A needed probe, or hogwash?

Wednesday, October 22, 1997

A needed probe, or hogwash?

REPUBLICANS The President must look into himself before changing
the law

By Dan Ruppel

The Clinton administration is embroiled in yet another
controversy. I’m talking, of course, about the latest in the
endless line of improprieties — the campaign-fund-raising scandal.
(Moneygate? Chinagate? You pick the snappy Watergate
reference.)

This time, the President is as slippery as ever, walking the
line of legality with the attorney general propping him up the
whole way. Ms. Reno is taking the symbol of "blind justice" to an
extreme by intentionally turning a blind eye to the growing pile of
evidence that grows larger by the day. There can simply be no
excuse for the stonewalling on Ms. Reno’s part. She should have
appointed an independent counsel long ago.

The law states that an independent counsel shall be appointed if
an investigation by the Justice Department leads to a conflict of
interest for the investigators. Clearly, the Clinton-appointed
attorney general fits that definition. Far from acting as an
investigator, she has taken the role of defense counsel,
continuously interpreting questions of legality in the President’s
favor with the narrowest of readings.

The latest investigations of the President and vice president
simply don’t go far enough. Despite the numerous incidents of
impropriety, Ms. Reno puts the blinders on once more to scrutinize
only the fund-raising phone calls made in the White House. Even in
these investigations it is the press who actually discovered
evidence, without the Justice Department even looking into it.

When Vice President Gore admitted making phone calls to raise
money, he said he had only done it a few times and had used a
Democratic National Committee credit card to raise "soft money."
The Justice Department simply took his word for it and didn’t look
any further. It was only later that members of the press discovered
that he had made many more calls than he originally stated, and
that some of the money that was raised was siphoned off into the
presidential-campaign coffers without the donors’ knowledge.

If the attorney general was truly an impartial investigator, she
would not have been so willing to dismiss an investigation after a
mere explanation by Mr. Gore. If she is willing to take this
administration at its word, then she obviously hasn’t been paying
attention for the last five years. ("O.J. said he didn’t do it?
Well, all right then, let him go.")

This is not the only time the Justice Department has been
scooped by the press. Are we to believe that this "rigorous"
investigation cannot uncover information before the Washington
Post? The Daily Bruin could follow the trail better than Ms.
Reno.

If the entire fund-raising controversy centered on where and
when the President and vice president made phone calls, I might be
more understanding of the Democratic apologists in Congress and the
Justice Department. If the calls could be made legally from across
the street, there isn’t exactly a smoking gun and certainly not an
impeachable offense.

Unfortunately, the other areas of the fund-raising scandal are
much more alarming. An independent counsel should look into
fund-raisers at the White House and at a Buddhist temple (where
poor nuns gave thousands to Democrats, only to be illegally
reimbursed by the temple). An independent counsel should be looking
at the solicitation and influence of foreign money in the Clinton
campaign and determine whether the President had direct knowledge
of these patently illegal activities.

On the famous White House coffee videos, which were "found" and
released the day after Ms. Reno dismissed her investigation of the
White House coffees, the President has his arm around and heaps
praise upon John Huang while chatting with James Riady.

An Indonesian gardener and his wife somehow came up with
$450,000 for the Democrats and told the President, "James Riady
sent me." Now Mr. Huang refuses to answer questions by asserting
the Fifth Amendment, Mr. Riady has fled the country and the money
has been returned to the gardener along with millions of dollars in
illegal money raised by Mr. Huang.

The President is not guilty by association; he’s just guilty.
With a wink and a smile he talks about his early 1996 lead in the
polls and how it was due to the ads bought by the DNC (which were
all scrutinized by the President before he gave his approval). Such
cooperation between the party, its "issue" ads and the presidential
campaign is illegal, pure and simple. Mr. Clinton’s words were: "We
realized we could run these ads through the Democratic Party, which
means we could raise money in $20,000, $50,000 and $100,000
blocks." These "blocks" are much larger than the
individual-contribution limits imposed on candidates.

But Mr. Clinton used the party as a mere extension of his own
bottomless-budget campaign. Many will think this is not a big deal,
but it is very illegal. Candidates agree to strict spending limits
at the start of a campaign, but Mr. Clinton did everything within
and without the law to get around these limits and gain an unfair
advantage in the election. If he hadn’t spent early 1996 hammering
away at the defenseless, primary-challenged Sen. Bob Dole with
illegal campaign ads, the outcome of the election could have been
dramatically different.

These are not charges that should be taken lightly, despite
cynical cries for campaign-finance reform and the charge that
"everybody does it." Does everybody really thumb his nose at the
law to steal the most important election in the world? The question
is asked as if it would dismiss the guilty parties. Certainly no
one has done it with as much chutzpah as Mr. Clinton. It is
unacceptable.

There should be an independent counsel in this case to look at
all of these important matters. Before the President begins his
cynical cry for campaign-finance reform, he should look in the
mirror. It’s his ethics that need reform, not the law.Ruppel is the
chairman of the Bruin Republicans.