3 Robb Aides Suspended in Tape Dispute

Sen. Charles S. Robb (D-Va.) placed three top aides on leave Tuesday and hired a prominent Washington lawyer to help him deal with the controversy over the taping of Virginia Gov. L. Douglas Wilder’s phone calls.

Virginia Atty. Gen. Mary Sue Terry has asked the FBI and state police to investigate the wiretapping, a law enforcement source in Virginia said.

That source and others spoke on condition that anonymity would be preserved. Attempts to confirm Terry’s request were not immediately successful.

Placed on unpaid leave were Robb’s chief of staff, David McCloud; his press secretary, Steve Johnson, and Bobby Watson, his top aide at the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, according to a statement issued by the senator’s Virginia office.

According to political sources in Washington and Virginia, Robb also retained attorney Charles T. Manatt, a former chairman of the Democratic National Committee.

Questions have been raised about the propriety of Robb’s office holding and then destroying a recording of a telephone conversation Wilder had when he was Virginia’s lieutenant governor.

On the tape of Wilder’s cellular phone call, Wilder tells a political associate that he believed Robb’s political career had been devastated by allegations that Robb, while governor, attended drug parties in Virginia Beach, Va.

Robb, responding to Wilder’s account, said his office 2 1/2 years ago received a plain envelope containing the taped conversation. A Robb spokesman said the tape was recently destroyed. Robb has denied using drugs or being in the presence of those using drugs.