Notoriety Heads List at Fund-Raiser : Gore had picture taken with a criminal. Democrats admit guest checks aren’t thorough.

On a rainy Saturday evening in South Florida last December, Vice President Al Gore dropped by the Spanish-style residence of a Democratic lawyer for a dinner reception with about 60 affluent guests.

If ever there was a time when visitors needed to wear name tags, this was it. Indeed, as Gore pumped hands and posed for photos by the pool, here’s how some of the tags might have read:

Mr. Jorge “Gordito” Cabrera, drug trafficker.

Dr. Joseph Douze, fugitive.

Dr. Claude Douze, loan deadbeat.

Mr. Larry Hawkins, habitual sex harasser.

The cast of notorious characters did not end there. The host, lawyer Jerome “Jerry” Berlin, was indicted in 1990--and later acquitted--on federal conspiracy charges of bribing public officials. One of the politicians allegedly targeted was then a U.S. senator from Tennessee, Al Gore, who, prosecutors stipulated, did not know of the alleged plot.

The event shows the almost comic possibilities that resulted from the Democratic National Committee pressing to raise a record $120 million during this year’s presidential election.

One guest, who paid the minimum $10,000 to eat chicken at Berlin’s home in tony Cocoplum, Fla., cracked in an interview: “Maybe the reason I got to sit with the vice president is that I was the only honest person in the room.” The evening’s take: $900,000.

DNC officials, already embarrassed after returning $1.5 million in illegal or unacceptable donations, concede that they also failed to check out thoroughly invitation lists for who would come in close contact with the president, vice president and top party leaders.

“Yes, we are concerned,” said DNC spokeswoman Amy Weiss Tobe. “This is a separate problem from [investigating] checks, and we are looking into it.”

Gore was “disappointed” to learn recently that his picture had been taken with a longtime narcotics dealer, said Gore spokeswoman Lorraine Voles. “He never wants to be associated with people who break the law.”

Gore relies on the Secret Service to screen strangers. But a drug conviction “in and of itself does not necessarily mean that a person poses a danger to those we protect,” said Secret Service spokesman Mike Tarr.

Moreover, some of the same donors at the Florida fund-raiser later received personal greetings from President Clinton and the first lady.

Within days of the Berlin event, Cabrera joined Hillary Rodham Clinton at a White House Christmas party. Cabrera, a Cuban-born U.S. citizen who gave $20,000 to the DNC last year, was sentenced two months ago to 19 years in prison for helping to import more than a ton of Colombian cocaine. At the time of the Gore fund-raiser and the White House visit, Cabrera was a twice-convicted felon with a lengthy history in drug trafficking.

Like others at Berlin’s home, Cabrera received a set of vice presidential cuff links and a bottle of wine with Gore’s mug on the label. The DNC returned the $20,000 to Cabrera in October after learning of his crimes.

An invitation to a White House Christmas party last year also was sent to Joseph Douze. By then, the government had confiscated Douze’s passport and restricted his travel to eastern Palm Beach County after his arrest three months earlier on 11 counts of federal mail fraud and conspiracy. A federal judge denied Douze’s request to leave the area to visit the White House.

But Douze, 42, who was arrested in 1988 for blowing up a bridge in his native Haiti, received the judge’s permission to visit his dying mother in Haiti a few weeks after the Gore fund-raiser. Douze has not returned.

Douze attended the Gore fund-raiser with his brother, Claude, records show. The $10,000 donation was made by Claude’s girlfriend, a DNC spokeswoman said. Both Douze brothers are chiropractors, who, between them, had failed to repay U.S. government-backed student loans totaling $178,816, records show. Claude paid off his debt in 1993 when he hit Florida’s Fantasy Five jackpot twice in the same day.

In April, Clinton was photographed at a $1,500-per-plate fund-raiser at the Biltmore Hotel in Coral Gables sitting next to Larry Hawkins, a co-chairman of the presidential gala. The event raised $3.4 million for Democrats.

Hawkins is a disgraced former Dade County commissioner who lost three posts after a series of sexual harassment complaints. A state ethics panel fined Hawkins in one case for subjecting female staff members “to repeated and continuous lewd” behavior.