Clinton Fires Back at Bush on Trust Issue : Campaign: Democrat senses victory is near. He cites President’s broken tax pledge and questions about prewar aid to Iraq.

Sensing victory within his grasp, Democratic presidential nominee Bill Clinton launched the final drive of his campaign Tuesday with a sharp attack aimed at turning around President Bush’s best remaining weapon--the issue of trust.

Speaking to a crowd of about 20,000 cheering supporters packed into the Mecca Arena here, Clinton ridiculed Bush’s claim to be the candidate Americans should trust with four more years in the White House.

“This is the guy who said, ‘Read my lips,’ ” Clinton said, “and he wants you to trust him on taxes?”

Bush used officials of the Treasury Department’s Office of Tax Policy to brief reporters on campaign advertisements and “pollute the politics of our country,” he continued, “and he wants you to trust him?”

From Little Rock, Clinton’s campaign issued a statement joining Ross Perot’s demand in Monday night’s debate that Bush declassify and release to the public the instructions the State Department provided to April Glaspie, the U.S. ambassador to Iraq, in the months before the invasion of Kuwait two years ago.

(On Tuesday, the Administration denied there were any such instructions but did release a cable sent to all U.S. ambassadors in the Mideast the day before Glaspie met with Hussein. Story, A1)

In his speech, Clinton cited the Iraq issue as well, for the first time using the word Iraqgate to refer to the questions about whether the Administration tried to cover up aspects of its aid to that country in the years before the invasion of Kuwait in 1990.

“He’s got the CIA and the Justice Department admitting that the government lied to a federal judge” about aid to Saddam Hussein before the Gulf War, “and he wants you to trust him with four more years?” Clinton said.

Officials of the two agencies have conceded that they withheld from Judge Marvin H. Shoob CIA documents relevant to a case concerning a massive loan scheme involving Iraq and the Atlanta branch of Italy’s Banca Nazionale del Lavoro. The two agencies are at odds about which is to blame for the omission.

Bush, Clinton said, has spent the fall pouring money into government programs in the hopes of attracting support in key states, “paying top dollar for their votes,” and has made false statements about Clinton’s Arkansas record.

“Mr. Bush reminds me of Lucy in Peanuts,” Clinton said, quoting a remark by the comic strip character: “ ‘If you can’t be right, be wrong as loud as you can.’ ”

Clinton surrogates were even harsher on Bush, raising controversial issues that Clinton often prefers to avoid. “Mr. Bush is right, this election is about trust,” Sen. Herbert Kohl (D-Wis.) said as he led the crowd in booing Bush’s appointment of Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court, Bush’s opposition to abortion rights and Bush’s refusal to support the Brady bill, which would require a waiting period before a person could buy a handgun.

Republican strategists believe that voters’ doubts about Clinton’s trustworthiness constitute their last hope for turning around the Democrat’s formidable lead in state and national polls.

“People want a reason not to vote for Bill Clinton and the reason is going to be trust,” Bush campaign spokeswoman Alixe Glen said Monday night after the presidential debate. “We’re going to keep hammering at it day after day.”

But Clinton aides see the race differently, arguing that voters are turned off by Bush’s negative attacks and harbor doubts about the President’s own credibility--doubts the Democrats intend to exploit in the campaign’s final stretch. To hammer home that theme, the Clinton camp issued a new ad Tuesday attacking Bush for breaking his word on taxes and for pledging to Americans that they would be better off in four years.

At the same time, Clinton aides admit to worries that the campaign could slacken in the final two weeks, given Clinton’s large lead and the candidate’s propensity to ease up when he is ahead. The renewed focus on Bush’s record is designed in part to prevent that.

But the mood of cocky optimism that pervades the Clinton campaign was on display when a pro-Bush heckler sought to interrupt Clinton’s speech. As the crowd started to shout the heckler down, Clinton silenced them.

“Don’t mind him,” Clinton said. “We’ll only have to put up with him a few more days if we do our jobs. Blow it off.”

If Bush does make any progress in wearing down Clinton’s lead, Wisconsin might well be the first place to show signs. Although the state voted for Michael S. Dukakis over Bush in 1988, it has a popular Republican governor, a relatively stable economy and a large culturally conservative ethnic Roman Catholic community, all of which combine to make Wisconsin the only large Midwestern state in which polls show the race close to even.

But by at least one often-accurate sign--the behavior of politicians--Clinton seems to be in good shape here. Recently, the state’s Republican Sen. Bob Kasten, running for reelection, told voters his positions were closer to Clinton’s than were those of his Democratic opponent, Russell Feingold.

Clinton and Feingold ridiculed the assertion as Democratic politicians up and down the ballot crowded onto the stage to be seen with the Democratic nominee--a greeting that the party’s candidates seldom received in other recent elections.

“I’m beginning to wonder if he’s even going to vote for George Bush,” Feingold said of Kasten. “I know who I’m going to vote for.”

Clinton received a similar welcome from his fellow politicians in downtown Chicago, where he opened his day with a lunchtime speech to a crowd of tens of thousands.

There, he urged supporters to “fight on for two more weeks” to redeem America’s “obligations to our future.”

Trying to tap into some of the anger with Washington that has fueled Perot’s campaign, Clinton portrayed himself as an outsider and Bush as a “politician” who resists change. The Republicans “can’t run on their record,” Clinton told the Chicago crowd. “So everything has become politics.” Bush’s attacks on his character, Clinton said, are “all politics, and we’re not buying it.”