The head of a Justice Department task force has recommended appointment of a special counsel to investigate Vice President Al Gore’s role in fundraising irregularities in the 1996 presidential campaign, according to a Justice Department official.
The recommendation raises the possibility Gore could be dogged through his presidential campaign by an official investigation into his ethical behavior, including whether he lied about a fundraising event at a Buddhist temple.
Though she put together a task force to examine 1996 Democratic campaign fundraising practices, Atty. Gen. Janet Reno has resisted three previous recommendations to appoint independent prosecutors to lead investigations. The pressure on her now will grow, following the recommendation from Robert Conrad, supervisor of the Justice Department task force.
The recommendation initially was disclosed by Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) and confirmed by a Justice Department official, who asked not to be identified.
At a Capitol Hill news conference, Specter needled Reno for her refusals to appoint an independent counsel to investigate fundraising matters, decisions that have provoked bitter Republican criticism.
Noting the poor timing for Gore’s presidential campaign, Specter said, “The attorney general’s failure to act has put the vice president and the Democratic Party at a substantial disadvantage. All of this could have been resolved two years ago.”
Campaigning in Minnesota, Gore said he wasn’t aware of the recommendation for a special counsel.
“You’re privy to news I don’t have,” Gore said.
During her tenure, Reno has named an unprecedented seven independent counsels to investigate the Clinton administration.
But independent counsel Kenneth Starr’s five-year, $40 million investigation of the president and first lady unleashed bitter criticism of the independent counsel system. The Starr effort resulted in the release of tawdry details about President Clinton’s sex life and provoked an impeachment crisis that dismayed the public.
Congress let the independent counsel law expire last year. The attorney general retains the discretion to appoint an outside prosecutor, but any such prosecutor would report to Reno, rather than to an independent panel of federal judges as Starr did.
Allegations of fundraising abuses in the Clinton-Gore campaign began emerging shortly before the 1996 election. The allegations ranged from accusations that favors were traded for big contributions to the charge that foreigners illegally channeled money to the Democrats.
A congressional source said Conrad’s recommendation stemmed from statements Gore made during an April 18 interview with Justice Department investigators concerning his involvement in a 1996 fundraiser at a Buddhist temple in California.
The Buddhist temple event put Gore under fire because tax-exempt organizations are forbidden to engage in this sort of political activity, and it appears that donations were improperly channeled through some of the temple’s monks and nuns.
Gore has denied knowing the event was a fundraiser. The vice president also has been criticized for making calls to donors from his official office in what some said potentially violated a law that forbids political fundraising in a government building.
Gore hurt his own cause with a disastrous press conference about the matter in which he repeatedly declared that “no controlling legal authority” said his actions were improper, highly technical wording that struck many as evasive. The phrase was widely ridiculed.
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From the outset, Republicans demanded that Reno seek an independent counsel to investigate the allegations of fundraising abuses. The administration’s Justice Department has an inherent conflict in investigating Clinton and Gore, Republicans have argued, precisely why an independent counsel system was created.
So far, Reno has stood firm.
In fall 1997, she formally considered but rejected seeking an independent counsel to investigate whether the fundraising calls that Clinton and Gore made from their offices were illegal.
The following year, she weighed but declined to name an independent counsel to explore whether Gore misled investigators when he said he did not know the contributions he was raising in those calls were “hard money,” which goes to specific candidates. Gore said he thought it was “soft money,” which is used for general party-building activities and is largely unregulated.
Reno also decided against seeking an independent counsel to explore whether Clinton and Gore controlled Democratic Party advertisements designed to benefit their own candidacies rather than the party as a whole, a possible violation of campaign finance laws.
In all those cases, Reno indicated she found insufficient evidence of wrongdoing to warrant naming an independent prosecutor. Instead, she has kept a campaign finance investigation in the hands of a large Justice Department task force.
This task force has won several convictions, but Republicans complain that it has targeted only small-time operators, shying away from prominent Democrats. Many Democrats, however, say the campaign finance laws are murky and that Clinton and Gore did nothing that is not common practice.
Reno’s stance against using a prosecutor outside the Justice Department has been increasingly criticized as the details of two controversial memos have emerged, one written by FBI Director Louis Freeh and the other by Charles LaBella, the former head of the task force. Both of the memos argued strongly for the appointment of an independent counsel, arguing that Reno has an unacceptable conflict of interest in supervising any investigation of Clinton and Gore.
“First Louis Freeh, then Chuck LaBella and now Robert Conrad have made it clear that Janet Reno’s Justice Department is incapable of conducting a thorough and unbiased investigation of the president and vice president,” said longtime Clinton critic Rep. Dan Burton (R-Ind.).
“This should be approved and the investigation should commence as quickly as possible,” Burton added.
For Gore, the odor of a possible investigation comes at a troubling time.
Consistently trailing in all national polls, including three released Thursday, Gore has yet to make a positive connection with a majority of voters.
Gore’s greatest asset–association with the Clinton administration–is also his greatest liability, and just as he has tried to shift the focus of his campaign to the unparalleled success of the economy, he is confronted with headlines that go to the very core of what voters dislike, namely the scandals of the Clinton years.
For months, Gore’s presumed Republican rival, Texas Gov. George W. Bush, has laced his campaign speeches with references to Gore’s credibility, trying to build a lasting impression among voters that Gore says one thing, then does another; that his word cannot be trusted.
It is rhetoric that reinforces an existing public perception. In the Battleground Poll released Thursday, 44 percent of voters surveyed said they had an unfavorable opinion of Gore as a person, while 47 percent said they viewed him favorably–uncomfortably close to an even split. Bush, in comparison, was viewed unfavorably by 28 percent but favorably by 63 percent.
Even on a day when Bush was the subject of renewed scrutiny over a death penalty case in Texas, Gore was left trying to fend off questions about his own integrity.
If an investigation of Gore goes forward, a presidential campaign that Gore would like to make a referendum on the economy could instead become one on personal characteristics of the candidates. So far, no single issue has emerged. In the Battleground Poll, restoring moral values and education topped voters’ lists of concerns, but each was cited by only 16 percent of survey respondents.
For Gore, the only upside would be a quick decision from Reno again rejecting the choice of career prosecutors. That would leave Republicans howling, and the airwaves of talk radio and television filled with anti-Reno venom. It also would allow Gore some cover and the chance to paint the GOP as the party of scandal-mongering.
In the Democratic primaries, Gore’s opponent, former New Jersey Sen. Bill Bradley, warned that Gore’s role in the fundraising scandals would be ammunition in a strong Republican attack.
A fall campaign is an entirely different context. In 1988, then-Vice President George Bush was dogged by questions about his role in the Iran-contra affair, but the issue was ultimately of little importance to voters. Similarly, Richard Nixon had to confront early questions about his role in Watergate in 1972, but it wasn’t until the investigation had run far deeper that voters seemed to care.
And, of course, Clinton in 1996 was hit by what seemed like daily attacks by the campaign of Republican nominee Bob Dole, on a wide menu of issues, only to have voters return him to the White House.
The difference here is that Gore might have to run under the cloud of an official investigation conducted at the behest of the attorney general appointed by the president.