Death of American Virtue - Ken Gormley [71]
Contributing to the incessant rumors was the fact that Vince Foster’s personal attorney in Washington, James Hamilton, invoked the attorney-client privilege to prevent the Office of Independent Counsel from obtaining key documents belonging to the decedent. Specifically, Hamilton would not release notes of his lawyer-client conversations with Foster, nine days before Foster’s death. These handwritten notes remained locked in Hamilton’s office safe. What was in them? skeptics asked. Would they reveal secrets concerning Foster’s strange death?
Robert Fiske set up a satellite office in Washington, pledging to complete a definitive report concerning the Foster death. He also promised to examine the removal of documents in Foster’s office by White House officials the night after Foster’s death, and to determine if there had been any irregularities in handling those papers.
In June, Fiske contacted the Clintons’ personal attorney, David Kendall, working out a plan to interview the president and First Lady. The questioning would take place at the White House in a quiet fashion, under oath, with questions limited to the Washington aspects of the investigation. The testimony could then be read to the grand jury, in lieu of a formal appearance by the president and First Lady before that body. In this way, Fiske explained, the dignity of the office could be maintained.
President Clinton would later say of his experience responding to questions posed by the independent counsel: “He could have me there every day if he had wanted to. I just wanted [it done]. I wanted to get this thing over with and hope that I had $3.50 left in the bank when my legal bills were paid.”
On Sunday afternoon, June 12, Independent Counsel Robert Fiske reported quietly to the side gate of the White House. He was accompanied by prosecutor Rod Lankler, who specialized in homicides and headed up the Foster investigation, and a single court reporter. The press knew nothing of the meeting.
President Clinton’s closed-door session took place in the Treaty Room and lasted over two hours. The First Lady occupied the hot seat for an equal amount of time. Fiske and Lankler questioned the Clintons about the death of Vince Foster and Treasury Department contacts relating to the RTC referrals. Both interviews were uneventful.
Fiske would later state that the witnesses were straightforward. “I don’t think they were having the time of their life,” he said. “Or that this was something that they would have loved to do. But they certainly were cooperative, yes.” When it came to the matter of Foster’s death, this seemed to be an especially painful subject for the Clintons to revisit. “Yes, I think it was,” Fiske said. After asking the uncomfortable questions, however, Fiske found nothing to implicate the Clintons in any regard. At the conclusion of the closed-door sessions, the parties walked away with a sense of mutual respect.
These signals of cooperation between the independent counsel and the White House, however, were not greeted with applause in all quarters. The conservative wing of his own Republican Party was now viewing Fiske as a traitor.
One big demerit was earned when Fiske tried to shut down the congressional Whitewater hearings. Republican Representative James A. Leach of Iowa, senior member of the House Banking Committee, accused Fiske of insubordination for attempting to put the hearings on ice. Congressman Leach—who had ardently supported Fiske’s appointment—now castigated the independent counsel for suggesting that congressional hearings “would pose a severe risk to the integrity of [the independent counsel] investigation.” Leach declared: “I am concerned that your public lobbying of Congress [to shut down the hearings] has the effect of sending a chilling precedent for Congressional oversight and a fatuous pretext for the majority party which controls the machinery of Congress to delay, defer, or avoid