Bill Clinton: “First of all, let's get back to the beginning, okay? Let's talk about my cousin. She's about my fifth or sixth cousin…”

“First of all, let's get back to the beginning, okay? Let's talk about my cousin. She's about my fifth or sixth cousin who worked in the campaign and ran the travel operations. We had a very efficient travel operation. Every operation at the White House was reviewed, because I said I was going to cut the White House staff by 25 percent. That's not easy to do, to run the White House on fewer people than your predecessor. We got more mail in 3\1/2\ months than came to the White House in all of 1992. It's tough. We found out that there were seven people working in the Travel Office, primarily to book travel for the press, and that the press was complaining that the cost was too high. So there were all these recommendations made to change it. But nothing was done until an accounting firm came in and reviewed the operation and found serious management questions in terms of unaccounted-for funds and things like that. So then the person in charge of that made the decision to replace them. Now, all those questions were raised about whether they all should have been replaced. Mr. McLarty got on it. He did an internal review. He'll fix it. But the issue is: Should we work seven people when three can do the job? And if we saved 25 percent off the cost of the very first plane flight, isn't that a good thing for the press? That's what we're trying to do. Mr. Smith. And nobody's going to argue with that. But what they are going to argue with is why was the FBI called in?”