Ex-GSA Official Denies Talking to Gore on Real Estate Deal

The former head of the General Services Administration says he never talked to Vice President Al Gore or anyone else in the Clinton administration about a proposed $400-million federal lease for a Democratic fund-raiser and longtime friend of Gore.

Ex-GSA Administrator Roger Johnson made the comments Thursday night in response to public disclosure of a memo suggesting that “Gore has called or is ready to call” Johnson in an attempt to help Tennessee developer Franklin Haney on a planned building called the Portals. Gore denies intervening on the Portals project.

Justice Department investigators got the undated, unsigned and unaddressed memo pursuant to a grand jury subpoena but have been unable to learn who wrote the three-paragraph document, U.S. Rep. Thomas J. Bliley (R-Va.) revealed in a letter to Atty. Gen. Janet Reno.

Johnson said government investigators questioned him over a year ago about the Portals.

“They were asking me was there any pressure on me from the administration to do anything” for “a developer, I think it was one of the vice president’s people,” and “my answer was ‘absolutely not,’ ” said Johnson.

Johnson emphasized that he didn’t have a conversation about the Portals with the vice president “or anybody else in the administration. That’s the bottom line.”

Johnson’s chief of staff, Barbara Silbey, met regarding the Portals in Johnson’s office with longtime Gore fund-raiser Peter Knight, to whom Haney paid $1 million for work on that and other real estate deals.

“There was a meeting between GSA and Mr. Haney,” Silbey said in a statement. “There were lawyers present and the meeting was for the entirely legitimate purpose of discussing Mr. Haney’s plans in connection with the Portals. Every aspect of government contracting law was complied with to the fullest.”