Racist Group Also Featured Speech by Lott

Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.) spoke about a decade ago at an event he did not know was sponsored by a white supremacist group, his spokesman said Saturday, but the senator has never belonged to the organization.

The senator’s name surfaced last week amid reports that Rep. Bob Barr (R-Ga.), one of the leading advocates on the House Judiciary Committee of impeaching President Clinton, was keynote speaker at the national conference of the Council of Conservative Citizens in June.

Barr subsequently said he would not have attended the meeting had he known of the group’s segregationist views. But Barr charged that the disclosure was politically motivated to discredit him as a leader of the drive to impeach Clinton.

Despite Lott’s denials, his name often has been linked over the years to the council, which is headquartered in St. Louis.

According to John S. Czwartacki, Lott’s spokesman, the senator only vaguely remembers that, while he was serving in the House of Representatives, he was invited to an event in his Gulf Coast district by two acquaintances who, it turned out, had ties to the group.

“That was over a decade ago,” Czwartacki said. “His recollection isn’t that straightforward.”

Since then, the organization has “bandied his name for years,” he said.

In fact, Czwartacki said, Lott “doesn’t consider himself a member. Nor does he have firsthand familiarity or knowledge of their views.”

Efforts to reach officials of the council were unsuccessful Saturday.