White House to Release More Videotapes

The White House prepared Wednesday to turn over to Senate investigators 20 to 25 additional videotapes of campaign fund-raising events featuring President Clinton and Vice President Al Gore but was declining to meet the investigators’ demand for numerous videos of other political events.

In the latest skirmish over documents, White House officials said they intended to send the videotapes to the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee today. The tapes captured Clinton and Gore at fund-raising events at the White House and elsewhere that were primarily sponsored by the Democratic National Committee and the Clinton-Gore campaign.

But the White House was not prepared to provide additional videotapes that show the president giving policy briefings to Democratic Party supporters and attending fund-raisers for Democratic congressional campaign committees, individual candidates and state Democratic parties, administration officials said.

A White House spokesman said that officials are withholding the tapes not because they could embarrass Clinton or Gore but because they fall outside the scope of the Senate committee’s probe of 1996 campaign fund-raising abuses.

“We’ve reviewed these tapes and there is nothing embarrassing or improper or illegal on these tapes, as was the case on the previous 150 tapes that we released to the public,” said White House Special Counsel Lanny J. Davis.

Davis said Republican members of the Senate committee have “been unable to articulate reasons for productions of tapes, which have nothing to do with the committee’s investigation. . . . We are continuing our willingness to engage in further discussions and to try to cooperate as much as can be reasonably expected.”

The Senate committee has sought the videotapes since Oct. 29. Investigators said the White House should have provided them under previous requests for such documents.

*

The decision to provide the additional two dozen or so tapes follows a Nov. 14 letter from Michael J. Madigan, chief counsel to the Senate committee, to White House Counsel Charles F. C. Ruff. The letter set a Nov. 19 deadline for the White House to comply with various document requests, including about 70 videotapes. Madigan complained about “a rather dismal record of delay” by the White House in complying with the committee’s document requests.

Davis said the White House’s delivery of the latest batch of tapes followed “good-faith discussions” with the Senate majority staff.

But a committee investigator familiar with the matter emphasized that the White House is still not turning over the majority of the tapes. “This is just one additional step to run out the clock. We’re going to weigh our options after we conclude the negotiations,” he said.

*

The Governmental Affairs Committee chairman, Sen. Fred Thompson (R-Tenn.), concluded the panel’s hearings last month but left open the possibility of reopening them before the investigation’s Dec. 31 deadline.

The panel could hold a hearing at which Ruff would be called to explain the White House’s refusal to supply documents that investigators are still seeking.

The videos were filmed by the White House Communications Agency, which is operated by military technicians. Previously released tapes included footage of Clinton greeting and thanking central figures involved in the foreign-linked campaign finance scandal, including Democratic fund-raisers John Huang and Yah Lin “Charlie” Trie and Indonesian financier James T. Riady.