Transcript Details Cover-Up by GOP of Phony Reagan Letters

Top Assembly Republicans in 1986 sent out campaign letters bearing then-President Reagan’s phony signature, even though they knew that the White House had rejected drafts of the mailers, according to grand jury testimony unsealed Friday.

Then they concocted an “Alphonse-Gaston” story, each blaming the other to cover up his own role in the scheme, several GOP aides said in sworn statements.

Assemblyman John Lewis (R-Orange) made the decision to mail to voters three phony Reagan letters, even though he knew they had been rejected by the White House, two GOP operatives told the Sacramento County Grand Jury, which indicted the lawmaker Feb. 6 on one count of forgery. Lewis also sent out three other letters that had never even been submitted for approval, the witnesses said.

“I recall him (Lewis) saying it was unfortunate we didn’t receive the approval of the President for letters, but that letters would . . . probably go out anyway,” said Henry Olsen, then a top aide to Lewis.

Win Seats

The 350-page transcript, released late Friday after the state Supreme Court rejected efforts by Lewis to keep it sealed, reveals in often-colorful language the lengths the Assembly’s GOP leadership and its staff reportedly went to in order to win seats in the lower house, where they have been the minority party for 28 of the last 30 years.

Although Lewis was the only legislator indicted as a result of the investigation by state Atty. Gen. John K. Van de Kamp, the documents show that prosecutors also questioned the roles played by former Assembly Republican Leader Pat Nolan of Glendale, current GOP Leader Ross Johnson of La Habra and Assemblyman Dennis Brown (R-Los Alamitos).

Lewis, Nolan and Brown could not be reached for comment Friday night. Johnson termed the investigation a “partisan witch hunt” but said he had not seen the grand jury documents.

The testimony of Olsen and two other GOP campaign workers, delivered under immunity from prosecution, presents the incident as a deliberate attempt to use Reagan’s name without authorization, not as a misunderstanding among staff members, as Lewis, Nolan and Johnson have described the situation since it became public.

‘Puff Piece’

Assemblyman Trice Harvey (R-Bakersfield), the only elected official to testify before the grand jury, said a GOP aide told him he would be getting a “puff piece” signed by the President. In a puff piece, Harvey said, the endorser “will say he (the candidate) is a wonderful person, family man, done all those wonderful things and I support him, as opposed to a hit piece, where you say he is a wonderful guy and his competitor is a jerk.”

But the White House, the testimony showed, refused to approve the puff pieces.

Olsen, now a law student at the University of Chicago, said Lewis authorized him to seek Reagan’s signature for as many as 17 letters, but Olsen eventually submitted 10 or 11 to the White House for approval. Olsen said Lewis knew that the White House required advance approval for the use of Reagan’s name.

But in October, as Election Day neared, Stephen M. Kinney, regional political director of the Republican National Committee, told Olsen that the drafts he had submitted to the White House had yet to be approved. Later, Kinney testified, he learned that, in fact, the letters had been rejected.

Olsen relayed the news to Lewis, who, he said, told him he might use Reagan’s signature anyway.

Of the six letters eventually sent over Reagan’s bogus signature, Olsen said three were among those that had been submitted to the White House in draft form and rejected. Three others were apparently never sent to the White House in any form.

The strongest of the letters, which endorsed Republican Roger Fiola against Assemblyman Richard E. Floyd (D-Carson), accused Floyd of caving in “to the powerful underworld drug industry.”

Tim Macy, a direct-mail consultant, testified under immunity that members of the Assembly GOP inner circle knew that White House approval for the Fiola letter had never been sought.

“They generally agreed with me that the approval would be very hard to get if they could get it at all for these letters,” Macy said.

The decision to mail the letters without White House approval was made Oct. 24 in a phone conversation Macy had with Lewis, who was at a leadership meeting with Nolan in Johnson’s office in Orange County, according to the testimony.

“I asked him if they were sure if they wanted to have the letters mailed out without authorization,” Macy said. “He told me he needed to go in and ask the entire group and came back out and said that they did.”

Once it was reported in news accounts that Reagan’s signature had not been authorized, Lewis and Nolan moved to squelch a White House investigation into the matter, according to the testimony.

Olsen said he and Richard Temple, director of the Assembly GOP campaign committee, were called into a meeting with Lewis in his Capitol office after Lewis had spent 90 minutes conferring with Nolan and Johnson.

Lewis told him to lie to the White House, Olsen testified.

“I was asked to tell what Mr. Lewis called an Alphonse-Gaston story,” Olsen said.

The cover-up, he said, would lay the blame for the incident on a miscommunication between Olsen and Temple. When Temple balked, the two aides and Lewis went downstairs to meet with Nolan.

Olsen said that Nolan, surprised to see the two staffers with Lewis enter his office, said: “Why did you bring them down here? I thought that we had arranged that you would talk to them to give me deniability.”

When Nolan also failed to persuade Temple to lie to the White House, the assemblymen summoned a third aide, Peter Conaty, to take the role Temple refused to play. Conaty, though reluctant, agreed, Olsen said.

Although Lewis and Nolan told Olsen that he would only have to lie to the White House and not to criminal investigators, they later asked him to stonewall FBI agents who called him about the incident, the former aide testified.

“What I was asked to do was, first, not return the (FBI) call, and subsequently return the call and state that I would not talk to them, because I thought this was a political matter,” Olsen said.

The FBI abandoned its probe and the White House apparently bought the cover story. White House counsel Peter J. Wallison sent Nolan a letter criticizing his staff’s handling of the affair and asking him to reprimand Olsen, Macy and Temple for being “grossly negligent.”

But the three testified that they were never chastised for their actions.

“I was never reprimanded by anyone,” Macy said.

Times staff writer Paul Jacobs also contributed to this story.