Inquiry to Focus on Gore’s Truthfulness

The latest Justice Department investigation of Vice President Al Gore’s campaign fund-raising strikes at a sore spot: the vice president’s candor.

Atty. Gen. Janet Reno said Thursday that the purpose of the newly launched 90-day preliminary investigation is “to consider statements Vice President Gore made in the course of another preliminary investigation last year concerning political fund-raising calls he placed from the White House.”

This review is more narrowly focused than the Justice Department’s previous preliminary examination of Gore’s 45 fund-raising calls from the White House, sources said.

The key question: Did Gore lie to federal investigators about whether he knew that a Democratic National Committee “media fund” that bankrolled a costly television advertising campaign in late 1995 and early 1996 included both “soft money” for party activities as well as “hard money” to support individual candidates?

The new review aims to determine whether there are “reasonable grounds to believe that further investigation is warranted” into whether Gore purposefully misrepresented his understanding of the media fund.

If Reno determines that such grounds exist, she will seek the appointment of yet another independent counsel to open a full-scale investigation.

It is a crime to lie to a federal investigator.

In contrast to the complex issues surrounding the phone calls themselves, a politician’s veracity, or lack thereof, is more clear cut. Any investigation that paints Gore as deceitful on a fund-raising question, particularly given how central his generally solid reputation is to his standing with voters, could wreak havoc with his anticipated 2000 presidential bid.

Gore expressed confidence Thursday that he faces no such jeopardy. At the end of a dialogue on school violence in San Francisco, he told reporters: “I will continue to fully cooperate with Justice Department [investigators] during their preliminary inquiry, and I remain confident that they will conclude that, as I know, everything that I did was legal and proper.”

Some congressional Republicans, who have long demanded the appointment of an independent counsel to look into Democratic campaign abuses, said that the Justice Department’s current review is far too restrictive and represents nothing more than further delay.

An independent investigation of fund-raising tactics for the 1996 campaign “must be complete and comprehensive, covering the president and vice president, not just bits and pieces,” said Rep. Dan Burton (R-Ind.), chairman of the Government Reform and Oversight Committee, which has been conducting its own inquiry into fund-raising irregularities.

In a letter sent Thursday to Reno, Burton said: “It would be dereliction of duty of the highest order if you fail to appoint immediately an independent counsel with a broad mandate to investigate the fund-raising abuses of the recent national elections.”

In his White House calls, Gore solicited money from donors to sustain the Democratic media campaign. He has said that he believed he was raising only soft money--which is not subject to campaign finance laws, including a ban on seeking funds from inside a federal building.

The Democrats acknowledged last year that some of the money Gore brought in was diverted to hard money accounts, which are strictly regulated, but that this was done without the vice president’s knowledge.

Gore told investigators last year that he believed, erroneously, as it turned out, that the media fund used only soft money donations from corporations, labor unions and individuals. He recently reiterated to investigators that he believed this then, according to an individual familiar with the proceedings.

“He thought at the time that he made the calls the media fund consisted of only soft money,” the individual said, even though Gore knew that the party relied on a mix of both hard and soft money for other expenses.

Reno reopened the phone call issue in light of recently discovered handwritten notations on a fund-raising memo by a former Gore senior aide suggesting that the composition of the fund--about two-thirds soft money and one-third hard money--was discussed during a Nov. 21, 1995, meeting at the White House attended by the vice president, President Clinton and senior White House and Democratic officials.

“The vice president doesn’t say that those statements weren’t made,” said the person familiar with the proceedings. “He merely says that none of those statements registered with him” on a busy day that included Clinton announcing the Bosnia peace agreement.

In a legal filing by Reno last December, when she decided not to seek an independent counsel to investigate Gore’s phone calls, she noted that the vice president’s “reasonable explanation for his conduct” included his belief that he was soliciting only soft money contributions for the media campaign, which was “funded entirely by soft money.” She added, “Nothing developed in the course of the preliminary investigation contradicts that this was his understanding.”

Investigators are zeroing in on the discussion at the Nov. 21, 1995, session and whether Gore was an active participant, according to individuals who have been questioned.

“They were looking for some concrete evidence that the distinction between hard money and soft money was discussed in that meeting and that somehow there was an understanding for the vice president to solicit hard money,” said one of those who has been interviewed.

Three participants told The Times that they did not recall this issue coming up. But Justice investigators have found others who said that it was mentioned, sources said.

Gore already was singed when he failed to be forthcoming about a fund-raising issue. He attended a 1996 Democratic luncheon at a Buddhist temple in Hacienda Heights where large sums were raised, much of it illegally. Gore initially claimed that he thought this was a “community outreach” event. He later acknowledged that he had known it was intended to court donors.

Times staff writer Mark Z. Barabak in San Francisco contributed to this story.