CAUGHT ON TAPE? October 22, 1997 NewsHour Transcript

The Online Explainers take your question on the investigation. The NewsHour's coverage of the Congressional Investigation. The inside stories on the political fight behind the public investigation. The investigation is big news in Washington, but how's it playing around the country. A closer look at the issues really under scrutiny by the Congress.

A RealAudio version of this report is available. KWAME HOLMAN: Sounding like the prosecutor he once was Senate Governmental Affairs Committee Chairman Fred Thompson today used newly acquired White House videotapes to lay out his most specific charge to date against President Clinton and his 1996 campaign. SEN. FRED THOMPSON, Chairman, Governmental Affairs Committee: Come to order, please. KWAME HOLMAN: Thompson noted when the President accepted millions in public funds for the campaign, he signed an agreement to spend no more than that. According to Thompson, the President violated that pledge by coordinating TV ads paid for by the Democratic National Committee, ads designed not to build up the DNC but to re-elect the President. SEN. FRED THOMPSON: This is actually very simple. If a candidate takes public campaign money, he or she has to sign a contract. Under the terms of the contract the candidate agrees not to spend more than a certain amount of money on their campaign, roughly $37 million in the case of last year's primary election and $62 million for the general election. The question is: Did Mr. Clinton spend more on his election campaign than he agreed to when he accepted public campaign funds? The DNC made significant expenditures of up to $44 million on what they termed "party building" issue ads. Now, to a lot of us it's pretty near impossible to tell the difference between an issue ad and a Clinton-Gore ad. This is no coincidence because the Clinton-Gore campaign budgeted, designed, produced, revised, and placed these DNC ads. And that raises the question of whether the DNC ads actually were Clinton-Gore ads and whether the Clinton-Gore campaign spent dollars above and beyond the federal limits. These next two videos are extraordinary because they provide contemporaneous evidence into how the President viewed the DNC ads. First, let's roll a clip from December of 1995. PRESIDENT CLINTON: I cannot overstate to you the impact that these paid ads would have in the areas where they're from. I wish that we had some other way to do this. I wish there was some other way to deal with it, but we don't have one. We don't have the mailing list of the Christian Coalition; we don't have the mailing list of the National Rifle Association; we don't have Rush Limbaugh and 400 talk show hosts. And I do not believe that we would be here today in the shape we're in if we had not run these ads. My original strategy had been to raise all the money for my campaign this year so I could spend all my money next year being President, running for President, and raising money for the Senate and the House committees as set forth. And then we realized we could run these ads through the Democratic Party, which means that we could raise money in twenty and fifty and hundred thousand dollar blocks, and we didn't have do a lot of the thousand dollars, and run it down by--you know--what I understand was permitted by law. So that's what we've done. But I have to tell you, I'm very grateful to you. The contributions you have made to this have made a huge difference. SEN. FRED THOMPSON: The President acknowledges that spending on campaign advertising is limited by law, but he and his advisors--so he tells the assembled contributors--who are being asked to pay for these ads--say that they've found a way that they could raise and spend money through the Democratic National Committee, that they could run these ads through the DNC. Indeed, the President credits his DNC advertising, which they and the White House directed and control, with having improved his performance by 10 to 15 points. The last clip I want to show relates to this same question. PRESIDENT CLINTON: We've been able to finance this long-running constant television campaign, where we were always able to frame these issues. And most of it's been actually quite positive, you know, not sort of a big negative hit on the Republicans but just trying to show the differences in what we were trying to achieve has been central to the position that I now enjoy in the polls. SEN. FRED THOMPSON: What we are going to do as a committee is submit a memorandum hopefully in the next few days to the attorney general laying out some of these things in a--in an appropriate and respectful way--a legal brief. But, you know, we can take this mass of facts right up to the courthouse door but we can't break the door down. So I think we've laid the facts out there and--which cries out for an independent counsel in this case. KWAME HOLMAN: John Glenn, the committee's top Democrat, responded by charging Bob Dole's campaign also coordinated as paid for by the Republican Party that benefitted his candidacy. SEN. JOHN GLENN, (D) Ohio: Now, let's compare what President Clinton says about issue ads to what Sen. Dole said about those same issue ads. I call up Exhibit 2405M please. President Clinton said in the tapes--and then we realize we can run these ads through the Democratic Party--Sen. Dole said in a 1996 televised interview--we couldn't get a copy of the televised interview, but he said, "But we can through the Republican National Committee, through what we call the Victory 96 program, run television ads and other advertising." That meant that it was not coming out of his campaign fund. I don't think that was a conspiracy of some type at all, and I don't think there were conspirators there. If we say that President Clinton has admitted to something that was improper, then do we say Bob Dole was also improper, because they're doing exactly the same things with the issue ads that were run on their behalf. Now, let's go back even further--use of the White House. Presidential meetings with contributors to the White House is an old, old story. We have a lengthy compilation of tapes from the Reagan Library that I think make a good comparison to these other tapes that we've been hearing so much about. PRESIDENT REAGAN: (April 1985) I want to thank you all for helping to make it possible for us to meet here today. At times like this living up above the store isn't too bad. Ed Rollins has told me that with the leadership of David Murdoch, your national chairman, of Mike Curb and Keith Brown, you raised almost $7 million to support the re-election effort. And I have also been told that every penny came at personal financial sacrifice. SEN. CARL LEVIN, (D) Michigan: Both parties have found the loopholes. Both parties have used the loopholes. The disagreement in this Senate is whether we're going to close the loopholes. Soft money is legal. Most legal experts say coordination of soft money is legal. This is what Congress permits, folks. Heck, we not only permit it, we thrive on it. We raise this kind of money ourselves. We see it coordinated through the parties. Take a look at this morning's Post. And it's up to us to end it. And it's all well and good to send another brief to the Justice Department. But, more important, it's for what we--more important, it's what we do ourselves to end this mess. That's what will count. SEN. DON NICKLES, (R) Oklahoma: Other people have said, well, everybody has done it. I want to take issue that I've said in the past not everybody has done it. As a matter of fact, this administration has broken all kinds of records of sleazy campaign practices. I don't think President Carter did it. I don't think President Ford did it. I don't believe President Reagan did it, and I don't believe President Bush did it. Did they all have contributors to the White House and they say thank you, I'm sure they did. But no one, except for this administration had such a sleazy operation that I believe, Mr. President--or Mr. Chairman, these tapes really present evidence of a conspiracy to evade campaign laws, directed by President Clinton, Vice President Gore, Mr. Ickes, and this entire team. KWAME HOLMAN: At mid-afternoon the committee had just begun hearing from officials responsible for videotaping the presidential coffees when Chairman Thompson abruptly adjourned. Democrats had invoked their right under Senate rules to block committee meetings they said to protest the Senate's slowness to approve the nominations of ambassadors and judges. The committee will resume questioning the officials in the morning.

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