Reno Summons White House Aide in Tapes Dispute

An angry Atty. Gen. Janet Reno has authorized an emergency grand jury session today to question a senior White House lawyer who delayed disclosing videotapes of scores of controversial fund-raising coffees hosted by President Clinton.

Officials confirmed Tuesday that Lanny A. Breuer, a White House special counsel who has helped quarterback the administration’s response to investigators’ requests for evidence, will testify.

“He has been subpoenaed to appear in front of the grand jury,” said Lanny J. Davis, a spokesman for the White House.

Breuer, along with his boss, White House Counsel Charles F.C. Ruff, delayed for three days--until Saturday--informing the Justice Department of the existence of the videotapes. Reno telephoned Ruff on Monday and conveyed her outrage at not being informed promptly of the videotapes, according to a Justice Department official.

Both Breuer and Ruff conceded Tuesday that they had erred.

“I do regret it,” Breuer, 39, told reporters.

Breuer, Ruff and Reno came under blistering criticism Tuesday at a hearing of the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee. Republican senators accused the White House lawyers of deliberately obstructing their investigation. Two senators called for the replacement of Reno, who over the last seven months has declined to recommend appointment of an independent counsel to look into the overall fund-raising controversy.

“I think we have clear-cut obstruction of justice in the White House . . . “ said Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.). “I think we have to look at a new attorney general.”

Said Sen. Pete V. Domenici (R-N.M.): “The president of the United States ought to relieve her of her responsibility in the interest of seeing that the American people at least can feel a tiny bit like justice might be taking place in the Justice Department of the United States.”

Bert Brandenburg, a spokesman for Reno, dismissed the Republicans’ criticisms as “political rabies.” Reno, embarrassed by the pace and focus of the overall investigation, last month named a new federal prosecutor to head the Justice Department task force that is investigating fund-raising activities during the 1996 elections.

Senate Democrats defended Reno’s integrity--as did former White House Deputy Chief of Staff Harold M. Ickes, whose long-anticipated appearance before the committee was cut short by the firestorm over disclosure of the videotapes.

But the delay in handing over the videotapes troubled Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (D-Conn.), who suggested that the committee might want to extend its investigation beyond its Dec. 31 deadline.

“One can hear the explanation given that it’s a foul-up and not a cover-up,” Lieberman said. “But the accumulation of foul-ups begins to raise an understandable question in the minds of this committee.”

Recognizing the gravity of the moment, Ruff appeared at the hearing uninvited. Sen. John Glenn (D-Ohio) urged the committee chairman, Sen. Fred Thompson (R-Tenn.), to call the White House counsel as a witness.

Thompson would have none of it, saying that he first wanted to take testimony under oath from others and subpoena any relevant documents that might shed light on the White House failure to produce the videotapes far earlier.

“This is not a cocktail lounge, where you can wander in and tell your story to the bartender,” Thompson said, before ruling Glenn’s request for a committee vote on the matter “out of order.”

It was Friday night that Reno announced in a sweeping letter to the House Judiciary Committee that after a 30-day initial review, her department had found no evidence of illegality associated with the coffees. On that basis, Reno wrote, she would not move toward seeking an independent-counsel investigation of the events.

If Reno had learned last week of the videotapes, she almost certainly would have advanced her department’s review of the coffees to a second, 60-day stage, lawyers familiar with the matter said.

Still, a more complete account of why the videotapes remained unknown for so long began to take form:

After receiving congressional and Justice Department subpoenas in the spring, White House lawyers asked the unit that films many of Clinton’s activities for any relevant materials. The White House Communications Agency, which films events for historical purposes, responded on May 6 with six documents but no videotapes, according to Davis.

In August, a lawyer from the Senate committee told the White House counsel’s office that there was reason to believe videotapes were made of the coffees. Davis said that a few weeks later an aide to Breuer was told orally by the communications agency that no tapes were made of the coffees.

When Donald T. Bucklin, the Senate committee lawyer, persisted last month in telling the White House that he believed the videos might exist, the aide to Breuer, attorney Michael Imbroscio, returned to the videotape unit.

“He went in last Wednesday, typed in the word ‘coffee’ into the database, and out came 49 hits,” Davis said.

Immediately that afternoon, Imbroscio informed both Breuer and Ruff that the videotapes existed. On Thursday at 3 p.m., Ruff attended a regularly scheduled meeting at the Justice Department with Reno and one of her senior deputies. He said nothing about the videotapes. The White House counsel’s office informed the Senate committee that day.

On Friday morning, Ruff, Breuer and other lawyers, including Davis, gathered in Ruff’s office to begin viewing the tapes, according to a person familiar with the matter.

Later in the day, William J. Corcoran, a lawyer on Reno’s Justice Department task force, phoned Breuer in what a Justice official described as a routine contact. The same official said that Breuer returned his call and left a message, saying that there was another matter he wanted to discuss with Corcoran.

Corcoran heard that message at 5:30 p.m. and tried to reach Breuer, leaving messages five separate times. In his final call, Corcoran left his home number. About 6:30 p.m. on Friday, Reno dispatched her letter to the House Judiciary Committee, finding no illegality with the coffees.

On Saturday, Breuer reached Corcoran at home and apprised him of the videotapes.

Portions of the videotapes made public this week show, among other things, President Clinton greeting several major political donors whose contributions to the Democratic National Committee ultimately were returned because they were found to be either illegal or otherwise questionable.

Nearly all of the 103 coffees hosted by Clinton in 1995 and 1996 took place in the residential quarters of the White House, where political fund-raising events are permissible. However, Clinton took part in at least one coffee in the Oval Office.

Investigators want to review a tape of the Oval Office coffee, in particular, to determine whether campaign funds were solicited by the president or by Democratic Party officials.