of any wrongdoing on the part of the savings and loan while I was at the Rose Law Firm.

Billing records located after the report was completed confirm that I did minimal legal work on Madison - an average of about one hour a week over 15 months, just as I have said from the beginning.

Despite these conclusive findings in the RTC report, there was no press conference, no announcement, no effort by congressional investigators to make them public.

This detailed and impartial report was finally released last week, but only after one member of the committee told his colleagues, “The committee makes much ado about supposed failures of the White House to turn over documents, while it refuses to release voluminous documents that strongly buttress the Clintons’ statements about Whitewater.”

He went on to caution that in recent weeks the Whitewater investigation had deteriorated into a series of unsubstantiated and outrageous accusations on matters that in some cases have yet to be the subject of testimony.

With each new round of allegations, we have responded with documents and facts. And each time we do, more questions are conjured up, shifting the ground once again.

As one veteran columnist observed, the investigations “promise horrors and prove nothing.”

What will happen next during this presidential election year? I don’t know what to expect. But I do know that we will continue to cooperate and give answers to questions about events that took place 10 to 20 years ago.

I also know that the American people are fundamentally fair. And in the end, I’m sure they will be able to separate fact from fiction, and to tell the difference between truth and scandal-mongering.

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