House Panel Accuses Reno of Protecting Clinton, Gore

In a bitter parting shot at outgoing Atty. Gen. Janet Reno, a Republican-led House panel issued a blistering final report Thursday accusing Reno of going to “extraordinary lengths” to protect the Clinton administration from charges of campaign finance abuses.

But Democrats characterized the 200-page report from the House Government Reform Committee as a political hatchet job, meant to smear the Clinton administration weeks before the election.

And the Justice Department challenged the notion that its decisions must be “corrupt or ill-motivated” simply because Republicans disagree with them.

“Indeed, such an approach undermines the value of congressional oversight,” the Justice Department wrote in a letter to Rep. Dan Burton (R-Ind.), chairman of the panel and a longtime Reno nemesis.

Burton and Reno have sparred for years over allegations of campaign fund-raising abuses in the 1996 Clinton-Gore campaign, with Burton’s committee even holding Reno in contempt for refusing to turn over subpoenaed documents. Thursday’s sharp rhetoric made clear that, even in the administration’s final days, the relationship is no less acrimonious.

After some half-dozen hearings on campaign financing since 1997, Burton’s committee offered in its final report an A-to-Z recap of the Justice Department’s alleged mishandling of its investigations into possible illegal contributions. The report was approved by the committee Thursday on a voice vote, with the lone opposition coming from Rep. Henry A. Waxman of Los Angeles, the only Democrat in attendance and the ranking minority member.

“Given the evidence compiled by the committee,” the report concludes, “it is hard to escape the conclusion that the attorney general has acted politically to benefit the president, the vice president and her own political party.”

Specifically, the committee repeated its view that Reno should have recused herself from reviewing Gore’s fund-raising activities because of a clear conflict. She showed even poorer judgment, the committee alleged again, by refusing to appoint an independent counsel to investigate Gore in 1997, despite the recommendations of FBI Director Louis J. Freeh and a top prosecutor. And she used obfuscation and distortions to cover up her political motivations, the report charges.

Burton’s committee also challenged the Justice Department again for not questioning key players in the fund-raising investigations and not asking Clinton or Gore until recently about central issues.

Not until earlier this year, for instance, was Clinton “asked a single question” about foreign money contributed to his 1996 campaign, was Gore asked about the controversial fund-raiser at the Buddhist temple in Hacienda Heights, Calif., or were Clinton and Gore asked about White House coffees with potential donors, the report notes.

The committee also alleged that the Justice Department failed to investigate damaging leaks, withheld documents from Congress and refused to look into criminal allegations against a Reno friend in Miami.

But Democrats said that the evidence refutes the accusations.

In the committee’s hearings, “not one witness has said that the attorney general is deceitful, corrupt or partisan. Rather, witness after witness has testified--under oath--to the attorney general’s integrity,” Democrats fired back in a report of their own.

Burton “has a vendetta against the attorney general,” Waxman said in an interview. The committee’s review has been “so reckless and partisan . . . that it will probably be a model for political scientists on how not to conduct an investigation by Congress,” Waxman added.

Nor did Reno supporters think the report’s release weeks before the election was accidental.

“This is certainly the type of partisan report that we’ve come to expect from this committee,” said one Justice Department official.

But Kevin Binger, chief of staff for the committee, dismissed such accusations. “If we got half the cooperation we needed from the Justice Department, this investigation might have been done last year,” he said.