Lawmakers Urge Probe in Leak Furor : Stories About Gray Anger Democrats, GOP House Leader

Angry Democrats demanded Thursday that Atty. Gen. Dick Thornburgh appoint an independent outside counsel to investigate the source of damaging reports leaked from the Justice Department about Rep. William H. Gray III (D-Pa.) as Gray launched his campaign for his party’s third-ranking post in the House.

The House Republican leader, Robert H. Michel of Illinois, also called for a probe, telling Thornburgh in a letter that it is “just hard to imagine anything more irresponsible” than “very deliberate and selective leaks” about lawmakers.

A spokesman for Thornburgh, saying that the attorney general is concerned by the reports, announced that the head of the Justice Department’s criminal division has been assigned to trace their origin. He said that sworn statements would be taken from Justice Department employees and did not rule out the use of lie detector tests.

Heightens Turmoil

The furor over leaked information about an FBI inquiry involving Gray further heightened the turmoil and bitter animosity enveloping Congress in the wake of the dramatic abdication Wednesday of House Speaker Jim Wright (D-Tex.) and the earlier announced resignation of Rep. Tony Coelho of Merced, the majority whip.

With waves of rumors and reports about possible future targets of ethics scrutiny sweeping the Capitol, members of both parties appeared buffeted by impulses to avenge damage to their ranks or to quell the storm so normal legislative business can resume.

The new burst of outrage directed at the Justice Department, headed by Thornburgh, a former Republican Pennsylvania governor, reflected the intensity of emotions.

Takes Slap at Gingrich

And in a surprising slap at Rep. Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.), the new minority whip in the House who has been outspoken in citing alleged ethical lapses by Democrats, Michel said that the Georgia lawmaker would have to be “much more responsible” now that he has become the GOP’s second-ranking leader than he was as a rank-and-file member of the party.

Appearing on the “CBS This Morning” show, Michel added: “He (Gingrich) recognizes that, I think. I’ve already detected something of a change in his deportment on the floor of the House. It’s a learning process for him.”

In New York City, Democratic National Chairman Ron Brown labeled Gingrich, who lodged the original accusations against Wright that eventually led to his resignation, as the chief force behind the attacks on leading Democrats.

”. . . Character smear, innuendo and assassination by leak have now become the mainstay of the Republican Party,” he charged.

He said that Gingrich “is content waging a partisan war of attrition--reducing politics to its shallowest depth. He says that he has a list of Democrats ripe for attack--a list that keeps getting longer--like Pinocchio’s nose.”

Denies ‘Feeding Frenzy’

Gingrich avoided reporters after Wright’s resignation speech in contrast to his usual style. But Thursday he lashed back at those blaming him for the partisan warfare, declaring there is no “feeding frenzy” on ethics in the House, as Wright alleged.

“Why is it wrong to insist that the current rules be enforced against gross violations?” he said. “Not against nit-picking, or clerical error.”

He said Wright and Coelho, whose personal finances had come under scrutiny, are “the first two guys I know of to have resigned from high office for corruption in modern times.”

Gingrich, himself the target of a Democratic complaint filed with the Ethics Committee about a special $105,000 fund he organized to promote a book he wrote in 1984, said he was confident any investigation of his affairs would exonerate him.

Leading House Democrats’ call for an investigation of Justice Department leaks about Gray was Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.), chairman of the House Judiciary Committee’s subcommittee on administrative law and governmental relations.

Will Hold Hearings

Endorsing an earlier demand by Gray himself for an inquiry, he said that the reports suggesting misconduct by Gray represented “blatant use of prosecutorial power for a political motive and we can’t allow it.” Frank said that he would conduct hearings on whether a new law is needed to make it a crime to leak information about a criminal investigation.

Michel’s letter lent bipartisan credence to the charges that the Justice Department was at fault.

Citing an earlier leak about a Justice Department probe of allegedly improper campaign contributions accepted by Rep. Joseph M. McDade (R-Pa.), he said “a full-scale investigation of these incidents” is needed.

House Democrats dismissed Thornburgh’s promise of an internal inquiry, saying the department cannot effectively investigate itself.

However, David Runkel, the attorney general’s spokesman, asserted that the investigation would be thorough.

“If we knew who was the leaker, the attorney general’s intention would be to dismiss them,” he told reporters.

Carried by CBS

The reports about the FBI investigation involving Gray were first carried on CBS Tuesday night after the Pennsylvania Democrat, the head of the House Democratic Caucus, had launched his campaign for the position of party whip. The report attributed the information to unnamed Justice Department sources. Since then, sources have said that the inquiry involves allegations that a “ghost” employee was carried on the payroll of the House Budget Committee in 1988 while Gray was the panel’s chairman.

Gray--who has acknowledged that he was questioned by FBI agents Monday but denied that he is the target of a criminal inquiry--reaffirmed that he would stay in the race for the whip post, even though any hint of controversy would undermine his chances in the current climate.

He denied that there were any no-show employees on his House staff.

‘Cowardly Acts’

“I will not allow the cowardly acts of self-motivated anonymous sources or the improper or illegal acts of the leakers in the Republican Justice Department to change my mind or affect my chances,” Gray said. He also released sworn statements from a group of his staff members asserting that they had earned their pay.

In a related development, a woman identified in some reports as the no-show employee gave a statement declaring that she was a conscientious worker during her time on the Budget Committee staff.

Lezli Baskerville, who earned $30,000 in the last six months of 1988 as a special assistant to Gray, said that she was a “workaholic” in her Capitol Hill jobs for Gray and earlier for Walter E. Fauntroy, the non-voting delegate from Washington, D.C.

The mood of House Democrats was indicated by Rep. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) who said in a floor speech that Wright’s denunciation of “mindless cannibalism” in his resignation speech was a sharp reminder that Congress must return to its legislative work.

Rep. Jack Brooks (D-Tex.), chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, and two of the panel’s subcommittee chairmen, Rep. Robert W. Kastenmeier (D-Wis.) and Rep. Don Edwards (D-San Jose) sent a letter to Thornburgh protesting what they called the “political leaks” in newspaper stories about criminal investigations of Democrats. Coelho’s resignation was preceded by a Los Angeles Times story reporting that the Justice Department had begun a preliminary criminal investigation of a junk bond purchase he had made.

“Nothing could be more destructive of the criminal justice process . . . than the appearance that information about the existence of investigations is being used for political advantage,” the three legislators wrote. “Yet that is precisely the impression created by these recent stories.”