Will the Senate ethics committee become C-Span’s first soap opera? The committee, which is considering sexual-harassment allegations against Packwood, has subpoenaed the senator’s diaries. His lawyers are willing to turn over certain portions they deem “relevant.” But Senate staffers want more. According to James Fitzpatrick, the senator’s attorney, complying with the ethics-committee subpoena would reveal such details as:
“A conversation with a senator about that senator’s extended affair with a staff member and the problems of his divorce.”
“A description of an affair by a Senate staffer with a member of the Democratic congressional leadership.”
“Campaign fund-raising activities” and “entries dealing with lobbyists visiting the senator’s office.”
By threatening to reveal Senate secrets, Fitzpatrick seems to be practicing what in espionage cases is called graymail. More formally, he is resisting the subpoena on the ground that it violates the senator’s constitutional right to privacy. The committee wants the full Senate to give it authority to go to court to enforce the subpoena; a vote may come as early as this week. Former House ethics-committee counsel Abbe Lowell believes the committee will have to prove a “high threshold of relevance” to win its case. But Stan Brand, Lowell’s law partner and a former House counsel, believes it is almost impossible to stop the “inexorable march to produce the material.” He thinks that the committee can prove legal relevance because the diaries might reveal Packwood’s state of mind or his intent. In other words, if he was talking to other senators about their purported affairs with staffers, the committee might learn something about why he felt free to proposition women who worked for him.
Senators will be in an awkward position when they debate the ethics-committee subpoena as early as this week. If they don’t vote to make Packwood turn over his diaries, they will be accused of covering up their own shenanigans to protect a member of what is still mostly an all-male club. If they ask the courts to make Packwood reveal all, they risk getting dragged into a tawdry spectacle. “I want to do what’s right,” says Sen. John Breaux of Louisiana. “But I feel some queasiness about sending over a personal diary if it’s not relevant to the charges.”
The battle of Packwood’s diaries is the latest twist in a scandal that has veered between personal tragedy and comic opera. In October 1992, when The Washington Post initially told Packwood that it was looking into the allegations, his chief of staff accused the paper of a “witch hunt.” In the first of several interviews, Packwood denied any improper advances. “I am so hesitant of anything at all that I just, I don’t make approaches,” he said. “It is simply not my nature, with men or women, to be forward.” Only after he was safely re-elected, and a parade of women told the Post and other newspapers of being groped, kissed and fondled by the senator, did Packwood admit to a problem. He blamed alcohol.
Although various women’s groups, as well as several local newspapers, demanded Packwood’s resignation, he has refused to step down. In Oregon, he has had to endure jeers. His first trip back to face the voters last winter was dubbed “the stealth tour” because he released his schedule a day at a time and slipped in and out side doors.
It is still not clear whether the ethics committee will take any action against him. The committee has not been known as an aggressive disciplinarian in the past. But if Packwood’s diaries are ever made public, they will provide interesting reading, not only to the public but to the senators who may have shared cloakroom intimacies with their colleague.
