Sitting in Senate Panel’s Hot Seat, Ickes Breathes Fire

For weeks, Republicans hesitated to call Harold Ickes to testify before the Senate committee investigating campaign finance abuses, fearing that the onetime top presidential aide would be too hot to handle.

When the GOP panel members finally tested the acid-tongued Ickes on Wednesday, he proved just as formidable as expected.

Challenged by Sen. Pete V. Domenici (R-N.M.) to cite evidence that GOP presidents had committed fund-raising excesses like those attributed to the Clinton White House, Ickes fired back, referring to the committee’s intense scrutiny of the Democratic administration.

“Give me $4.5 million and 100 skilled investigators,” he retorted. “I’d like to go through the Reagan White House and the Bush White House and see what they did.”

But while such confrontations captured most of the day’s attention, there were more subtle tensions at play during Ickes’ appearance as the committee’s most heralded witness--conflicts involving his own convictions, ambitions and loyalties.

In a sense, the part Ickes played with zest as champion of President Clinton and the Democratic political establishment was an implausible one. As most senior Democrats well know, for more than three decades Harold McEwen Ickes was at the forefront of every uprising that disrupted their party and challenged its hierarchy.

He came early to the civil rights movement and went on to protest the Vietnam War. In presidential politics, he took his stand with the insurgents, from Eugene McCarthy in 1968 to Edward M. Kennedy in 1980 to Jesse Jackson in 1988.

When Clinton prepared to run for president in 1991, Ickes was 52 and had yet to back a winner. His commitment to rebellion had cost him a kidney--ruined by the ravages of racist thugs when he was a young civil rights worker in the South--and had gained him little beyond the esteem of his comrades and a none-too-lofty post as a member of the Democratic National Committee from New York.

Ickes’ decision to cast his lot with Clinton meant reconciling his liberal creed with the Arkansas governor’s centrist themes. But with Clinton’s victory, Ickes gained what previously had been denied him--power, prestige and privileged access to government’s highest reaches.

In return, Ickes took on the most thankless tasks Clinton had to offer, serving as point man for the administration’s failed health care reform bid and its handling of the Whitewater controversy. In the process, as he made painfully clear to his Republican questioners Wednesday, he transformed himself into the ultimate insider and loyalist.

Because Clinton, seeking to set a less provocative tone for his second term, had dumped Ickes rudely after his reelection, some had thought that the son of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Interior secretary might turn against his old boss. But one GOP staff member who had previously questioned Ickes knew better. “He’s too much of a pro,” the staffer said.

Indeed, Ickes laid down the gauntlet in his prepared statement to the committee Tuesday. After making clear that he was hardly glad to be part of the proceedings, he went on to deny any illegality or even impropriety by Clinton. Rebutting criticism of phone calls allegedly made by Clinton to raise funds, he cited a Jay Leno quip: “The guy lives in the White House, he works in the White House, he’s the president. What’s he supposed to do, go to the pay phone at the 7-Eleven?”

On Wednesday, Ickes at times was disarmingly frank. Asked whether a Democratic “issue” commercial, which under the law was not supposed to directly advocate Clinton’s reelection, would give the average viewer a favorable impression of the president, Ickes said: “I would certainly hope so. If not, we ought to fire the ad agencies.”

Most Republicans seemed on their guard, reluctant to provoke Ickes’ celebrated ire.

Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), however, decided to take an aggressive approach. When she hectored him about money buying access to Clinton, Ickes snapped: “If you give enough money to Republican senators, you get access too.”

One of the hottest moments came when Sen. Don Nickles (R-Okla.) broached the prospect of obstruction of justice in connection with Ickes’ handling of a campaign donation, then sought to move on to another point without giving Ickes as much time as he wanted for rebuttal.

“Mr. Chairman,” Ickes protested to Sen. Fred Thompson (R-Tenn.), “the senator was alleging obstruction of justice. I don’t take accusations like that lightly.”

Thompson looked at Ickes and sighed. Then he told Nickles to give Ickes what he managed to have most of the time throughout the long day--the last word.