Gingrich Sees Broad Effort to ‘Destroy’ Him

House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.), after several months of keeping a relatively low profile while reflecting on his sharp drop in popularity, Wednesday angrily accused the press, labor unions, trial lawyers and the Democratic National Committee of spreading disinformation in a concerted effort to destroy him.

Although he said that he has been “clearly damaged” and expects to remain a target of ethics investigations as long as he is in public office, he confidently predicted that Republicans will retain control of the House and that he will remain speaker.

In an hourlong interview with a small group of reporters, Gingrich complained repeatedly about press coverage of him and other Republicans and vehemently denounced a lengthy story in Tuesday’s Los Angeles Times, which said that he had used tax-exempt foundations for political purposes.

The Times, he said, “managed to make a long story out of nothing” and “recycled things that aren’t a valid characterization.” He said that he repeatedly has denied using any tax-exempt foundations for political purposes and contended that the House Ethics Committee has dismissed most of the allegations filed against him.

The Times article cited public records showing that six nonprofit organizations linked to Gingrich’s political action committee had raised at least $6 million in tax-deductible funds that tax experts said appeared to have been used for Republican political purposes. Federal tax law prohibits tax-exempt organizations from engaging in any form of partisan activity.

Meanwhile, Democrats on the Ethics Committee continued to press for a full committee investigation of allegations contained in The Times’ report. Rep. Harry A. Johnston (D-Fla.) introduced a resolution that would direct the committee to expand special counsel James M. Cole’s authority to include the allegations in his investigation.

Cole already is investigating allegations concerning two tax-exempt foundations that Gingrich used to finance a nationally televised college course that he taught, and, in January, Democrats filed a complaint seeking to expand the investigation to a third.

Gingrich, singling out Johnston, Rep. David E. Bonior (D-Mich.) and Rep. George Miller (D-Martinez) as among his main tormentors, complained that all three have said publicly that they were out to destroy him. All three deny having made such statements, but say that Gingrich’s conduct clearly is a major political and ethical issue which they will continue to press.

The speaker labeled Johnston’s resolution as a move to draw attention from allegations about White House misuse of FBI files and said that the measure was “just to make noise because the FBI files are too one-sided, it’s only about Democrats maybe breaking the law.”

“Gingrich acts like I’m on a witch hunt and he doesn’t even know who I am,” Johnston declared. “We’re merely asking the Ethics Committee to send all complaints against Gingrich to the special counsel.”

Gingrich said that, while he kept his distance from the press for the last three or four months, he reflected on his political plight and concluded that his enemies are out to “destroy the messenger.”

He said that the effort began in December 1994, a month before he took office as speaker, when he received “astounding Christmas presents from the elite media:” a Time magazine cover portraying him as “Scrooge” and a Newsweek cover depicting him as “the Gingrich who stole Christmas.”

By last May, he said, Democrats had run 10,800 30-second television commercials--90 hours of negative advertising--based on what he characterized as incorrect information that Republicans planned to cut Medicare.

Although Democrats traditionally lag far behind Republicans in fund-raising, Gingrich declared that this year Democrats are better-financed than his party and that the GOP is “not in the same league” as trial lawyers, unions and the Democratic National Committee in raising funds.

He called it “an astonishing outrage” that the AFL-CIO would announce that it is earmarking $35 million in campaign funds for the Democrats this year when, he said, an estimated 40% of union members voted Republican. Union bosses, he said, have “coerced” those members into having their own funds used against their political interests.

Gingrich said, however, that he expects Republicans to match Democratic spending during the fall campaign and he predicted that Bob Dole, the presumed GOP presidential nominee, will defeat President Clinton and that Republicans will retain control of both houses of Congress. The latest poll he has seen, he said, indicated that if the election were now, the Republicans would increase their margin in the House by 10 seats.

Asked how long he expects investigations of his ethics to continue, Gingrich replied: “As long as I’m in public office. [The Los Angeles Times] managed to make a long story out of nothing. [It] recycled things that aren’t a valid characterization. How many liberal Democrats work with tax-free institutions? How many liberal Democrats go out and have studies done?

“Normally,” he said, “you would have thought that a political leader who spends his time teaching a college class because he had a PhD was probably a good thing, not an investigative thing.”

He said that, through a “Earning by Learning” program he sponsored and helped fund, he had helped “little kids,” including a fourth-grade girl in a poor Washington neighborhood who has read 92 books. If he had been a liberal, he said, the press would have regarded it as “a wonderful thing, an example of compassion, an example of reaching out to kids.”