COMMENTARY : PERSPECTIVES ON POLITICS : Put Independence Back in Counsel : Who gave to GOPAC, was federal election law violated, and what did the givers get for their money?

Newt Gingrich sure knew what he was doing when he appointed Nancy L. Johnson (R-Conn.) head of the House Ethics Committee. The speaker was aware that allegations had been raised concerning the use of his GOP Action Committee to raise funds in violation of federal election laws and House rules.

What better way to ensure that those allegations would be buried than by appointing to the House Ethics Committee a chairwoman and four members who had all been involved with GOPAC? The public didn’t know the jury was rigged until last week, when the Federal Election Commission revealed GOPAC’s ties to the Republican committee members. But Gingrich did. He also knew that one of Johnson’s biggest contributors had given GOPAC $192,000. Just to ice the cake, Gingrich pushed a bill through the House that benefited the insurance companies in her home state.

Nor did Johnson disappoint the speaker. For 10 months she stonewalled and the committee was gridlocked, with Republican members refusing to seriously investigate the charges or to appoint an outside counsel. Johnson relented only after the FEC went to court with a scathing indictment of GOPAC’s and Gingrich’s subversions of the federal election law. The resulting headlines forced Johnson to budge, but just a bit. The Republicans agreed to turn over only one specific charge to an outside counsel for further investigation while slapping Newt’s wrists for three others and dismissing the rest. Committee Democrats were so desperate they went along with this whitewash in the hopes that the outside counsel might find some larger room to maneuver as the investigation proceeds.

This is a serious cop-out. Restricting the work of an outside counsel to the matter of the funding of Gingrich’s college course avoids the major conflict-of-interest issues that have arisen. The ethical and legal questions raised by the FEC weren’t even considered by the House Ethics Committee. Since the committee was demonstrably biased, the outside counsel should be empowered to engage in a full-blown investigation of GOPAC.

Gingrich was quick to claim that the issues at stake are “technical” and that opponents of his legislative program are using them as an excuse to discredit him while avoiding substantive debate on the issues. But no such dichotomy exists. Conflicts of interest concerning legislation and government regulation are not technical; they go to the substance of policy. This was demonstrated last week in the revelation that Gingrich wrote a letter to the EPA about the “crisis” of asbestos lawsuits after a major contributor expressed his concerns about it in a letter to Gingrich that accompanied his $10,000 check to GOPAC. The public has a right to know if their congressional officials are being unduly influenced by secret contributions.

The key substantive issue is: Whose agenda is being advanced? The evidence from the FEC files indicates that wealthy contributors avoided restraints of federal election law to gain undue advantage for candidates pushing programs to their liking.

GOPAC still has not revealed the names of most of its contributors. Those that have leaked out show a pattern of giving by telecommunications, insurance, pharmaceutical, textile and real estate interests with much business before Congress. The main questions to be pursued by an independent counsel should be: Who gave to GOPAC, did their giving violate federal election law, and what did they receive in return for their money?

Unfortunately, the special counsel that Johnson will permit to be appointed will not be empowered to investigate those questions. Unless the counsel’s mandate is quickly broadened to include the issues raised by the FEC, then this whole exercise will prove to be nothing more than a skillful coverup of and by Newt Inc.

The special counsel looking into Gingrich’s possible transgressions ought to have the same broad mandate that independent counsel Richard Phelan was granted by the Democratic-controlled ethics committee that investigated Speaker Jim Wright. At that time, the committee also dropped most of the charges against Wright, but the greater scope provided to that independent counsel allowed for the truth to surface after a 29-month investigation, and Wright was forced to resign.

In 1988, during the Wright investigation, it was Gingrich who insisted that the special counsel be granted “the independence necessary to do a thorough and complete job.” Now that Gingrich is the target of the investigation, does he deserve anything less?

By restricting the outside counsel to one narrow incident, Johnson pulled off a fast one for her patron, the speaker. No wonder Gingrich’s response was “Obviously, I’m pleased.” But the voters should not be, and they have got to let their elected representatives know loudly and clearly that they are not buying into this scam.