Reno Orders 90-Day Investigation of Gore
By Roberto Suro and Michael Grunwald
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, August 27, 1998; Page A01
Attorney General Janet Reno yesterday ordered a preliminary investigation into whether Vice President Gore lied to Justice Department officials looking into the campaign finance scandal, according to sources familiar with the probe.
The preliminary investigation could lead to the appointment of an independent counsel and represents a new round of legal trouble for Gore, who was cleared last December by Reno after an investigation of highly technical fund-raising matters but now faces questions about his truthfulness.
The new investigation will focus on whether Gore misled Justice Department prosecutors and FBI agents during an interview last Nov. 12 when he said he understood that a massive Democratic media campaign in early 1996 was going to be financed entirely by "soft money" funds, which are not fully regulated under federal law. It was after that interview that Reno said there was no reason for further investigation of Gore's fund-raising telephone calls.
The current inquiry began a month ago after the vice president's office turned over a Democratic National Committee memo bearing handwritten notations from a top Gore aide. The notes, scribbled by Gore's former deputy chief of staff, David Strauss, suggested that a decision to finance the media campaign with both soft money and fully regulated "hard money" was discussed at a White House meeting on Nov. 21, 1995, that Gore attended, sources said.
Gore was interviewed by Justice Department officials about the newly uncovered document before he left on vacation in Hawaii two weeks ago. Reno's decision yesterday to seek a preliminary investigation reflected a conclusion by Justice officials that this interview and other recent inquiries had failed to clear up questions about the truthfulness of Gore's earlier statements, sources said.
Gore's attorney, James F. Neal, said in a statement yesterday evening, "I am totally satisfied that Vice President Gore has fully, completely and honestly answered every question asked of him, and I am confident that when this investigation is completed, the Department of Justice will reach the same conclusion."
The vice president has been dogged by questions about his role as an aggressive fund-raiser for the 1996 Clinton-Gore campaign since he appeared at a controversial campaign event at a Buddhist temple outside Los Angeles. In a now infamous news conference on March 3, 1997, Gore readily admitted that he had solicited political money from his White House office, but insisted that there was "no controlling legal authority" that would warrant an investigation.
Reno began the first investigation of Gore on Sept. 3, 1997, after The Washington Post reported that the funds he had raised had been placed in hard money accounts in apparent violation of a 19th century law prohibiting campaign fund-raising on federal property.
Much of the debate at the time centered on the question of whether soliciting soft money donations from federal property violated the law or whether the prohibition applied only to hard money. Gore insisted that he only asked for soft money and had no idea that some of the contributions he solicited ended up in hard money accounts.
In deciding that no independent counsel was necessary, Reno stated last December, "The allegation that the vice president may have been soliciting hard money is insubstantial and depends so heavily on conjecture and speculation that I conclude it does not provide reasonable grounds for further investigation."
In court papers, Reno said that Gore's statements in his own defense were an important aspect of her finding: "Finally, the vice president provided a reasonable explanation for his conduct. He stated that he understood the media campaign to be funded entirely by soft money, and that he was soliciting large soft money contributions specifically for that campaign. While his understanding of how the media campaign was funded was not correct, nothing developed in the course of the preliminary investigation contradicts that this was his understanding."
Justice Department officials said yesterday that the current inquiry is potentially more of a problem for Gore because it raises the more serious accusation that he lied during the earlier probe.
During last year's investigation, Gore and other participants at a Nov. 21, 1995, meeting on the financing of the Democrats' media campaign said they had no recollection of any discussion relating to whether they would pay for it with hard money, which can be used to support individual campaigns for federal office, or soft money, which can only be used for general party activities like issue advertising or voter registration drives.
The current investigation was opened because of the notes Strauss took at the meeting. Just below an entry on the financing of the media campaign he jotted "65% soft/35% hard." Those figures refer to a formula, sanctioned by federal guidelines, for the financing of advertising that both supports individual candidates and the party in general. However, it was a formula that Gore insisted he knew nothing about when he was interviewed by federal investigators last year.
The action Reno took yesterday consisted of informing a special panel of three federal judges that after an initial 30-day inquiry she had not been able to resolve questions raised by the new information regarding Gore, the first step of the complex process that leads to the appointment of an independent counsel.
At the conclusion of the next stage, the preliminary investigation, Reno by law will have to seek an independent counsel unless she can determine "that there are no reasonable grounds to believe that further investigation is warranted." The attorney general initially has 90 days to reach that conclusion and can ask for a 60-day extension, but then, if any questions remain unresolved, she must ask for an outside prosecutor to take over the inquiry.
Reno has been under tremendous pressure from congressional Republicans to appoint an independent counsel to investigate campaign finance violations, and has been cited for contempt by the House Government Reform and Oversight Committee for refusing to turn over memos from FBI Director Louis J. Freeh and Charles G. LaBella, former head of the Justice Department task force on campaign finance, recommending an independent counsel.
Last night, the committee chairman, Rep. Dan Burton (R-Ind.), complained that a 90-day preliminary investigation is an unnecessary "delaying tactic," and repeated his call for an independent counsel to investigate the entire Clinton-Gore fund-raising operation.
"A 90-day pause is what the White House and DNC desperately need to get a distressful decision conveniently past this fall's election, and that's what the attorney general rewarded them with today," Burton said in a statement.
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