Republicans Say White House Played ‘Hide and Seek’ With Coffee Tapes

Explanations from Clinton administration lawyers about why they did not disclose for months long-sought videotapes of 44 fund-raising coffees at the White House are not believable, congressional Republicans charged Monday.

“They have thwarted our subpoenas. They have misinformed us. They have misled us. This is just the latest example of it,” said Sen. Fred Thompson (R-Tenn.), chairman of the Senate committee investigating campaign donations.

Spokesmen for President Clinton insisted Monday that tardiness in identifying and turning over the videotapes was the result of inadvertent error. They said a search is continuing for videotapes of more of the 103 coffees that took place during 1995 and 1996.

People who attended the coffees contributed about $27 million to the Democratic National Committee for the 1996 campaign.

“We should have found these [videotapes] from the very beginning and we didn’t,” said Lanny J. Davis, a White House special counsel, who termed the delay “a genuine oversight.”

Clinton, in brief remarks to reporters in the Oval Office, said: “I think it was just an accident.” He added that “as soon as I found out about it late last week, I said, ‘Get this out and let’s go on.’ And you can view the tapes and draw your own conclusions.”

Davis insisted that the White House has been forthcoming in producing subpoenaed information and has “never sought to withhold anything.”

The videotapes were recorded for historical purposes by a unit in the White House whose primary purpose is providing secure telephone lines for the president in Washington and when he travels. Camera crews from the White House Communications Agency have videotaped a wide assortment of presidential events dating to the Ronald Reagan administration.

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Congressional investigators are seeking information about the coffees to determine whether Clinton used the White House improperly to raise money for the Democratic campaign.

Thompson, visibly ired, said at a news conference that he intends to investigate vigorously whether certain White House aides illegally obstructed his committee’s investigation of campaign-finance abuses.

Thompson said he planned to question under oath “several individuals who have knowledge or information” of why the videotapes of the coffees were not turned over months sooner.

The delay in receiving the videotapes is particularly galling to Thompson because his committee’s authority to investigate the controversy expires at the end of December.

Moreover, White House lawyers acknowledged that, although they discovered the videotapes last Wednesday, they did not report it to the Justice Department until Saturday. Just hours earlier, on Friday night, Atty. Gen. Janet Reno had informed the House Judiciary Committee that her department’s review of the White House coffees found no evidence of illegality.

Reno wrote that she would not recommend moving toward appointment of an independent counsel to look into either the coffees or overnight stays in the Lincoln Bedroom, arranged for major Democratic campaign contributors.

Thompson said Monday that, under better conditions, the Senate committee might ask the Justice Department to investigate possible obstruction of justice in connection with the videotapes.

“But we might as well make a reference to the Department of Interior under these circumstances, if the information is going to get a burial in a salt mine,” Thompson said.

A Justice Department official said the campaign-finance task force had lodged a request “months” ago that was “certainly broad enough” to have encompassed the newly emerged videotapes. The official declined to say whether the request was in the form of a subpoena.

Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.), a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said the discovery of the videotapes makes even more questionable Reno’s refusal to seek an independent-counsel investigation.

Reno, Specter said, is “unable to convey the tone of urgency and seriousness necessary to bring about cooperation from those under scrutiny.” Specter called for a Senate investigation of Reno’s handling of the campaign fund-raising inquiry.

Earlier requests by both Thompson’s committee and by a House investigating committee sought to obtain any videotapes of the coffees.

A subpoena issued on March 4 by the House Government Reform and Oversight Committee specifically asked for records, including video or audiotapes.

The chairman of the House committee, Rep. Dan Burton (R-Ind.), complained last May that he did not think the White House was complying properly with his committee’s requests for documents. In a letter Monday to Clinton, Burton demanded that the White House immediately provide unedited versions of the tapes, along with inventory logs.

“Given the ‘hide and seek’ games the White House apparently plays with documents,” Burton wrote, “we are left to guess which documents have been withheld and what other types of records which are clearly under subpoena have not been provided.”

On Aug. 19, a lawyer for Thompson’s Senate committee informed the White House that the panel had “received information” that videotapes might exist.

“Please advise me immediately whether any video or audio record exists and whether it will be produced pursuant to the outstanding subpoena,” wrote Donald T. Bucklin, senior counsel to the Senate committee. Bucklin’s letter was addressed to Lanny A. Breuer, special counsel to the president.

Three weeks later, White House lawyers replied that the coffees were not videotaped, records and interviews show.

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White House Counsel Charles F.C. Ruff said Monday that the tapes were found following “additional inquiry” by White House lawyers.

“In this instance, of course, the White House should have found the videotapes as the result of our original search directives,” Ruff said, in a letter to Thompson. “That they were not found then was, I assure you, a result only of inadvertence. . . . I recognize that the committee has legitimate and serious concerns about the delay in production of the videotapes.”

White House spokesman Davis said the “White House counsel’s office takes responsibility for this good-faith error.”

Times staff writers Ronald J. Ostrow, Edwin Chen and Glenn F. Bunting contributed to this story.