Utahn M. Danny Wall blamed his critics' "simplistic efforts to find a scapegoat" for pressuring his resignation Monday as the nation's top sav ings-and-loan regulator.
Wall, director of the Office of Thrift Supervision, said he is proud of his accomplishments but resigned with an uncertain effective date, saying attacks against him were handicapping his office and tarnishing the Bush administration.He denied he was pressured by the White House to resign. "The decision is completely mine," he said at a press conference.
Referring to scapegoats in the Bible that had the sins of the people laid on their heads as they were banished to the wilderness, Wall said other actors in the savings-and-loan fiasco were forcing him out to carry away their sins. But he didn't accept the task without first taking some sharp parting shots.
The main target of those shots was House Banking Committee Chairman Henry Gonzalez, D-Texas, who first called for Wall's resignation. Gonzalez's committee did not pass 1986 and 1987 savings-and-loan bailout bills Wall said would have saved tens of billions of dollars.
Wall said Gonzalez resorted "to corruption of the truth and abandonment of our historical devotion to fair play and due process" to make Wall a scapegoat.
Gonzalez led a series of hearings this year that showed Wall did not close Lincoln Savings and Loan of Irvine, Calif., for two years after field inspectors first recommended it. Lincoln's failure could cost taxpayers $2.5 billion.
But Wall called those hearings deliberately lopsided and said he had good reasons for his actions. He said field inspectors failed to find the proof needed to close Lincoln. Audits by their replacements finally uncovered it.
Wall said Gonzalez did not allow him to tell his side until after weeks of hearings.
Wall said such action "and the simplistic efforts to find a scapegoat to shoulder the blame for the entire thrift crisis led various critics to join in the hue and cry raised by (Gonzalez) for my departure."
Gonzalez did not respond to the allegations. He simply said Monday, "I commend him for taking the action so that the air may be cleared and we may move forward in dealing with the savings-and-loan crisis."
Meanwhile, Wall's old boss, Sen. Jake Garn, R-Utah, also was charging Wall's critics with making him a scapegoat. "Danny was a convenient target for the critics who sought a scapegoat for the serious problems in the thrift industry.
Among those who had joined Gonzalez in calling for Wall's ouster were Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell, D-Maine; the Wall Street Journal; the Washington Post; Public Citizen: The National Taxpayers Union Foundation; and Citizens against Waste in Government.
Critics accused Wall of giving S & L lobbyists free run of his office and of bending to their wishes, of general ineptness, of getting and holding the job only because of his ties to Garn and of grossly underestimating the cost of the S & L bailout to prevent it from becoming an issue in the 1988 presidential election.
Many critics, however, stressed they found Wall to be of good character.
Rep. Charles P. Wylie, R-Ohio, the ranking Republican on Gonzalez's committee and a Wall critic, said he had too many political ties for a regulator, but he "is touched by any suggestion of financial impropriety or scandal," "he had nothing to do with the origins of the S&L fiasco" and little to do with its expansion.