Reno Won’t Include President in Casino Investigation

Atty. Gen. Janet Reno declined Monday to include President Clinton in an investigation into whether campaign contributions influenced an administration decision rejecting a casino license for three Chippewa tribes in Wisconsin.

“At this time, there is no legitimate basis” for doing so, Reno said in a letter to Rep. Henry J. Hyde (R-Ill.), chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, whose Republican members asked for the broadened probe a month ago.

Hyde reacted by accusing Reno of continuing “down a perilous path” by “slamming the door on a preliminary investigation of the president.”

Hyde was referring to previous rejections by Reno of other Republican requests to have an independent counsel investigate Clinton over campaign finances, including her recent decision concerning fund-raising calls the president made from the White House.

In her decision Monday, Reno also rejected the demand by GOP members of the judiciary panel that she seek appointment of an outside prosecutor because of a conflict of interest they said was raised by the Justice Department defending the casino ruling in a civil suit brought by the tribes while investigating government defendants named in the suit.

Carrying out those responsibilities does not add up to a “personal, financial or political” conflict under which the attorney general can use her discretion to seek appointment of an independent counsel under the law, Reno said.

But Hyde said he remained convinced that Reno has “a classic conflict of interest” by investigating the same people in the criminal case that she is defending in the civil case.

In her letter to Hyde, Reno noted she already is conducting a 90-day preliminary investigation of whether Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt may have violated federal criminal law through his role in the casino licensing case and his congressional testimony about it.

She has until Feb. 11 to decide whether to ask for an independent counsel in Babbitt’s case. Other Justice Department officials have said they regard it as likely that an outside prosecutor will be sought.

On Nov. 13, the same day Reno initiated the preliminary probe of Babbitt, the GOP Judiciary Committee members asked that she also investigate Clinton, former deputy chief of staff Harold M. Ickes and deputy counsel Bruce Lindsey for their role in the casino case. Under the law, she had to respond to their request by Monday.

At issue is the denial in July 1995 by the Interior Department of a casino license for the three Chippewa tribes, which overruled the recommendation of the Minneapolis area director of Interior’s Bureau of Indian Affairs. In raising suspicions about the denial, Republicans point to nearly $300,000 in contributions to the Democratic National Committee and other Democrats by tribes opposed to the license.

Summarizing the GOP arguments, Reno said lobbyists for the Indian tribes opposed to the licensing allegedly mentioned the issue to Clinton at a political event or in a social setting.

“We are also aware of other evidence that the president was aware of and inquired of his staff about the status of the casino matter,” she said in her letter to Hyde. And she said she knew of “evidence that some White House staff were monitoring the matter and inquiring of the Department of Interior concerning it.”

But this does not indicate criminal wrongdoing by Clinton, she said.

“Your letter does not identify any alleged conduct by the president or other information that would warrant an inference that the president’s unsolicited receipt of information from lobbyists and his subsequent expression of interest in the matter was potentially criminal, or part of any criminal conspiracy.

“Nor are we aware of any such information from any other source that would suggest that the president’s awareness of and inquiry about the matter reflected any participation in a crime,” she wrote Hyde.

In addition to the Babbitt preliminary investigation, the Justice Department’s campaign fund-raising task force is examining whether tribal lobbyists, Democratic fund-raisers and White House officials violated the law in their handling of the casino license case. Reno, in her letter, took no note of a finding last March by U.S. District Judge Barbara B. Crabb in the civil suit challenging the casino decision that “there is considerable evidence that suggests that improper political pressure may have influenced agency decision-making.”

Crabb, named to the bench by President Carter, added that many of the events cited in the case “could be considered innocent in and of themselves. But their combination . . . raises substantial suspicion.”

Crabb has made no final ruling in the case.