Ruff/White House Cave to Burton

Charles Ruff & The White House Cave In to Burton

Wednesday, May 21st, 1997 -- White House counsel Charles Ruff ate crow yesterday and handed over more than 2,000 pages of documents to the House Government Reform & Oversight Committee. The Chairman of the Committee, Dan "Pakistash" Burton, is himself accused of shaking down a lobbyist for a $5,000 campaign contribution under threat of blackball (see our previous article, Fox in the Henhouse).

Ruff was staring down the throat of "contempt of Congress,'' which are criminal proceedings.

Ruff also promised to provide clean copies of censored documents and a list of documents the White House continues to refuse to hand over.

Before yesterday, Ruff had claimed he wouldn't give up the documents because he believed Chairman Burton or others on the Committee would leak them to the media for partisan purposes.

Burton was nearly trembling with glee. According to reports he said "This is a victory for the people's right to know. We gave up nothing. We said we were going to be persistent and consistent with our demands until we got every document we need.''

Of course this isn't quite true, in that the White House is still refusing to give up documents Burton has asked for -- most notably those reflecting conversations between the First Lady and her lawyers.

Burton, not to be upstaged, said he might still take action to get those documents if he thought he needed them for his "investigation." Then, to rub salt into the wound, he added that he would leak contents of documents should he believe the American people "should know."

Keep in mind that Burton, with a flair for the idio-dramatic, is the leading proponent of the theories that
Webster Hubbell got hush money directed by the White House, and;
John Huang was a "spy" working for the Peoples Republic of China.

This about-face by Ruff may indicate both a change of heart in the Oval Office and the possibility that a deal has been cut between the White House and the Republican leadership. Ruff is well-respected by White House insiders, but it's doubtful they would order Ruff to turn over the documents merely to help him escape contempt of Congress charges.

What that deal was is anyone's guess, but watch for an easing of Republican interest in hanging the Democrats for campaign finance irregularities. This in light of recent revelations that the Republican Party, led by former Chairman Haley Barbour, used tax exempt corporations to provide cover for big corporate contributors along the lines of Newt Gingrich's GOPAC fiasco.