| 1987: | Ed Meese testifies about his early investigation of the Iran-Contra scandal, in which he started as one of the investigators and ended up one of the investigatees, just as he did in the Wedtech scandal. He uses the phrase "I don't recall" or variations of it about 340 times, beating the mark of 184 set by John Poindexter two weeks earlier. Meese claims he "didn't realize" that the investigation he was conducting as Attorney General was a criminal case (though years later he admitted that this was his first thought), and thus kept few records and didn't ask many obvious questions. Senator George Mitchell finds Meese's explanation "hard to accept." |