FBI Memo Cites Fund Probe Pressure
By John Solomon
Associated Press Writer
Thursday, May 18, 2000; 8:47 p.m. EDT
WASHINGTON –– FBI Director Louis Freeh wrote a memo in the
earliest days of the Democratic fund-raising investigation
suggesting a top Justice Department official was under pressure
not to proceed with the probe to save Attorney General Janet
Reno's job.
The memo, belatedly turned over to Senate investigators this
week, also discloses that Freeh urged Reno and Justice Department
public integrity chief Lee Radek to step aside from the
investigation as early as December 1996 because of purported
comments made by Radek.
The memo was described to The Associated Press by several
government officials who have seen it since the FBI turned it
over to be produced to the Senate and House Judiciary committees
investigating the fund-raising matter.
In the Dec. 9, 1996 memo to Deputy FBI Director William J.
Esposito, Freeh recounted, third-hand, comments Radek allegedly
made to Esposito suggesting he was being pressured in connection
with the investigation into Democratic fund-raising improprieties
during President Clinton's 1996 re-election.
Freeh's memo quotes Radek as telling Esposito he was "under a lot
of pressure not to go forward with the investigation" because
Reno's job "might hang in the balance," the officials said.
At the time, there were reports speculating in Washington on
whether Reno, who requested the Whitewater independent counsel
investigation, would serve a second term as attorney general.
She steadfastly resisted an independent prosecutor for
fund-raising, but has named a total of seven independent counsels
to investigate the president and his administration – at times
angering Clinton's supporters.
Freeh wrote Esposito that he met with Reno and told her about
Radek's purported comments and suggested "on that basis" both
Radek and Reno should step aside from the investigation, the
officials said.
Reached late Thursday, Radek said he never was under pressure to
scrap the investigation to help Reno and did not recall ever
making such comments to Esposito.
"I have no recollection of ever saying I was under pressure
because the attorney general's job hung in the balance. Nor is it
something I would have said because it has no basis in fact,"
Radek said in a prepared statement.
FBI spokesman John Collinwood declined comment.
Justice Department spokesman Myron Marlin said: "This attorney
general has never let her own self-interest color her own
decision making. She bases her decisions on the law and the
facts."
The emergence of the Freeh memo comes at a sensitive time for the
FBI and Justice Department, whose relations have been strained by
very public disputes over the investigations into China espionage
and fund raising.
Law enforcement officials told AP that Reno has received an
internal report on the government's handling of the case of
nuclear lab scientist Wen Ho Lee that criticizes both agencies.
The sources, who spoke only on condition of anonymity, said the
report by prosecutor Randy Bellows blames the FBI for not
providing enough oversight and resources into the early part of
the investigation when leads of Lee's possible spying for China
emerged.
After months of suggestions that Lee would be indicted for China
espionage, the scientist was charged last December with lesser
offenses of removing nuclear secrets from the Los Alamos lab with
no suggestion he gave them to China.
The Bellows report sides with the FBI on one issue – that the
Justice Department had enough grounds to approve a warrant for
electronic surveillance in the Lee case, the officials said.
Justice had rejected the FBI's request, angering its agents.
But the Bellows report adds that the FBI did not provide the
department with all the information it collected that could have
helped in the decision.
The Freeh memo involving the fund-raising issue emerges more than
two years after Congress first began reviewing the conduct and
quality of the criminal fund-raising investigation, in which
several Democratic donors and fund-raisers have been convicted.
Officials said the FBI did not disclose the existence of the memo
to Justice officials until late last month and that it wasn't
turned over to Senate investigators until this week.
Lawmakers mostly have focused on debates within Justice and the
FBI in 1997, 1998 and 1999 to name an independent prosecutor to
take over the probe of Clinton and Vice President Al Gore's
fund-raising activities.
Freeh and the former head of the Justice task force that ran the
investigation both have acknowledged they fervently argued later
in the investigation for appointment of a special prosecutor, but
Reno turned them down.
But Freeh's memo provides the first evidence that such arguments
dated to the very beginning of the investigation in late 1996 and
were based in part on concerns about possible political
pressures.
According to the officials' description of the 1996 memo, Freeh
wrote that Radek's public integrity section was not capable of
conducting a thorough investigation and that Reno and Radek
should recuse themselves from the investigation in favor of
aggressive outside investigators – whom he referred to as
"junk-yard dogs."
© Copyright 2000 The Associated Press
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