8/25/00 11:05 a.m.
The New Gore Standard
Al Gore does a Clinton. Reno lets him.

Barbara Olson is the author of Hell to Pay: The Unfolding Story of Hillary Rodham Clinton.

xactly what should a federal prosecutor do if new evidence indicates that a witness lied under oath to Justice Department lawyers and FBI agents? According to Attorney General Reno, "no further criminal investigation is warranted." Case closed. Move on to more pressing matters. This is the startling new standard established by General Reno this week when she made her third announcement that no outside counsel would be appointed to investigate whether vice president Al Gore lied about his political fundraising activities. General Reno's latest decision is in direct conflict with her top adviser, whose good judgment she said she respects and whom she put in charge of the entire fundraising investigation. She acknowledged that at least two other Justice Department prosecutors advised against her decision as well.

Vice president Gore submitted to five separate interviews by law enforcement officials. And more and more evasive answers and outlandish rationalizations followed each production of new evidence. General Reno refused to accept the possibility that Gore's inconsistent answers about the Buddhist Temple and the White House coffees warranted further investigation. Instead, Reno told us this week that no special counsel was needed because "further investigation is not likely to result in a prosecutable case for perjury or even false statements. Gore's seemingly inconsistent responses were given a Justice Department blessing as simply "disagreements about labels." In the end, this inquiry did not depend on whether the evidence raised sufficient doubt about Gore's denials that he knew that the Buddhist Temple and the White House coffees were fundraisers. No. General Reno decided that no evidence could pierce the interpretation that Gore gave to the words "fundraiser" and "coffee."

If this sounds familiar, it is. We have seen this brand of legal analysis before. Remember when President Clinton testified to the grand jury that the truthfulness of his answers in the Paula Jones deposition depended on the meaning of such commonly understood terms as "sex" and "is?"

Of course, it follows from this reasoning that allowing a witness to redefine commonly understood words to rebut a willful intent to lie, will abolish perjury prosecutions. When words no longer have universally accepted meaning, all truth becomes relative. All laws become infinitely elastic, and the rule of law disappears. Each allegedly illegal action will become subject to repeated re-characterizations according to whatever new meaning the disputing evidence will allow. No proof of willful intent is possible when evidence and common sense lose all value in our legal system.

A look at some of Gore's responses during this investigation proves this. Gore maintains that he did not know that the 103 White House coffees that raised $26 million were "fundraisers." After all, when first questioned, Gore claimed that he remembered attending only one White House coffee. Then evidence began to surface. Gore is now contending, and Reno is accepting, that the coffees were neither coffees nor fundraisers. We now know that Gore hosted 23 coffees and attended 8 with President Clinton. To understand how these two answers are consistent is to understand and buy into Gore's individually understood label for "coffees" and "fundraisers."

Gore's reinvention of the definitions of all the pertinent nouns was cited by Reno as the sole basis for her decision. Gore was able to pull this transparent wool over the attorney general's eyes despite evidence that: Gore's chief of staff authored talking points referring to the coffees as fundraisers; deputy chief of staff Harold Ickes referred generally to the coffees as fundraisers; and Lanny Davis admitted in his tell-all book that the White House's denial that the coffees were fundraisers was "absurd." Even vice presidential candidate Joe Lieberman noted that the coffees were obviously fundraisers.

But under the new Reno/Clinton defense, commonsense and conflicting evidence is not a factor. Gore claimed that his answers were true in spite of the evidence. Gore's label for a fundraiser required that money had to actually exchange hands at the event. And a coffee wasn't a coffee if it wasn't held in the White House. Reno found no reason to investigate further. It is simply a case of disagreement over labels.

Gore also testified that he did not know that the Buddhist Temple event was a fundraiser. He maintains that he does "not to this day know that it was a fundraiser." Remember when Gore thought he was attending a "community outreach" event? Then it was a "finance related" event. Then labeled a "donor maintenance event." The ever changing answers identifying this event apparently convinced General Reno that it must be nothing more than a disagreement over labels rather than willfully false explanations provided to common sense questions to fit newly discovered evidence.

It must have been equally clear to General Reno that Gore failed to notice that his former fundraiser Maria Hsia, the DNC chairman and vice-finance chairman were in attendance at the Buddhist Temple that day. And Reno must have believed that Gore did not read or remember the email from staff about the "fundraisers in California." It is a mystery that needs no further investigation to explain how the Secret Service was informed that the Buddhist Temple event was a fundraiser. The same applies to the National Security Council when the fundraiser was discussed in e-mails. In fact, all seven people on Gore's staff that mentioned the Buddhist Temple "fundraiser" must never have spoken these words in Gore's presence. That also must explain why Justice Department Public Integrity Chief Lee Radek ordered the Los Angeles U.S. Attorney's Office not to investigate whether criminal laws were broken at the Buddhist Temple.

We now know that laws were broken. Maria Hsia was found guilty of five felony counts in connection with her fundraising at the event. Reno concluded, however, that Gore's testimony reflected only a "disagreement about labels."

The campaign-finance task force's other investigations leading up to Reno's third rejection for an outside counsel also gives some insight into Gore's new politics of meaning. Remember when Al Gore was accused of violating the Pendleton Act by dialing for dollars from his White House office? Gore dismissed the charges, noting that he only made calls on a "few occasions" and that no taxpayer funds were used since all calls went on a DNC credit card. No harm, no foul defense. Gore took to the podium proclaiming that there was "no controlling legal authority" and that he was "proud" of what he had done in the reelection effort.

General Reno did her part. She reinterpreted the law. Reno re-labeled the prohibition against soliciting money from a federal building. Now the law only made soliciting hard money illegal. Raising "soft money" for the Democratic party was not covered.

Then phone records revealed that Gore actually made 86 calls to 43 Democratic donors using a Clinton/Gore reelection card. New evidence surfaced that 35 percent of Gore's solicitations were for hard money deposited into the Clinton/Gore reelection campaign account. Gore denied that he knew that "hard money" was being raised. He denied that he heard any talk about fundraising at the infamous weekly campaign meetings. Imagine Clinton/Gore campaign meetings without any talk of fundraising?

More new evidence emerged from the White House. Gore's own Deputy Chief of Staff took notes at the meetings quoting Gore as eager to "take more of the events and calls" and to be "counted in" on the solicitations. He also wrote that there would be a "65 percent soft/35 percent hard" money division. Donors said they found Gore's requests for large contributions to be "heavy handed and inappropriate for an incumbent vice president." Gore denied that he ever discussed the calls at the meetings. Reno stood steadfast. She refused to appoint an independent counsel to investigate the fundraising calls. General Reno assured us that Gore had no motive to lie and that this surely was not going to be material to the investigation. Besides, how did she know what "label" Gore gave to hard money or how he defined soliciting?

Gore's testimony under oath became more and more vague. His recollections of events at these meetings disappeared. Gore testified that he did "not recall" conversations about hard and soft money. He no longer had "a specific recollection" of anything talked about at the meetings. Gore claimed he "simply did not hear" any of the conversations recorded by his staff. And finally, just one last justification: He drank quite a bit of ice tea during the meetings. It was a novel new defense.

Reno ordered a second preliminary investigation into the telephone calls and Gore's answers to the prosecutors. The campaign-finance task force supervising attorney, the chief investigator, FBI director, FBI assistant director, FBI general counsel, principal associate deputy attorney, and two other Justice Department attorneys, all advised General Reno that the threshold for appointing an independent counsel had been met — Gore's inconsistent answers were reason to investigate further. Reno ignored all the advice of these prosecutors and no independent counsel was appointed.

More revelations. Former White House chief of staff Leon Panetta testified that Gore was paying attention during the meetings. Deputy chief of staff Harold Ickes halted the meetings if either Clinton or Gore had to leave. Still, Reno determined there was "no reason t investigate further."

What do Robert Conrad, Charles LaBella, Robert Litt, Louis Freeh, Robert Bryant, James DeSarno, Larry Parkinson, and Judy Feigin have in common? They are all experienced professional prosecutors and investigators occupying the highest positions in the Justice Department. These are the career prosecutors and investigators that actually participated in the investigation, looked the witnesses in the eye and determined that the investigation must proceed — but not under the direction of a subordinate of the president or vice president. Reno didn't look any of the witnesses in the eye, she only read the transcripts and determined that she thinks it should be proceed internally. Even when her top advisers say it can't. Each of these officials hold positions that General Reno says she respects. That she claims she listens to. But when President Clinton or vice-president Al Gore are involved, it is clear that Reno can hear no evil, see no evil and will speak no evil.