Robert Ray Responds to Critics
Sep 2, 2000 1:17 AM
WASHINGTON (AP) - Independent Counsel Robert Ray says critics are
misconstruing his plan to divulge conclusions of the Whitewater
investigation just weeks before voters decide whether to elect
Hillary Rodham Clinton to the Senate.
Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., and several legal experts said the
Independent Counsel statute under which Ray was appointed limits
him to filing his soon-to-be-completed report with a federal
appeals court, which wouldn't release it until well after
Election Day.
The criticism came after Ray told The New York Times he would
issue a statement of his findings and conclusions in the
Whitewater probe a few weeks before New York voters go to the
polls.
Ray ``is defying the law,'' Levin declared.
``Our plan to make a public statement is not shocking,'' Ray said
in a statement. ``This office is not releasing a final report or
a portion of a final report without court approval.''
Ray added that the U.S. Attorney's manual expressly authorizes
public statements regarding matters that have ``already received
substantial publicity.''
But Levin said Ray does not have the authority to release
conclusions and that ``Congress was very clear about this
precisely to avoid an independent counsel releasing or appearing
to release a report for political purposes.''
Customarily, when other independent counsels filed final reports
under seal with a special division of the U.S. Court of Appeals,
they issued terse statements, devoid of criticism, announcing an
end to their investigations.
``I'm surprised'' by what Ray is planning and ``I think Carl
Levin is exactly right,'' said George Washington University law
professor Stephen Saltzburg. He said it's the court that makes a
judgment on what to release.
Saltzburg is a former Iran-Contra prosecutor who was a deputy
assistant attorney general for the Justice Department's criminal
division in the Reagan and Bush administrations.
``If you issue a statement at the same time that you file a
report under seal, you are absolutely running roughshod over the
spirit'' of the requirement that the report be kept confidential,
said Larry Barcella, a former federal prosecutor who has
represented Republicans and Democrats in Independent Counsel
probes.
Georgetown University law professor Paul Rothstein said, ``I
think it is wise'' for an Independent Counsel ``to make some kind
of statement if it is not accusatory in nature,'' but it's
``another kettle of fish if it's going to be accusatory in any
sense. Sometimes these final reports say we're not prosecuting,
but we think there's a lot of wrongdoing.''
Ray took Mrs. Clinton and the White House to task in a three-page
news release in June announcing the end of his investigation into
the firings of White House travel office employees.
Ray accused the White House of ``substantial resistance'' to
providing ``relevant evidence'' to his investigators and said
there was ``substantial evidence'' Mrs. Clinton played a role in
the travel office firings.
That conflicted with the first lady's sworn statements that she
``had no role'' in the decision.
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