Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, December 17, 1993 TAG: 9312170229
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Knight-Ridder/Tribune
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium
The order came as Senate attorneys provided fresh evidence that Packwood had altered some tapes and transcripts shortly before the Senate Ethics Committee issued a subpoena to obtain them.
Packwood is fighting the subpoena in the court, asserting his constitutional rights to privacy of his papers and against self-incrimination.
Meanwhile, political support for Packwood eroded further Thursday. Sen. Nancy Landon Kassebaum of Kansas became the first Republican senator to call for his resignation.
"I guess I feel that he's reached a point where this is so all-consuming now, and certainly questionable, that I just don't feel that he can effectively serve Oregon in the Senate," Kassebaum said in an interview with the Wichita Eagle.
Previously, Democratic Sens. Robert Byrd of West Virginia and Daniel Inouye of Hawaii had called for Packwood to resign.
Just as a hearing on the Oregon Republican's challenge to the subpoena got under way, U.S. District Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson ordered Packwood's attorney, Jacob A. Stein, to deliver all of the senator's taped and written diaries to the court.
Jackson said he will keep them under seal until he decides, probably early next month, whether to approve the ethics committee's subpoena for the materials.
The committee is investigating multiple charges of sexual misconduct against Packwood, along with allegations that he attempted to intimidate witnesses in that case, misused public and campaign funds to prepare his diaries, and swapped favors with lobbyists to find work for his ex-wife.
Ethics committee attorney Michael Davidson also released a new sworn statement, taken Wednesday, of Cathy Wagner Cormack, Packwood's former secretary.
Cormack said that sometime between early August and late October, Packwood took back some tapes he had delivered to her and made changes in them.
"As best I can recall," Cormack said, "he said something about the possibility of a subpoena, and he didn't want me to have anything in my possession if that were to occur."
by CNB