Paper Says GOP Can’t Prove Vote Plot by Chinese

A partial draft of a Senate report on alleged campaign fund-raising abuses fails to substantiate accusations that China plotted to influence the 1996 election by funding Democrats, a newspaper reported in today’seditions.

However, the report details Asian donors’ relationships with Democrats, in particular with Vice President Al Gore, the New York Times reported.

The newspaper obtained an incomplete copy of the 1,500-page draft, which was prepared by Republican staff of the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee. The report is expected to be released in coming days.

It follows a $3.5-million investigation and hearings that ran from July to October and led by Sen. Fred Thompson (R-Tenn.).

The newspaper noted that a chapter on the Asian connection was missing from the draft because the Federal Bureau of Investigation and Central Intelligence Agency have not yet declassified information in that chapter.

The report again calls on Atty. Gen. Janet Reno to appoint an independent counsel to investigate Democratic campaign abuses, a move she has rejected in the past, the paper said.

The report was dismissed as partisan by Democrats, and a chapter on Republican campaign abuses was missing, the story said.

According to the report, Gore did know, despite his previous denials, that an April 1996 event at a Buddhist temple in California was meant to raise money.

The event proved an embarrassment to Democrats when they had to return donations that were improperly collected.

A spokesman for the White House counsel’s office, Jim Kennedy, told the paper that the report is “the Republican Party’s first press release of the 1998 campaign.”