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Subject:   There is a God .   was Re: Rick Lazio : Thank You! 
   Date: Fri, 10 Nov 2000 13:00:11 -0500
   From: BobArmstrong 
     To: RLazio2000@aol.com, Jim.Nicholson@rnchq.org
     CC: lpny_discuss  , others

  RLazio2000@aol.com wrote:
> 8 Nov 2000
> Thank You
> We fought a great battle thanks to the support from all of
> you, I never backed down and fought the good fight against
> the White House and all their power. We stood up against
> enormous odds but we played by the rules and told the truth.
 
 Rick , with all due respect , get real .  

From Senate Archive :

This bill is about Travelgate. Travelgate is a sordid account of people close to the President who set out to use the full power of the Federal Government to conduct a smear campaign against the employees of the White House Travel Office. That campaign was conducted in order to create an excuse for firing those people and giving their jobs to President Clinton's friends and family. As soon as President Clinton won the election in 1992, Catherine Cornelius, President Clinton's cousin, and World Wide Travel, the agency that had handled the Clinton-Gore campaign, began discussions about the eventual takeover of the White House Travel Office. World Wide Travel is partly owned by Harry Thomason, a close personal friend of the Clintons. In January 1993, David Watkins, assistant to the President for management and administration, hired Cornelius. In February, Cornelius provided Watkins with a proposal to make her a co-director of the travel office, with World Wide Travel as the outside travel specialist. In April and May, Cornelius and Thomason claimed that there were allegations of corruption in the Travel Office, and pressed to have World Wide Travel take over its operation. In May 1993, employees of the White House counsel's office, Cornelius, and others met with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) regarding the Travel Office. Although the FBI was unsure that enough evidence existed to warrant a criminal investigation, William Kennedy of the White House counsel's office and former law partner of Hillary Clinton informed Bureau agents that a request for an FBI evaluation came from the "highest" levels. The FBI then agreed to investigate. At this time, it also was decided that the accounting firm of Peat Marwick would conduct an audit of the Travel Office. On May 14 the audit began. On May 17, Watkins and McLarty, then the President's chief of staff, decided to fire the Travel Office staff. On May 19, Kennedy notified the FBI that all the Travel Office employees were going to be fired that day. The FBI warned that doing so could interfere with its investigation. That same day, Harry Thomason's business partner, Martens, began arrangements to take over Presidential press charters. Kennedy ordered Watkins to delete any reference to the FBI investigation. At 10:00 a.m. that morning, Watkins informed the travel office employees that they were being fired because a review revealed gross mismanagement. They were told they had 2 hours to clean out their desks and leave. Watkins learned that press secretary Dee Dee Myers had publicly disclosed existence of the FBI investigation as well as the Peat Marwick review. Later that same day, Myers gave another press briefing in which she denied that an FBI investigation had taken place. She claimed that the firings were based on the Peat Marwick review. The Peat Marwick review was not finalized until May 21, 2 days after the firings. The report was backdated to May 17. It found some evidence of accounting irregularities, but it found no evidence of fraud. Further, the report gave no assurances as to either its completeness or its accuracy.

Two of the travel office employees who were fired found out from watching the evening news. Others were unceremoniously hauled out of the White House in the back of a cargo van without any seats. After decades of service to Presidents of both parties, these dedicated, non-partisan employees were dismissed without warning. Their ordeal did not end with the loss of their jobs and the totally unfounded slander of fraud that was being slung about by the Clinton Administration. It had barely begun. The FBI and IRS were about to begin a witch hunt. One of the employees, John P. McSweeney, testified before Congress as follows: "Although I have been a registered Democrat for 44 years, it was not a political but a civil service appointment. This came to an abrupt halt while I was on leave in Ireland when my son Jim called to inform me that the evening news shows had just announced that the entire staff of our office had been fired and that the FBI was starting an investigation for possible criminal activity. Although the White House recognized that not all of us had any financial authority, for the next 30 months we all became part of a full-blown Department of Justice investigation with Billy Dale (the head of the Department) as their target. For myself, it involved FBI agents interviewing my neighbors, two grand jury appearances, two Justice Department and FBI interviews, and one meeting with the IRS, along with legal fees of over $65,000. Over time, where before I had been intimidated, it now turned to complete frustration as the White House had free rein with the media in putting out its story while we were muzzled by the Justice Department. They presented me with a letter that stated that I was not a subject or target of their investigation at the present time, which meant that anything I said could be used against me."

Mr. McSweeney was one of the lucky ones. The FBI quickly tried to make the head of the Travel Office, Billy Dale, its scapegoat. It dragged him all the way through a criminal trial, but its case was so weak that the jury deliberated for less than 2 hours (the amount of time that it usually takes for a jury just to organize) before it cleared him of all charges. His legal fees, though, ended up at nearly $500,000. At this point, one might think that the Clinton Administration would finally stop its vicious attacks, but one would be wrong. After Mr. Dale's exoneration, a memo from Watkins surfaced that said that the firings were at Hillary Clinton's behest. When this information came out, the Administration released confidential information on plea bargaining negotiations with Mr. Dale in an attempt to make it appear as if he were guilty. Mr. Dale, of course, was not guilty of anything--he was $500,000 in debt and was hoping to stop the witch hunt. Still, to turn the attention off the First Lady, the White House was willing to continue its vicious smear tactics.

Mr. Dale served faithfully through eight Presidents, but he was not entitled to that job. The Travel Office jobs are not protected civil service jobs--they are held at the pleasure of the President. If the President has greedy friends and relatives who want to run the office for their own profit, it is his right to give its jobs to them. However, it is not his right or the right of his underlings to smear their reputations and order the FBI and IRS to hound them. This bill should not be held up. Last year, by voice vote, we already paid for the legal expenses of all the travel office employees except for Mr. Dale because he was still on trial. He has now been exonerated, so we should pay his legal expenses too, plus we should pay for some remaining expenses of the other employees that were not covered by the earlier bill. This payment will be similar to the payment that was paid to cover Hamilton Jordan's (an aid to President Carter) legal fees when he was unjustly accused of using cocaine. As in that case, we will only be paying legal fees, not fees for testifying before Congress. Further, every Senator understands that this is an open-and-shut case of the Administration abusing its vast powers to attack innocent people. Approving this bill is a matter of simply human decency. We urge our Democratic colleagues to stop their heartless filibuster, and to join us in passing this bill.

Those opposing the motion to invoke cloture contended:

We will happily let this bill pass if our Republican colleagues drop their opposition to our offering our minimum wage amendment to it. We are not willing to let one bill after another keep rolling through the Senate without voting on our amendment. Every bill that comes up our Republican colleagues tell us is not the right bill, and they will not give us a time certain when they will be willing to consider a minimum wage bill. We want a vote, and we are determined to get it. If this bill is defeated it will be our Republican colleagues' fault for refusing to vote on the minimum wage.

As for the substance of this bill, we think that if we are going to show so much concern for Billy Dale we should also show some concern for the Administration officials who have had huge expenses because of Whitewater. Many of them have run up huge legal bills in preparing their testimony before Congress. Our colleagues tell us that if, when Whitewater is all over, it is obvious that some of those officials have been abused as Billy Dale has been abused then they will be willing to pay their legal expenses. We doubt it. It is certainly highly unusual to pick up legal expenses for people who have been under investigation by the Government, and we are somewhat leery of setting any precedent with this case. Still, we are ready to support passage of this bill as soon as our Republican colleagues stop their opposition to considering the minimum wage. Until they do, we will not vote in favor of cloture.

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