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.
The committee was created by S.Res. 120[1] 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,[2] and culminating in an 800-page final majority report on June 18, 1996.[3]
The hearings did not receive much public interest:[2] 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"[2] - and there were few dramatic moments of testimony, as D'Amato and Chertoff were unable to find any "smoking guns" for their case.[2]
Some key figures of the Senate Whitewater Committee were:
