ACCESSION NUMBER:00000
FILE ID:97031802.TXT
DATE:03/18/97
TITLE:18-03-97  CONGRESSIONAL REPORT, TUESDAY, MARCH 18, 1997

TEXT:
(Senate reaction to Lake withdrawal)  (380)

SENATORS REACT TO LAKE WITHDRAWAL

Anthony Lake asked President Clinton to withdraw his nomination to
head the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) the same day the ranking
Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee telephoned several White
House officials, including Lake himself, to ask questions about news
reports that raised doubts in his mind about the nomination.

Senator Bob Kerrey (Democrat-Nebraska) placed the calls during the
morning of March 17 after members of the Senate Intelligence Committee
read a front-page story in the Wall Street Journal that claimed Lake,
then President Clinton's National Security Adviser, did not know that
Democratic party chairman Donald Fowler had tried to arrange a meeting
with Clinton for controversial party contributor Roger Tarmaz, despite
objections from an NSC staff member. Tarmaz, an oil financier, is
wanted in Lebanon on decade-old embezzlement charges, the Journal
said.

Lake asked President Clinton to withdraw his nomination later on March
17.

Kerrey and other members of the Intelligence Committee were concerned
that Lake apparently did not have any established system for learning
about such events. Kerrey called this situation "a potentially
disqualifying mistake."

Lake's withdrawal took many senators by surprise, since he was
generally considered to have performed well in three days of grueling
testimony before the committee. The consensus was that he had the
votes for confirmation not only in the Intelligence Committee, but in
the full Senate as well.

"I'm surprised," Senator Orrin Hatch (Republican-Utah) said on
NBC-TV's "Today" show March 18. "I think he would have made it through
the process. I personally liked him, wanted to vote for him and
probably in the end would have."

However, said Hatch, "questions have to be asked." Acknowledging that
the committee had asked "some tough questions," Hatch noted that "this
is a big job that involves an awful lot of power, and power that is
really unchecked in many ways."

The chairman of the Intelligence Committee, Senator Richard Shelby
(Republican-Alabama), denied that he had been "out to get Mr. Lake."
In an interview on ABC-TV's "Good Morning America" program March 18,
Shelby said "it was not personal with me." However, he added, "this
was a controversial nomination from the outset."
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