U.S.

Reno Defends Gore Probe Rejection

By CBSNews.com staff CBSNews.com staff

June 27, 2000 / 10:07 AM EDT / CBS

Attorney General Janet Reno on Tuesday defended her decisions not to put Vice President Al Gore under investigation by an independent counsel for allegations in connection with campaign fund-raising.

"I have not been shy about appointing independent counsels when the facts and the law required it," Reno told the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Reno's testimony came five days after committee Republican Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania disclosed that the head of the Justice Department's campaign finance task force, Robert Conrad, was recommending that a special counsel be appointed to investigate Gore for possible false statements.

Questioned April 18 by Conrad, the vice president said he did not know he was attending a fund-raising event when he went to a Buddhist temple during the 1996 campaign, despite the fact that his aides knew.

"An independent counsel for campaign finance-related matters should have been appointed a long time ago," said committee chairman Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah. "FBI Director Louis Freeh, Charles LaBella, Robert Litt and now the current head of the campaign task force, Robert Conrad, have all called for an investigation."

LaBella previously ran the task force and Litt is a former top adviser to the attorney general.

"The fact that several people have advised me at various times to seek the appointment of an independent counsel—should come as no surprise to anyone," Reno testified, saying that in deciding whether to appoint one, she had to determine whether the question was over mistakes of judgment or mistakes of law on the vice president's part.

But the former task force head, LaBella, told CBS News Correspondent Diana Olick that there was reason to investigate whether the law had been broken.

"You have more than sufficient information to warrant a further investigation," said Labella, "and that's all anybody is saying. And I've said before and others have said before, no one is suggesting these are going to end up in charges - or that charges are even likely."

Sen. Robert Torricelli, D.-N.J., said it was a crime for someone to leak Conrad's recommendation to Specter, and that the matter now should be left up to "the American people" to decide. Specter said the information was gathered as part of his subcommittee's oversight function.

Gore campaign spokesman Chris Lehane accused Specter of "McCarthyite tactics" and said he and other Republicans opposed to Gore in the presidential race against George W. Bush "have turned the Congress into a scandal industrial complex designed to manufacture and create partisan scandals and inflict political damage on the vice president a mere four months before voters go to the polls."

Specter took exception to Lehane's "McCarthyite" remark and said he "will take up personally with the vice president" whether Gore authorized such a statement

Senate Republicans admit they don't expect Reno to open a new investigation but they want to keep the heat on Gore during this summer's presidential race

And they can keep on calling hearings as long as they want, but they probably will stop in August when Congress takes its summer recess.

The Gore camp Friday released a transcript of Conrad's April interview with the vice president and asked Americans to take it at face value.

"I have full confidence in the judgment of the American people. I think the timing of this whole thing kind of speaks for itself and I think people see that," said Gore.