June 7, 2000
House releases LaBella report
By Jerry Seper
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
President Clinton and Vice President Al Gore were key
players in a 1996 Democratic fund-raising scheme designed to
"raise money by whatever means and from whomever would give it,
without meaningful attention to the lawfulness of the
contributions."
That is one of the conclusions of a previously unreleased
94-page report by Charles G. LaBella, former chief of the Justice
Department's campaign finance task force, who recommended in July
1998 that Attorney General Janet Reno seek an independent counsel
to probe fund-raising abuses.
"The intentional conduct and the willful ignorance uncovered
by our investigations . . . resulted in a situation where abuse
was rampant, and indeed the norm," Mr. LaBella, a career
prosecutor, said. "At some point, the campaign was so corrupted
by bloated fundraising and questionable contributions that the
system became a caricature of itself."
The report, which Justice refused over the past two years to
release despite Senate and House subpoenas, was made public
yesterday by the House Government Reform Committee.
The committee also released a November 1997 memo by FBI
Director Louis J. Freeh, describing Mr. Gore as an "active
participant" in questionable fund-raising efforts and calling on
the attorney general to seek the appointment of an independent
counsel to investigate campaign finance abuses by the vice
president.
"The evidence tends to show that the vice president was an
active participant in the core group fundraising efforts, that he
was informed about the distinctions between 'hard' and 'soft'
money, and that he generally understood there were legal
restrictions against making telephone solicitations from federal
property," Mr. Freeh said.
Mr. Gore, claiming "no controlling legal authority," has
said he believed he was soliciting only soft-money donations. But
documents show both hard and soft money were discussed at
meetings he attended and at least 35 percent of the donations he
sought went to hard-money accounts.
He told the FBI he might not have heard the discussions
because he was drinking a lot of iced tea and may have been in
the bathroom.
Soft money consists of unlimited and largely unregulated
donations; hard money is made up of smaller and more restricted
donations.
The Freeh memo said the FBI's campaign-finance investigation
focused on accusations that a "core group" of White House and
Democratic National Committee officials, including Mr. Clinton
and Mr. Gore, were involved in "an all-out effort" to raise money
— leading to White House coffees, overnight stays and telephone
solicitations by the president and vice president.
"The task force has now established that the vice president
made approximately 86 fundraising calls from his West Wing office
and reached at least 43 potential donors," Mr. Freeh said. "At
least five of the persons solicited by the vice president gave
money that was deposited, in part into DNC accounts."
Mr. Freeh described a decision by Miss Reno not to seek
outside counsel based on Mr. Gore's claims he intended to solicit
only soft-money donations as "seriously flawed."
"In the face of compelling evidence that the vice president
was a very active, sophisticated fundraiser who knew exactly what
he was doing, his own exculpatory statements must not be given
undue weight," he said.
Mr. LaBella noted in his report that Mr. Gore had received a
series of memos from White House Deputy Chief of Staff Harold
Ickes and attended weekly meetings concerning hard and the
so-called soft-money solicitations and the DNC's hard-money
accounts.
He described Mr. Ickes, who now runs Mrs. Clinton's New York
campaign, as a "Svengali, assuming power — with the imprimatur of
the president — to authorize DNC and Clinton/Gore '96
expenditures.
"Curiously, though renowned as a policy wonk, the vice
president claims he did not read the memos and cannot recall the
meetings," Mr. LaBella said.
He said the White House, in a "desperate need to raise
enormous sums of money" to offset losses to Republicans in 1994,
relied on the "calculated use of access" to Mr. Clinton and first
lady Hillary Rodham Clinton "as leverage to extract
contributions" from donors hoping to enhance their own business
positions.
"All pretense of maintaining discrete areas of
responsibility and control were shattered as the need for
campaign funds — driven by the media campaign — increased," he
said. "Such blurring of lines is troubling because it triggered
an intermingling of funds, resources and personnel that resulted
in the circumvention and violation of campaign contribution
regulations."
In releasing the documents, Committee Chairman Rep. Dan
Burton, Indiana Republican, chastised the Justice Department for
its failure to make the documents public. He said the department
showed a lack of aggressive prosecution by officials trusted by
the American people to do their job.
"Can you blame the American people or many in Congress for
being cynical?" Mr. Burton said.
The panel's ranking Democrat, Rep. Tom Lantos of California,
questioned the investigation and accused Mr. Burton of trying to
politically damage the vice president. He said Mr. Freeh had said
at an earlier hearing he did not believe Miss Reno made the
decision not to seek outside counsel because of politics.
The committee also heard testimony from two top FBI
officials confirming that a Justice Department official told them
he was under "a lot of pressure" in the campaign finance abuse
investigation because Miss Reno could lose her job.
FBI Assistant Director Neil J. Gallagher and former FBI
Deputy Director William Esposito testified they had no doubt that
Lee Radek, who heads the Justice Department's Office of Public
Integrity, made the comments during a 1996 meeting and that the
two statements were linked.
Mr. Radek told the committee he did not remember the meeting
and did not recall the conversation but did not believe he would
have made the statement "because it wasn't true."
In the LaBella memo, the former task force chief accused the
Justice Department of "gamesmanship" and "contortions" to avoid
seeking outside counsel to investigate the president, vice
president and other top White House officials. He described his
Justice Department superiors as "intellectually dishonest."
"If these allegations involved anyone other than the
president, vice president, senior White House or DNC and
Clinton/Gore '96 officials, an appropriate investigation would
have commenced months ago without hesitation," he wrote.
"However, simply because the subjects of the investigation
are covered persons [subject to the Independent Counsel Statute],
a heated debate has raged within the department as to whether to
investigate at all. The allegations remain unaddressed," he
wrote.
Mr. LaBella also noted in his report that an investigation
was warranted into Mr. Clinton's connection to a top Democratic
fundraiser involved in the sale of missile-related expertise to
China — a request that also was rejected by Miss Reno.
That request involved Mr. Clinton's ties to Bernard L.
Schwartz, chief executive officer at Loral Space & Communications
Ltd., who gave $1.5 million to the DNC. He wanted to know if
technology transfers for Loral to China were related to his
donations to the DNC.
Mr. LaBella said Justice avoided the appointment of an
independent counsel in the case "by constructing an investigation
which ignored the president of the United States — the only real
target of these allegations."
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Kadosh, Kadosh, Kadosh, YHVH, TZEVAOT
FROM THE DESK OF: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
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~~~~~~~~ <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
The Best Way To Destroy Enemies Is To Change Them To Friends
Shalom, A Salaam Aleikum, and to all, A Good Day.
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