John Sarbanes: “I just want to come back to revisit the Iran-Contra hearings on which the distinguished Senator from Utah served. As he…”

“I just want to come back to revisit the Iran-Contra hearings on which the distinguished Senator from Utah served. As he will recall, at the outset of that, there were Democrats who wanted to extend those hearings into 1988, into the election year. Now, Senator Inouye and Representative Hamilton rejected that proposition and agreed, in response to a very strong representation by Senator Dole for a specific date to end it, and then conducted hearings in a very intense manner in order to accomplish that. Again, I want to make the contrast between the hearings schedule in Iran-Contra in order to meet its cutoff date, which involved 21 hearings between July 7 and August 6. In other words, we had hearings every weekday throughout that period from July 7 to August 6 except for 2 days--21 out of 23 days we held hearings. Contrast that pace, that effort to comply with a requirement that had been passed by the Senate, with what took place over the last 2 months, when this committee in January held only 7 days of hearings--in other words, all of the other days were open to hold hearings, and no hearings were held.”