Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, December 19, 1993 TAG: 9312190092
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-10 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Newsday
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium
Cathy Cormack, a 52-year-old Capitol Hill real estate agent and wife of a retired Navy captain, knows more - much more - than she wants to know.
"I don't even know why he told me," Cormack told Senate lawyers after divulging that Packwood kept an original, unexpurgated set of tape recordings of his diaries. "I mean, I wish he hadn't told me. But I now know that there is an original set that exists somewhere."
For 24 years, Cormack has been transcribing the most private thoughts of Packwood, who, according to substantial documentation, has more than a few secrets of salacious nature.
And now the woman described by colleagues as an intensely private but efficient person has had camera crews staking out her house while her husband, James, a former aide-de-camp to now-retired Gen. Colin Powell, fends off reporters. Her own words and thoughts, as told under oath to Senate lawyers, are now a widely distributed public record.
In her first deposition, on Nov. 22, Cormack said she had never discussed the substance of the tapes with Packwood and never thought much about them, either, even this fall when she was "crunching" to finish the tapes for Packwood's lawyers.
"I mean, I just did it, just typed it, and, I mean, I already knew it was for the attorneys and probably had something to do with the investigation," she said.
But 2 1/2 weeks later - three days after Packwood's new lawyer had disclosed to the committee that Packwood had been recording over some of the tapes - Cormack filed a "supplement" to her statement saying that Packwood had taken some tapes away from her and later admitted he had made changes.
She had noticed on those tapes - from the last two years of diaries - certain differences in background noises or volume that made her suspicious. She actually confronted the senator, who conceded through a word or "body language" - she was not sure which - that changes had been made.
She repeatedly insisted she did not remember what was on the altered tapes.
by CNB