Washington Times-EDITORIAL June 8, 2000
Perjury and the vice president
For two and a half years, Attorney General Janet Reno has
obstinately refused to disclose several internal Justice
Department documents and memorandums relating to the department's
investigation of campaign-finance abuses during the 1996
presidential election. For years, Justice has argued that
publicly disclosing the memos would provide defendants with a
road map of the task force's investigation. On Wednesday, the
House Government Reform Committee publicly released numerous
internal documents, including memos written by former task force
chief Charles LaBella and FBI Director Louis Freeh strongly
arguing that the law compelled Miss Reno to seek the appointment
of an independent counsel to investigate President Clinton, Vice
President Al Gore and first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton, among
others.
It immediately became clear why Miss Reno has refused to
disclose these documents. Declaring that the documents "expose
the bankruptcy of this investigation," Rep. Dan Burton, the
committee chairman, conveyed the exasperation that Messrs. Freeh
and LaBella have felt for years, noting, "If this is a road map,
it's a road map of a car going around in circles."
The first of the controversial documents was a Nov. 24,
1997, memo written by Mr. Freeh to Miss Reno, who had to decide
within the next 10 days whether Mr. Gore's federally regulated
hard-money fund-raising solicitations from the White House should
be investigated by an independent counsel. The previous March,
Miss Reno absolved Mr. Gore of any guilt on the basis of Mr.
Gore's assertion that only unregulated soft money had been
raised.
In September 1997, however, newspaper reports disclosed that
Mr. Gore had in fact raised substantial sums of hard money for
the Democratic National Committee (DNC) from his White House
office. Mr. Gore subsequently claimed he did not know hard money
was being raised. In his Nov. 24, 1997, memo, Mr. Freeh argued:
"In the face of compelling evidence that the vice president was a
very active, sophisticated fund-raiser who knew exactly what he
was doing, his own exculpatory statements must not be given undue
weight." Indeed, Mr. Freeh warned Miss Reno that the Justice
Department was ignoring "reliable evidence" that "contradicted"
Mr. Gore's statements. Miss Reno ignored Mr. Freeh's
recommendation to seek an independent counsel.
In July 1998, Mr. LaBella, who had been selected by Miss
Reno in 1997 to head the task force after it had become mired in
chaos, sent his 94-page memo to Miss Reno arguing that the law
compelled her to seek an independent counsel to investigate Mr.
Gore, the president, the first lady and Deputy White House Chief
of Staff Harold Ickes, whom Mr. LaBella described as a "Svengali,
assuming power with the imprimatur of the president to
authorize DNC and Clinton/Gore '96 expenditures." Noting that Mr.
Gore had received a series of memos from Mr. Ickes and attended
several meetings, all of which discussed the status of the DNC's
hard-money accounts, Mr. LaBella wrote, "Curiously, though
renowned as a policy wonk, the vice president claims he did not
read the memos and cannot recall the meetings." Accusing the
Justice Department of "gamesmanship" and "contortions" to avoid
seeking the appointment of an independent counsel, Mr. LaBella
described his Justice Department superiors as "intellectually
dishonest." Miss Reno ignored the advice of her own hand-picked
task force chief.
The following month, however, news reports revealed that a
potentially incriminating Democratic fund-raising memo had
surfaced. The memo, which served as the talking points for a Nov.
21, 1995, White House fund-raising meeting attended by Mr. Gore,
contained numerous hand-written notations by David Strauss, Mr.
Gore's then-deputy chief of staff. Mr. Strauss's notes referred
to the requirement that the DNC's media fund must finance its
so-called issue ads according to a "65 percent soft/35 percent
hard" split. And Mr. Strauss's notations defined soft money, in
terms of contributions to political parties, as "corporate or
anything over $20K from an individual." Thus, the first $20,000
that Mr. Gore raised for the DNC from individuals would be, by
definition, hard money. This was important because unregulated
soft money was easy to raise, but highly restricted hard money
was not. The difficult part would be raising the hard money
component (35 percent) of the media fund. Mr. Strauss also noted
how eager Mr. Gore was to make the solicitations: "VP: 'Is it
possible to do a reallocation for me to take more of the events
and the calls?'" and "VP: "Count me in on the calls.'"
Several days after the memo with Mr. Strauss' notations
surfaced, Miss Reno initiated another 90-day preliminary inquiry
to determine whether an independent counsel should be appointed
to investigate Mr. Gore for perjury, among other things. Miss
Reno received
