Larry Klayman - chairman, Judicial Watch, Inc.; former trial attorney, U.S. Department of Justice; former aide, U.S. Senator Richard Schweiker; member, executive finance committee, Kemp for President 1988; co-author, A Fair Playing Field of Trade.

I was born in Philadelphia, 1951 -- I guess I'm a Baby Boomer -- the grandson of a meat packer. My grandparents came from Russia. They thought they were fleeing the Bolsheviks; unfortunately, they were fleeing the czar.

They came to this country, and they believed in hard work. They taught our family a certain ethic, which I think we all share and have experienced. They taught me to work with all types of people. They taught me that, although we may have different beliefs and different ideas, we all are trying to arrive at the same place. Some of us drive Chevrolets, others drive Fords, but we're going in the same direction.

I attended university at Duke during the Vietnam War years. During that period perhaps I hadn't quite realized how conservative I was. I knew that I didn't support the anti-war movement, and I was troubled by that movement. And of course, this was during the period of Richard Nixon.

One of the things that I remember from those days is that Nixon said we all are basically intelligent people. Some people are obviously more intelligent than others. But what separates those who succeed from those who don't is really hard work. I have friends who knew him very well; I did not. But that quality was something I admired deeply.

After law school, I spent a year working for Senator Richard Schweiker of Pennsylvania. These were the Watergate years, when we talked about ethics. We talked also about the law. Troubled Republicans came forward and helped get things right. We do not have a situation like that today. The Democratic Party and the liberal movement will not utter a word about some of the gross abuses occurring in government and in our society today, for fear that they may lose hold of power.

Conservatives and Republicans have never been that way. We have always confronted the issues when we've had to. We put our own house in order, and we moved on.

After graduating from Duke University and spending a year with Senator Schweiker, I attended Emory University School of Law in Atlanta. I began my practice in Miami, Florida in 1977. It was a large, conservative law firm. I chose that over working in Washington, D.C. because I wanted to develop the tools to be a trial lawyer. I know that's not a popular thing to claim to be, but, as you'll see later, I'm trying to put that experience to good use with our organization.

The law firm was a big, established organization. I got my first taste of the court system, which I'll talk about later.

Then I moved to the Department of Justice where, shortly before Ed Meese became Attorney General, I served in the antitrust division. I developed an appreciation for competition, for allowing everyone to be able to prosper based on their own merit and desire to get ahead, not based on who they were, or their concentration of economic power.

That was an interesting experience, since I'd been in the private sector. I remember one of my chiefs in that government office coming to me and saying, "Larry, why are you working late? Go home." And that perhaps I should not be so tough on the secretaries and on the support staff to get the job done. It was almost as if it was a negative thing, this hard-work ethic.

This taught me that government is not what we perhaps thought it was. Certainly the Justice Department was a revered and admired institution which, for the most part, kept its head above politics and its nose to the grindstone.

I left the Justice Department in 1981 and went with a small law firm, which gave me a further experience, what it was like to run a small business. First hand, I saw how the private sector suffers from government regulation, taxes, and a general attitude that business is always wrong and that others are always right.

I left that firm in 1983 and started my own law firm, Klayman and Associates. Perhaps I suffered a little bit from an immigrant complex. I wanted to see if I could do what my grandfather had done as he built up his meat packing company. I left without clients.

And I've stayed in that private practice for thirteen years, up to the present time. Along the way, I learned that the basic values, honesty, respect for ethics and the law, are very important. But I also learned that you have to take society as you find it. Society is not perfect. Society does not always live up to those values. We ourselves may not live up to those values, no matter how hard we try. Nobody is perfect.

I saw the evolution of Ronald Reagan. I listened to people like Jack Kemp, William Bennett and others. And I learned that the conservative movement truly was the movement that tried to protect the interests of us all, not just big corporate interests. We, in fact, are the movement of the people. We are populists. We get our strength from that foundation.

And I learned that in the justice system, where I represented small American importers in an international-type practice. I also represented some overseas interests in the United States, from anywhere that clients would come. They had a desire to excel on their own, to have their business prosper without excessive government regulation and waste.

Like many lawyers who start to get a little older -- I'm 45 now -- I came to believe that I could take the skills I had learned as a trial lawyer on behalf of clients and try to change society in some small way. We all do our small parts to make our little marks on the world. Back in the 1960s and 1970s, some of my friends of the more liberal persuasion in high school were talking about dodging the draft, taking marijuana, and other things which I never quite accepted. This was the age when people went to law school to try to change things. In those years, things kind of got reversed 180 degrees. The liberal establishment became the vested interest, and the conservative establishment became the movement of change.

Those who went to law school to try to disrupt are now probably in big business. Campus radicals in many cases later converted into capitalists. And we conservatives strove, not just to prosper from the capitalist system, but to change things.

And then it came to pass that in 1992 we elected one William Jefferson Clinton. Certainly, we would all like to respect our President and First Lady. Certainly, we would like things not to have gone the way they went. But what we've seen is one scandal after another, obfuscations of fact, false information being provided to the public on a daily basis.

In the last few weeks alone, the White House press secretary, Mike McCurry, and the White House counsel, Lanny Davis, have been criticized even by the liberal media -- even by the Washington Post -- for disseminating false information to the public and misleading congressional investigators and groups such as my own.

In 1993, I felt that I could take what I had learned and create a useful, activist organization. Being the capitalist, the businessman that I was, I looked for a market niche.

I didn't do this for profit. We founded Judicial Watch as a volunteer group. I don't take a salary. Our thirty or so volunteers do not draw salary. We do it because we believe in it. We do it for the same reason that Judge Robert Bork has written his book, Slouching Towards Gomorrah.

We've seen, with each successive generation, a degeneration of ethical and moral values. The President and First Lady, and the people around them, are a reflection, unfortunately, of the society we live in. They are not the root of all evil. They are the manifestation of what has gone wrong in our society.

So we formed our group to address these questions, and to address what we felt was wrong in our legal system, particularly in our system of selecting and monitoring judges.

Our first case involved the President's legal expense trust, an ideal opportunity to address the issue of money, big corporate money interests, dominating the politics and the soul of the American system. The President and First Lady set up a trust called the Legal Defense Fund. It allowed for the payment of money directly into their account. The monies were deposited in a trust account. If there's money left at the end, they can keep it. They don't pay taxes on this account.

We've learned a lot about this president's legal expense trust fund, most recently with the revelation of $629,000 of laundered cash deposited by Charlie Trie into that account. We looked for a creative way to bring this to the public's attention, to challenge the President's legal expense trust, because we thought it was wrong.

Contrary to popular belief, the President is a multi-millionaire. His net worth far exceeds a million dollars. And he will receive large book contracts, speaking engagements and other types of benefits when he leaves office. For his legal expenses, he could have gone to a bank and taken out a loan at regular market rates, not as George Stephanopolous did, for his condominium on Connecticut Avenue in D.C. Stephanopolous borrowed from the Democrats' bank, Nations Bank, at below market rates. The President did not have to hold his hand out to special interests and lobbyists. Not in the 220 year history of the United States had any President panhandled for dollars.

We looked for a creative way to bring this case. We claimed that the group of ten people surrounding this trust were giving advice to the President. (They were, in fact, soliciting advice from the Office of Government Ethics as to the trust's legality.)

A President can accept gifts from foreign dignitaries and others, but those gifts belong to the American people. Federal government workers cannot accept gratuities.

So we brought this case to court under the Federal Advisory Committee Act. We asked the court to shut down the trust if it would not open itself up to full disclosure.

The case was assigned to a very fine judge, a Reagan appointee, Judge Roy C. Lamberth in the U.S. District Court of the District of Columbia. Judge Lamberth did not agree with us that the trust could be reached under the Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA), because he claimed it was a private activity, not a governmental activity subject to FACA. He did rule that the trust presented serious ethical and legal dilemmas, which needed to be addressed but could not be addressed in that lawsuit.

We take some pride in the fact that we sensitized many Americans to the idea that this was an illegal activity. In fact, the trust complained that its donations fell off while our suit was in progress, and have continued not to be what they expected.

That was our first case. And I'll tell you later how that's now coming back into play. Because it has become an issue again.

As a lawyer who practiced international trade, I had developed an appreciation that the Commerce Department, which we conservatives have tried to eliminate for the last four years, has become a den of political corruption. Big money meets politics there, a place where money talks and nobody walks. And on top of that, no one knows what they do.

The appointment of Ron Brown as Secretary of Commerce set off alarm bells. He was the leading fundraiser for the Democratic Party of all time, the previous Democratic National Committee chairman. He installed there many of his friends from the Democratic National Committee. I practiced in front of the Commerce Department and knew that this was likely to become the cradle of an illegal fundraising operation in the Clinton administration.

As a public interest group, our Judicial Watch volunteers filed Freedom of Information Act requests, seeking to open up and disclose what was going on at the Commerce Department under Ron Brown.

We noted reports that many of the donors Ron Brown was taking on trade missions were chosen, not on the basis of their merit, but on how much money they had given to the Democratic Party. The department stonewalled and refused to respond. We filed suit.

The new case, quite by chance, was also assigned to Judge Lamberth. All of a sudden, the Commerce Department became agreeable. "Pay us $13,000," they said, "and you can have all the records."

Well, the judge gave them twenty-four hours to agree to produce the records free of cost.

What did we learn? We're still in progress. This case has expanded way beyond its initial scope. For example, we discovered one John Huang. He, like many colleagues from the Democratic National Committee and others in the Clinton administration, used the Commerce Department as an illicit means to raise political cash. And, most likely, to feather their own private nests.

And during this case, when John Huang was discovered -- quite by accident -- in October of 1996, we sought to depose him. True to form, the government -- the Clinton Justice Department -- didn't even know who he was. The right hand wasn't talking to the left. We convinced Judge Lamberth, before the Justice Department even knew what happened, to allow us to take Huang's deposition.

And what happened then? We all know. Huang fled from justice. He escaped the U.S. marshals. The judge had to send a marshal out to bring him in. A public relations spectacle unfolded. DNC people came before the judge and told him that they did not know where Mr. Huang was. Then we learned that they did know where he was, because Mr. Huang said that he'd been speaking with Mr. Sandler at the Democratic National Committee, and with Mr. Fowler, and others. We brought Huang in because they threw in the towel. It became a public relations debacle for them.

During this period of time, we were accused of being anti-Asian -- extreme right wing, Chris Dodd said on television -- but also of manufacturing this case for election purposes. In fact, that was not so. We had started our case two years earlier.

But what impact did this have? In the weeks just before the 1996 elections, even the liberal media started to pick up on the corruption in the Clinton Justice Department and the Clinton administration in general. And the unintended result was that many conservatives and Republicans went from ten points down in congressional races to narrowly winning re-election. They kept the House and the Senate. Only a difference of about 11,000 votes, all told, shifted to the Democrats would have given them a majority in the House.

Why are ethics and the law important? Not just because ethics and the law are a fundamental part of our Judaeo-Christian ethic. They are, in fact, many aspects of the Ten Commandments. They are what we are taught in Sunday School. They're what we are taught about what is right and wrong. Ethics is a powerful issue. It is a moral issue. And it is the issue which is responsible for conservatives' retaining control of Congress.

But within twenty-four hours after the election, we heard some of our leaders in Congress say, "Well, maybe we've had enough. Maybe bipartisanship is the way we should go. Maybe the Whitewater investigation has spent too much money. Maybe we should shut it down. Maybe we would like to be friends with President Clinton and his wife and others. Maybe we can accomplish some good."

Well, yes. We would like to be friends with President Clinton and his wife. But we cannot overlook what forms our moral being. What is our reason to exist as conservatives? This is our issue. It's what put Ronald Reagan in power. It's what put Newt Gingrich in as Speaker of the House. It has preserved the conservative majority in Congress in 1996. It's not something to be swept under the rug and forgotten.

Education is important. Other things are important: national defense, foreign policy. But without respect for ethics and the law, we really have nothing. And, as Judge Bork said, we're going down the slippery slope to Gomorrah, where we will not exist as a nation in 220 more years if we continue this slide.

And so I was glad to see J.C. Watts the other night give a response to the State of the Union. He expressed the need for ethics and the law. We should all applaud the congressman, because he did the right thing. And he should not be criticized for what he said, nor should we conservatives ever be criticized for speaking what we believe. That is where we get our strength. That separates us from the liberals. We may have differences of opinion, but we speak from our heart.

J.C. Watts spoke from his heart. He doesn't need to apologize for that. And my hat goes off to William Bennett for pointing that out.

We are not prostitutes. We are people who believe strongly in what we do.

So it was my pleasure to be invited to speak to you today, because while there are other important things in life, nothing is more important than a respect for family values -- and these are family values -- a respect for ethics and the law. Nothing is more important than a respect for the essence of our Judaeo-Christian heritage, the Ten Commandments.

And this is why Bill Clinton, in the end, will do us a favor. Because he has put things in relief. He has put before us an opportunity to bring cases such as I've described -- and we also have a private class-action suit on behalf of the Reagan and Bush administration employees whose files were purloined and rifled.

But we will not stop at this. We will continue chipping away. Judicial Watch looks for your assistance and that of other groups. Join in this fight. We do not need to be embarrassed about this. We do not need to engage in bipartisanship when the other side tries to blackmail us with what they consider to be ethical issues. We conservatives must always hold our heads high. We must keep our own house in order. And we must beyond reproach.

So I applaud J.C. Watts. I applaud Judge Bork. I applaud all of you. And I ask for your help in the months ahead.

 QUESTION: I want to thank you so much for coming and talking to us today. You really are an unsung hero.

Would you suggest what might happen along your lines of inquiry in the future. What are you looking for in the weeks and months to come?

MR. KLAYMAN: We appeared in front of Judge Lamberth last money -- last money -- that's a Freudian slip, last Monday. Because what we're talking about is money, campaign finance corruption. We asked the judge for authority to take thirty-seven more depositions, including Don Fowler, Christopher Dodd, Bruce Lindsay's law partner and Mr. Tisdale, who was assisting in some of what we feel was document destruction in our cases.

And the judge was very upset at that hearing. He chastised the government lawyer for engaging in obstructionist tactics, for not allowing information to come out.

What we have to do each step of the way is to probe the individuals in the Clinton administration and those who have left who are involved in this scandal. And as the judge remarked, "I can't cut Mr. Klayman off from taking discovery, because each time he turns over a rock he finds something."

We have to keep turning those rocks over. Little by little, the house of cards is going to fall. We heard recent reports that Kenneth Starr hired two prosecutors, and that he's preparing a memorandum with regard to possible prosecutions.

I know that many outside of this room in the general populace are demoralized today, believing that nothing has happened. But I firmly believe that, in the months ahead, we will bring this crowd in the Clinton administration to justice. But more important than that, we're going to use that as a springboard to help get some fundamental change, to clean up the system where money talks and nobody walks in Washington, D.C.

 QUESTION: To what extent are the congressional committees that have jurisdiction over these kinds of questions paying attention to what you're doing, assisting you, showing an interest in pursuing hearings which would augment what you're doing?

MR. KLAYMAN: Let me say at the outset, I have tremendous respect for Senator Fred Thompson and Congressman Dan Burton, who are in charge of the Senate and House investigations. We make ourselves available to them whenever they need information. Our information is open to anyone.

Thus far, in all these months, as incredible as it may seem, we've not received one call from the Clinton Justice Department. How is it that the Attorney General Reno claims that she's conducting a massive, thorough investigation? They don't start with the horse's mouth, the group that has 85,000 documents and perhaps has more knowledge about this than anyone?

We have responded to the committees on the majority side. We've received one call from the minority counsel. They want a tape, a copy of John Huang's tape. Now, that's a complete joke. That tape has been available in the public domain now for five months. They just wanted to see if I'd cooperate.

Our doors are open to anybody who wants to get at the truth.

Now, to answer your question about the congressional committees, I know the staff on the majority side is chafing at the bit to be able to get at this. What happened, unfortunately, over the last few months, was a blurring of the lines. With the difficulties in Congress, it was very hard to focus on these investigations. It's just starting to pick up right now.

And this is one of the reasons why I wanted to speak to all of you on why conservatives must lead. We can't lose sight of the fact that we're never going to be liked by liberals, no matter how many Jesse Jacksons are invited to sit in galleries at State of the Union messages. We have to do our own thing. And bipartisanship is fine, as long as it's on the majority's terms.

We are the majority, and we're there to lead. The people put us there to lead. And we should not de-emphasize these investigations.

Obviously, the Democrats are now trying to do anything they can to slow it down and to obfuscate the issues.

 QUESTION: Larry, one thing that the people here are interested about is your very, very effective organization. How do people go about supporting your organization?

MR. KLAYMAN: Well, we obviously rely on support from the public. Although I don't draw a salary, we have currently one salaried employee. He's an investigator. Larry Klayman, by and large, has been the subsidizer of my group up to now. Fortunately, I've done fairly well in private practice.

But we are looking forward to receiving some help from the public. We like to keep that help diverse, and to open it up to the people by and large.

But I didn't come here -- and I thank you for asking me -- to solicit your help. I don't have any personal Legal Defense Fund, although I may need one shortly.

 QUESTION: I want to echo what was said a few minutes ago, our gratitude for what you've done. It's remarkable to me what you've done pretty much as a one-man shop in the last two years. You are accurate in saying that you made a huge change -- although that wasn't your goal in the 1996 elections. You had a huge impact on the elections.

A dozen separate conservative organizations in the past few months have been targeted for IRS audits. And this comes on the heels of Bill Clinton playing his Henry II role of saying, "Will someone rid me of these turbulent organizations?" And all of a sudden, a dozen of them are audited.

This administration plays hardball. Do you see a correlation between the fact that things are getting pretty hot for this administration, and that all of a sudden a dozen conservative organizations are targeted by the IRS?

MR. KLAYMAN: It's not coincidental. I've been retaliated against, too -- fortunately, not with a tax audit. But if they did, they wouldn't find anything anyway. They'd find that Larry Klayman spent a lot of his money on these matters.

But what we would find out there is a concerted effort. I think Attorney General Meese can appreciate this, but the Justice Department has become completely politicized. This raises the question of whether we need an independent Justice Department which is not under the Executive Branch. I'll leave that for another speech, and another day, particularly under this administration. But the IRS has been used, and other agencies have been used.

We are talking about criminal activity of the highest magnitude. Even in today's society, which has become insensitive, thinking more about family leave than values, it's going to catch up with them. And I was heartened to see that some congressional investigators have sent some subpoenas out.

But if any of you have been subject to these types of things, we're not a wallflower, and if you would like to consider using us to help you in any way, I would be there on your side. And so would certain of our volunteers, I'm sure.