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By David Lieberman, USA TODAY
NEW YORK — Goldman Sachs tried to hide potentially embarrassing information and sidetrack a bipartisan congressional investigation into the causes of the worst recession since the 1930s, the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission said Monday.
The 10-member commission subpoenaed Goldman on Friday. The FCIC said Goldman wasted months failing to arrange times for the commission to interview senior executives. In addition, the financial services giant allegedly buried responses to specific information requests in millions of pages of unneeded documents. "They stretched us out thinking they played the game cleverly," FCIC Vice Chairman Bill Thomas said. "They may have more to cover up than we thought." Goldman said, in a statement, "We have been and continue to be committed to providing the FCIC with the information they have requested." Still, the subpoenas may intensify questions about Goldman, which is already defending itself against a Securities and Exchange Commission civil fraud charge involving an investment based on subprime mortgages that it sold in 2007. "Goldman is the occupant of a one-room doghouse right now," says Michael Robinson of Levick Strategic Communications, a crisis-management firm. "Not cooperating (with the FCIC) is a way to guarantee a long stay." The FCIC has asked Goldman for information about the same kind of investment that's at issue in the SEC case. The commission, which is scheduled to report its findings by Dec. 15, has already held several hearings and subpoenaed about a dozen executives including Berkshire Hathaway CEO Warren Buffett. The FCIC says that many of the subpoenas are deemed as "friendly"— for example, some executives ask for one as a formality before they testify. But the FCIC says the Goldman subpoena is "unfriendly" for a company that's been far less cooperative than other banks and financial institutions have been. "You could not construe what (Goldman) did as anything other than deliberate and disruptive," Chairman Phil Angelides said. He added that Goldman only started to arrange interviews with executives, including CEO Lloyd Blankfein, after it received the subpoenas. "We were perhaps more patient than we should have been," Angelides said. "We're not going to let the American people be played for chumps here."
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