White House E-Mail Casts New Light on Money Calls

President Clinton and Vice President Al Gore volunteered “on their own” to place telephone calls seeking large donations from Democratic supporters in late 1995, according to an internal document obtained Thursday.

The disclosure raises new questions about the president’s stated inability to remember whether he made telephone fund-raising pitches from the White House on behalf of the Democratic National Committee at a time when the Clinton-Gore team needed millions of dollars for early television advertising.

Clinton said in March that he could not recall soliciting people for money, but he did not rule out the possibility. White House officials insisted that the new document did not contradict his earlier statement.

“The president has previously stated that he made thousands of phone calls, and some of them may have been for fund-raising purposes. But he can’t recall specifically making any, though he may well have,” special counsel Lanny Davis said.

The participation of the president and vice president in helping the DNC raise $187 million for the 1996 election is expected to draw considerable attention when Senate hearings into Democratic fund-raising practices begin Tuesday. The hearings will probe whether Clinton and his aides unduly traded on the White House to solicit money.

Federal law prohibits government officials from soliciting political funds on government property, and Clinton’s chief lawyer in 1995 specifically warned White House employees against engaging in any fund-raising activities at the Executive Mansion.

Nevertheless, administration officials said they believe that any fund-raising calls by the president would be legal.

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The Senate Committee on Governmental Affairs has issued subpoenas to 30 potential witnesses to appear at hearings, including former top White House and Democratic Party officials who coordinated the president’s reelection campaign.

Among the witnesses is Karen L. Hancox, the former deputy White House political director who wrote an electronic mail message suggesting that Clinton and Gore were willing to make fund-raising calls.

A copy of the Nov. 24, 1995, message, addressed to Gore’s scheduler, begins: “The POTUS and VP offered (ON THEIR OWN) to make f r calls for the DNC.”

POTUS is the acronym for President of the United States and “f r” is an abbreviation for “fund-raising.”

Hancox also wrote that Harold M. Ickes, the former White House deputy chief of staff who directed the reelection effort, wanted the calls to start right away.

“Harold will be asking POTUS to carve an hour out of his schedule Mon. and Tues. for the calls, and would like to ask the same of the VP,” Hancox wrote.

Hancox declined to comment for this story, and Ickes could not be reached.

A White House spokesman said that Hancox wrote the e-mail to Gore’s office “not from direct knowledge” but based on discussions with other administration officials.

The Hancox memo stemmed from a regular Wednesday “money meeting” at the White House with senior DNC officials and White House aides, led by Ickes and often including Hancox, said a former Democratic political operative.

White House officials on Thursday were unable to verify whether Clinton actually made the calls. One official said that Ickes, in a deposition before the Senate panel, couldn’t “recall specifically whether the president did so.”

However, one administration official said: “There is probably a pretty good chance the president made fund-raising calls. So far, we have not been able to definitely establish that he did.”

Senate investigators are pursuing the Hancox message as well as notes released last week suggesting that Clinton made calls from the White House to solicit $500,000 from Democratic Party donors.

“BC made 15 to 20 calls, raised 500k,” White House aide David Strauss wrote in excerpts of 1994 notes.

Gore was widely criticized after admitting in March that he made fund-raising calls from his White House office. He called a press conference to assert that he did nothing improper, saying repeatedly there was “no controlling legal authority” barring such activity.

The vice president said he was “proud of what I did,” but that as a matter of policy, he would not make similar calls in the future.

There is considerable disagreement within the administration over the applicability of laws governing fund-raising solicitations.

In 1995, then-White House Counsel Abner J. Mikva wrote that “no fund-raising phone calls or mail may emanate from the White House or any other federal building.”

But administration officials contend the law doesn’t cover Clinton or Gore because they live and work on government property and they were raising “soft money”--contributions to their party’s national committee that, unlike money given directly to candidates, can be raised in unlimited amounts.

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“If the president did make fund-raising calls, is there anything inappropriate or illegal? The answer is no,” said a senior White House official.

Experts in campaign finance say that, regardless of the legal technicalities, presidents should avoid making direct pitches for money.

“To me, there is something beneath the dignity of the office of the president of the United States to be calling around the nation trying to scarf up cash,” said Charles Lewis, director of the Center for Public Integrity, a nonpartisan Washington-based watchdog group. “Maybe other presidents did this, but we have never heard that, and it’s never been reported.”

Times staff writers Alan C. Miller and Mark Gladstone contributed to this story.

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Oval Office Involvement

E-mail from Karen Hancox, top aide in the White House Political Affairs Unit, to vice presidential scheduler Kimberly H. Tilley regarding President Clinton’s (POTUS) involvement in 1996 campaign fund raising.