The letters Mr. Gingrich submitted to the Committee concerning the Renewing American Civilization complaint were very troubling to the Subcommittee. They contained definitive statements about facts that went to the heart of the issues placed before the Committee. In the case of the December 8, 1994 letter, it was in response to a direct request from the Committee for specific information relating to the partisan, political nature of the course and GOPAC's involvement in it.
Both letters were efforts by Mr. Gingrich to have the Committee dismiss the complaints without further inquiry. In such situations, the Committee does and should place great reliance on the statements of Members.
The letters were prepared by Mr. Gingrich's lawyers. After the Subcommittee deposed the lawyers, the reasons for the statements being in the letters was not made any clearer. The lawyers did not conduct any independent factual research. Looking at the information the lawyers used to write the letters, the Subcommittee was unable to find any factual basis for the inaccurate statements contained therein. A number of exhibits attached to the complaint were fax transmittal sheets from GOPAC. While this did not on its face establish anything more than GOPAC's fax machine having been used for the project, it certainly should have put the attorneys on notice that there was some relationship between the course and GOPAC that should have been examined before saying that GOPAC had absolutely no involvement in the course.
The lawyers said they relied on Mr. Gingrich and his staff to ensure that the letters were accurate; however, none of Mr. Gingrich's staff had sufficient knowledge to be able to verify the accuracy of the facts. While Mr. Gaylord and Mr. Eisenach did have sufficient knowledge to verify many of the facts, they were not asked to do so. The only person who reviewed the letters for accuracy, with sufficient knowledge to verify those facts, was Mr. Gingrich.
The Subcommittee considered the relevance of the reference to GOPAC in Mr. Gingrich's first letter to the Committee dated October 4, 1994. In that letter he stated that GOPAC was one of the entities that paid people to work on the course. Some Members of the Subcommittee believed that this was evidence of lack of intent to deceive the Committee on Mr. Gingrich's part because if he had planned to hide GOPAC's involvement, he would not have made such an inconsistent statement in the subsequent letters. Other Members of the Subcommittee and the Special Counsel appreciated this point, but believed the first letter was of little value. The state- ment in that letter was only directed to establishing that Mr. Ging- rich had not used congressional resources in developing the course. The first letter made no attempt to address the tax issues, even though it was a prominent feature of the complaint. When the Committee specifically focused Mr. Gingrich's attention on that issue and questions concerning GOPAC's involvement in the course, his response was not accurate.
During his testimony before the Subcommittee, Mr. Gingrich stated that he did not intend to mislead the Committee and apologized for his conduct. This statement was a relevant consideration for some Members of the Subcommittee, but not for others.
The Subcommittee concluded that because these inaccurate statements were provided to the Committee, this matter was not resolved as expeditiously as it could have been. This caused a controversy over the matter to arise and last for a substantial period of time, it disrupted the operations of the House, and it cost the House a substantial amount of money in order to determine the facts.
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