THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, July 25, 1994 TAG: 9407230014
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A6 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Editorial
LENGTH: Medium: 54 lines
The Democratic-controlled Congress has been dragged kicking and screaming into finally holding hearings on the Whitewater affair this week. As the curtain is set to rise on the hearings tomorrow, the ethical sludge piles higher and higher - and raises this question: Just how good a job is ``independent'' counsel Robert B. Fiske Jr. really doing?
For instance, buried in the newspapers last week was a small story with the headline, ``Prosecutor Seeking White House Files on Foster.''
The files are the ones that were removed from White House Deputy Counsel Vincent Foster's office by White House staff members last July immediately following Foster's suicide but before investigators arrived. It is incredible that Fiske is only now asking for a subpoena to obtain these records. Odder still, earlier this month Fiske's office released, with considerable fanfare, a report concluding that foul play played no part in Foster's death.
How could Fiske make that conclusion without knowing all the facts surrounding the odd goings-on in Foster's office immediately after his death was revealed? Shortly after the late counsel's body was found, White House officials removed records from his White House office dealing with financial transactions of the President and First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton and the Whitewater affair. The office wasn't sealed until 11 a.m. the next day. White House officials did not even acknowledge there had been a search until December of last year.
Rep. Dan Burton, R-Ind., has been a bulldog in raising uncomfortable questions concerning the thoroughness and independence of Fiske's investigation. He has pointed out that Fiske, in private practice, represented International Paper Co. when it sold 500 acres of land to the Whitewater Development Corp. Fiske also recommended Bernard Nussbaum to Iran-Contra special prosecutor Laurence Walsh. That's the same Bernard Nussbaum who as White House counsel when Foster died searched Foster's office before investigators arrived.
Fiske also has said he found no criminal conduct in Deputy Treasury Secretary Roger Altman's ``heads-up'' meeting with White House staff members about the progress of the Whitewater investigations. But clearly Altman was skating close to the edge, and his account has now been challenged by other Treasury officials.
These questions - and many, many others - point out the need for this week's hearings to be as thorough and wide-ranging as possible. The public has seen too much corner-cutting, too many evasions and half-truths, to take the word of anyone in this administration regarding Whitewater. And that goes for anyone appointed by the administration to investigate Whitewater, such as Robert Fiske. by CNB