United States Senate Whitewater Committee

The Senate Whitewater Committee, officially the Special Committee to Investigate Whitewater Development Corporation and Related Matters, was a special committee convened by the United States Senate during the Clinton administration to investigate the Whitewater controversy.

Whitewater congressional hearings began on August 2, 1994. ^[1]The committee was created by S.Res. 120^[2] on May 17, 1995, and approved by the Senate, 96-3. Hearings ran for 300 hours over 60 sessions across 13 months, taking over 10,000 pages of testimony and 35,000 pages of depositions from almost 250 people,^[3] and culminating in an 800-page final majority report on June 18, 1996.^[4]

The hearings did not receive much public interest:^[3] they were televised on C-SPAN, not the major networks; they were reported on in daily newspapers, but rarely made evening newscasts; media critics rated the hearings a "snooze"^[3] - and there were few dramatic moments of testimony, as D'Amato and Chertoff were unable to find any "smoking guns" for their case.^[3]

Some key figures of the Senate Whitewater Committee were:

• Al D'Amato (Republican - New York), chair
• Paul Sarbanes (Democratic - Maryland), ranking member
• Michael Chertoff - majority (Republican) counsel
• Richard Ben-Veniste - minority (Democratic) counsel