August 2, 1994 - Part 10
August 2, 1994 - Part 10
(00:35:18) Senator SASSER. I guess what I'm trying to do is to get an as ssesment of the priorities of your time vis-a-vis the RTC during this period of time. In other words, did being interim CEO of the was that a particularly large job as far as you were concerned was it a particularly high priority on your scale of priorities? Mr. ALTMAN. I tried to take it seriously, but I had other priorities that were senior to that one. They included the economic plan.' They included the U.S.--Japan negotiations, they included the evolution of the Health Care plan, and I took 6 weeks or so off at the end of the summer last year to work full-time on the economic plan. I moved over to the White House in the so-called war room and I worked full-time for 5 or 6 weeks on it. During that time I bad nothing to do with the RTC. I couldn't Senator SASSER. Well, I just want to sort of put this in perspective. In other words, some people viewing these proceedings might come to the conclusion that you were full-time working as the act- ing CEO of the RTC, but the truth is you were devoting no more, than 3 hours a week to it, and you had all these other balls in the air simultaneously? Mr. ALTMAN. Yes, Sir. Senator SASSER. Mr. Chairman, I want to yield what time I might have remaining to Senator Kerry if that's permissible. The CHAIRMAN. Senator Kerry. Senator SASSER, Thank you, Mr. Altman. Senator KERRY. Thank you. Who I understand you yielded some time. Thank you very much. I thank him for that. Mr. Chairman I guess I might say that the last series of questions raised by the Senator from Tennessee sure raises some questions about the RTC itself and that's not what we're here for. But I just want to say it is not comforting to learn that the acting CEO was spending only a few hours and had not enough time to pay at, tention to it and that raises a separate series of question that this Committee, and 1, and some others have been deeply concerned about with respect to recoveries and the direction of this can Of worms, as it's been called. I want to go into a couple things, if I may, very quickly. I think it is obviously appropriate and within the scope that the Commit- 517 tee's instructions from the Senate which is to conduct hearings into whether improper conduct occurred with respect to contacts, to certainly determine whether there was improper conduct in those contacts with respect to testimony before this Committee. I agree with my colleague it's not the center focus or the whole focus. It's one of them, but I would ask my colleagues to be really fair in assessing the answers of the witness and the realities of this transcript as you read it. I think there are questions, very serious ones still, about the February 3 meeting and the lack of statements and the contrary evidence as to who knew about that. I think there are questions there, and we still need to make judgments about it. But I also think it is fair to the witness to read his answer to Senator Domenici in its full context. And to understand that be was talking about a substantive meaningful contact. He was-you can argue the February 3 meeting falls into that and I'm not going to discuss that now, but you cannot argue that the Maggie Williams' notation falls into that. And it seems to me that Mr. Altman has fairly suggested in his answer at the time contemporaneous with the question saying when you asked Senator Domenici, you are not suggesting you bad more than one, are you, which was specifically on the subject of RTC incidentally, not on the subject of recusal. He would then answer no, I'm just saying if you run into someone in the hall, if you see a thing in the paper this morning, I'm not including that. Now, in my judgment the Maggie Williams' communication certainly falls under that kind of casual encounter at a separate kind 'of event not calculated or scheduled for any purpose except other things and he learned something. So I think we have to be fair in were going to attach here. I think it is fair to raise questions about the February 3 meeting. I think it is certainly fair to raise another set of questions about the recusal, and I think the Senator from New Mexico and I share a concern here about what may or may not have been going on. Now, I would simply like to start by saying- and I hope my colleagues will agree with me here-the recusal is not an important issue for what did happen because nothing happened. And so when Altman says it was moot, he is, in fact, correct as to any action to interfere with the investigation.