Until now. These two relentlessly ambitious Tennesseans are on a collision course. The confrontation will soon take center stage in Bill Clinton’s second term–and later, perhaps, in the next presidential contest. As chairman of the Senate committee investigating money corruption in the last campaign, Thompson can play the role of good-government crusader with all the legal and acting talent he can muster. If he succeeds, a bid for the GOP nomination could follow. Clinton, of course, still faces difficult ethical questions. But the fate of the Democratic Party is now Gore’s problem, not Clinton’s. Already running for 2000, Gore has everything to lose from hearings that place him at the center of 1996’s excesses. ““Gore’s now thought of as dull but clean,’’ says a Democratic media strategist. ““What if it turns out that he’s merely dull?''
Thompson hasn’t specifically targeted Gore, but the vice president is in his field of fire. His top priority, Thompson told NEWSWEEK, will be to investigate ways in which the flow of campaign cash in 1996 may have affected ““national security.’’ Translation: he wants to focus on the machinations of John Huang, the Chinese-American fund raiser whose hectic dealings first ignited the money-in-politics story last fall. Thompson and his investigators want to know whether Huang was illegally funneling money into the party from overseas. They will look for signs that the administration made for-eign-policy–and foreign-trade–decisions based on who gave how much cash.
The first direct charge of money laundering by Huang emerged last week. The Washington Post reported that he had approached two business associates in 1996 and offered to pay them $45,000 if they’d take $250,000 from him and donate it in their own names to the Democratic National Committee. They say they refused the offer to do Huang’s laundry. Through his lawyer, Huang denied everything. But this was the first time a news report seemed to shake the confidence of Gore’s inner circle–and the president’s–on the campaign-money issue. Until last week they had dismissed the matter as lamentable but not indictable. ““This is the first hint of something really problematic from a legal perspective–a willful, criminal violation,’’ said a top Gore adviser.
Why should Gore be concerned? Because he’s known Huang almost as long as Clinton has. The ““Asian-American outreach’’ program Huang drafted for DNC fund raising envisioned an important role for the ““VPOTUS.’’ Huang accompanied Gore on a three-day junket to Taiwan in 1989. The trip was paid for by the same Buddhist sect that hosted Gore at a fund-raiser in L.A. It was this Huang-engineered event (labeled ““The Temple of Doom’’ by the tabloids) that first raised concerns about money laundering: penurious monks and nuns were listed as having contributed thousands to the DNC. If Huang was trying to launder money in Washington, investigators wonder, why not in L.A.?
Gore and his aides compounded their problems by being less than candid about what Gore knew and when he knew it. They first said he thought that the temple event was ““community outreach.’’ Then they conceded he knew it was ““finance-related.’’ In fact, National Security Council messages to Gore’s office call the event by its true name. For foreign-policy reasons, an NSC aide warned Gore, the temple ““fund-raiser’’ should be avoided.
But Gore went: money was involved. Clinton has taken most of the blame for his campaign’s obsession with raising cash, but Gore was his codependent. Of the 103 White House ““coffees’’ for donors and other dignitaries, Gore hosted 22 himself. Even his wife, Tipper, hosted five events of her own at the Naval Observatory building on the grounds of the vice president’s mansion. The roster of one, in March 1995, reads like a list of Powerful Women in Business, NEWSWEEK has learned. It includes representatives of AT&T, MESA Inc. and First Hospital Corp. Another, White House records show, was a Philip Morris executive–even though Al Gore has become an anti-tobacco crusader. A Gore spokesman said nothing improper happened at the events.
Thompson hopes to air all of this, and more, in hearings that will start as early as April. Meanwhile, the DNC is preparing to return another $1 million in questionable donations. Prompted by reports on NBC, the White House fired four staff ““volunteers’’ whose salary was being paid by the DNC. The Justice Department is conducting its own investigation of DNC fund raising, and may soon bring indictments that could prevent witnesses from testifying. Huang has already refused to turn over some documents to Congress, citing the privilege against self-incrimination, though he may be willing to talk in exchange for immunity. Other witnesses, Thompson concedes, may already have ““fled to the mother country,’’ wherever that may be.
Partisan infighting is already intense: Thompson and his Democratic counterpart, Sen. John Glenn, had to hold their own negotiating session to decide who would have access to the committee’s copying machine. Thompson has asked for $6.5 million to fund the probe. He’s all but daring the Democrats to filibuster the bill–and they may do so this week. ““We’ll see if they really want to talk about this for a couple of days on the floor,’’ Thompson says.
Thompson is realistic about the likelihood of sweeping campaign reform: next to zero. His own GOP leaders aren’t for it. He readily concedes that he’s taken his share of donations from unsavory characters. But he’s a lawyer and actor who now has the air of a brusque lawman unconcerned with consequences: Buford Pusser with a gavel. While Republicans were on recess in Florida with fat cats (and Clinton was in Manhattan at a $1 million fund-raiser), Thompson was in Washington in his office, briefcase open on his desk, a stack of newspaper clips on the coffee table. Just as in Nashville years ago, he has a case to try.
