Another Reno Aide Urges Probe of Gore

WASHINGTON —  A senior Justice Department prosecutor has recommended that Atty. Gen. Janet Reno appoint a special counsel to determine whether Vice President Al Gore told investigators the truth about his role in 1996 Democratic fund-raising activities, government officials familiar with the inquiry said Thursday.

Robert J. Conrad Jr., who heads the Justice Department task force investigating 1996 fund-raising abuses, told Reno that questions have arisen about Gore’s truthfulness about a controversial 1996 luncheon at the Hsi Lai Buddhist Temple in Hacienda Heights, Calif., after investigators questioned him under oath April 18, the officials said.

Conrad’s preliminary recommendation places renewed pressure on Reno, who rejected an earlier rec

ommendation from one of Conrad’s predecessors, Charles G. LaBella, to ask for an independent counsel to investigate Gore. She also declined to do so after two preliminary investigations of Gore’s role in Democratic fund-raising telephone calls from his White House office.

This latest development could spell serious political trouble for Gore, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, raising anew questions about his veracity in the midst of the 2000 campaign. The appointment of a special counsel in itself would provide new fodder for Republicans, and any such inquiry could easily continue through the November election.

Reno’s reaction to Conrad’s recommendation was not known. Nor was it clear when she would respond. The attorney general has been criticized intensely by GOP lawmakers and officials for past refusals to seek an independent investigation of the Democrats’ fund-raising.

Justice Department spokesman Myron Marlin declined to comment other than to say that the campaign finance investigation is ongoing.

“It’s a preliminary recommendation,” a Justice Department official said. “Conrad and other officials are reviewing the information they have gathered before a final decision will be made by the attorney general.”

Another Justice Department official said that Conrad “thinks he’s now reached a point where there’s sufficient basis for further investigation to be done, and it ought to be done by someone other than the Justice Department” to avoid a conflict of interest. He said that Conrad is expected to make a final recommendation within 10 days.

Gore, campaigning in Minneapolis on Thursday, said that he knew nothing about the matter.

His communications director, Jim Kennedy, said: “As of now, we have received no word from the Department of Justice about the reported campaign finance development. As you know, the vice president has cooperated fully with the investigation every step of the way.”

Texas Gov. George W. Bush, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, jumped on the news to reiterate a recurrent campaign theme.

Bush campaign spokeswoman Mindy Tucker said: “Gov. Bush believes that the American people are tired of all these scandals and investigations and the best way to make them go away is to elect someone new and different.”

LaBella, the former chief of the Justice Department task force, said that the timing of the recommendation is unfortunate.

“This is the worst possible time to be conducting an investigation--smack in the heat of a political campaign,” he said in a telephone interview. Nonetheless, he said, “I don’t think [Reno] has any choice now that another . . . prosecutor has come to the same conclusion we did.”

Conrad was appointed by Reno six months ago to head the task force investigation that has been ongoing since shortly after the 1996 presidential election.

Gore, who was previously questioned four times by campaign finance investigators, was interrogated for four hours by Conrad and two FBI agents in April. This was the first time that he was asked about his role in the 1996 Democratic National Committee luncheon at the Hsi Lai Buddhist Temple.

Gore has said that he was unaware the luncheon attended by saffron-robed nuns and monks was a fund-raiser, although he has acknowledged that he knew it was finance-related.

The event, which lacked the conventional trappings of a fund-raiser, nonetheless raised $140,000 for the Democratic National Committee. Much of the money was later returned when questions arose about the donors. Longtime Gore fund-raiser Maria Hsia was convicted this year of campaign finance violations, involving disguising the true source of donations given by the temple.

A Justice Department official said that Conrad’s focus “relates back to the nature of that event. Was it a fund-raiser?” But he said that Conrad had not uncovered “much, if anything, in the way of new evidence” about Gore’s knowledge of the event.

Although the independent counsel law, under which Reno was authorized to seek an outside investigation, has expired, the attorney general can appoint a special prosecutor if she decides that the Justice Department would have a conflict of interest in handling the matter.

Conrad becomes the latest in a line of high-level federal investigators recommending that the attorney general turn to an outside inquiry of 1996 campaign finance abuses allegedly involving top White House officials.

In late 1997, FBI Director Louis J. Freeh recommended an outside prosecutor--as did LaBella, then the newly installed task force chief. Reno declined.

LaBella renewed his recommendation in July 1998. In a confidential memorandum to Reno, the career prosecutor also blasted her senior advisors for engaging in “gamesmanship” and legal “contortions” to avoid seeking such an independent inquiry. Again, Reno refused. LaBella’s memo was dismissed as “flawed” by one of the senior advisors he had criticized.

Later, in the fall of 1998, a few weeks after LaBella left the task force to become acting U.S. attorney in San Diego, Reno received yet another recommendation for outside counsel. A task force report by former LaBella assistant Judy Feigin cited new evidence raising questions about the vice president’s truthfulness, including a photograph of Gore in a White House meeting studying documents that he told FBI investigators he could not recall seeing.

Although the latest development seemed to support LaBella’s original conclusions, he said in the interview Thursday that Reno’s delays have “hurt investigators, the Department of Justice and the vice president” by prolonging a case that “should have been resolved two years ago.”

So far, these allegations have not appeared to hurt Gore much in the presidential race, though recent polls show some ominous clouds.

Polls have found that voters make few distinctions between Gore and Bush on broad questions of character. But Gore still faces doubts on the specific question of trustworthiness. A Wall Street Journal/NBC poll released Thursday showed that Bush already leads Gore when voters are asked which candidate is “trustworthy enough to do the right thing when making decisions.”

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Miller reported from Washington and Rempel from Los Angeles. Staff writers Ronald Brownstein in Washington; Megan Garvey in Austin, Texas; Matea Gold in Minneapolis; and Edwin Chen in Phoenix contributed to this story.