The leading Republican advocate for congressional Whitewater hearings accused President and Hillary Rodham Clinton and their partners in the Whitewater real estate venture of "high improprieties and breaches of the public trust."
"In a nutshell, Whitewater is about the arrogance of power," said Rep. James Leach, R-Iowa, the top Republican on the House banking committee.
Leach, in an unusual floor speech, offered his analysis of the complex ties between the real estate venture and the failed Madison Guaranty Savings & Loan, whose 1989 failure cost taxpayers $ 60 million.
"There is a disjunction in this administration between public policy and private ethics," Leach said.
At his news conference, Clinton denied any knowledge of one of Leach's key claims: that federal officials sought to stop investigators from the Resolution Trust Corp. from putting Whitewater in a criminal referral.
"I can tell you categorically I had no knowledge of this and was not involved in it in any way, shape, or form."
In his analysis of facts and evidence long before the public, Leach said: -- The 1978 Whitewater land deal between the Clintons and James McDougal, Madison S&L president, "was used to skim . . . federally insured deposits from the S&L" and another company that got Small Business Administration loans. -- The Clintons profited from the Whitewater real estate investment, contrary to their claims of money lost. -- Taxpayer guaranteed funds were "in all likelihood used to benefit" Clinton's gubernatorial campaign in 1985. -- The federal government's regulatory system "has been flagrantly violated" to protect the president. -- Democrats in Congress and the White House are using "closed society techniques to resist" a full airing of the issue.
"An ethical lapse here and an ethical lapse there, and pretty soon it adds up to a character deficit," Leach said.
Leach complained of the "unprecedented" procedural tactics employed by Democrats to prevent full disclosure.
But more importantly, Leach accused the administration of repeatedly misstating the facts about intricate details of the potential scandal.
"What is so extraordinary is the absence of simple truth," Leach said.
And he questioned whether the line had been crossed between a "heads-up" and a "cover-up" when federal regulators last fall notified the White House of criminal referrals involving the failure of Madison.
Leach, after the floor speech, produced a series of notes in 1993 between RTC regulators in Kansas City and their overseers in Washington that suggest "people at the top" were obsessed with Whitewater; they did not want it to be publicly connected with the failed Madison S&L, now central to the investigation of special counsel Robert Fiske.
Leach said that within a few months, a senior investigator in the Kansas City office was taken off the case.
In February, Washington RTC officials made it clear to the Kansas City office that - in their view - Whitewater wasn't responsible for losses at Madison.
"Courageously, Kansas City investigators refused to allow Washington . . . objections to change the content of the referrals they sent" to the Justice Department, Leach said.
Kansas City RTC officials, Leach said, have sought whistleblower protection.
