WASHINGTON-Vice President Gore’s major-and questionably legal-role in Clinton administration fund raising raises more questions about whether telecommunications and trade policies continue to be compromised by campaign contributions from donors seeking a lane on the Information Superhighway.
Gore, the most influential telecommunications policy voice in the White House and the reason Reed Hundt heads the Federal Communications Commission today, reluctantly admitted last week to soliciting campaign contributions from the White House.
But Gore insisted, “I never did anything that I thought was wrong, much less a violation of the law.”
Gore’s prominent role in Clinton administration fund raising was detailed in a March 2 Washington Post article. The vice president’s clout in telecommunications policy apparently was not lost on telecommunications executives when Gore called for campaign contributions.
The article reported Gore called Texas telecommunications businessman James L. Donald last year to thank him for a $100,000 donation. The donation, according to the article, was intended as a “thank you” for the Clinton administration’s aid in helping DSC Communications Inc., a telephone switch and computer maker in Plano, Texas, win a $36 million telecommunications contract in Mexico.
The vice president said calls made from his White House office were charged to the Democratic National Committee. A 1995 memo from then-presidential counsel Abner Mikva banned fund-raising from the White House. Gore said the memo didn’t apply to the president and vice president, and explained that his counsel advised him “there’s no controlling legal authority that says that (fund-raising from federal buildings) violated the law.”
The Post said late Commerce Secretary Ron Brown, prompted by a congressional request on behalf of an influential Washington-based lobbyist who happened to be a big Clinton donor, jumped on the case and put the DSC case into the hands of the “Advocacy Group.” The little known unit was created by Brown to help U.S. companies vying for contracts abroad.
The Post said DSC’s lobbyist, the Dutko Group, contributed $700,000 to Clinton-Gore in 1995 and turned over $2.3 million to the DNC in 1995-96. Dutko also represents AT&T Wireless Services Inc.
Brown personally intervened, according to the Post, in hopes of giving DSC an edge over Alcatel and L.M. Ericsson for the $36 million contract to provide switches to Telefonos de Mexico, Mexico’s quasi-private telecommunications agency.
Brown reportedly wrote Chico Pardo, Telmex’s chief executive, and followed that up with a personal call on May 25, 1995.
The contract was awarded to DSC less than three weeks after that call, the Post article stated. A Commerce spokesman said DSC would have received support even if its lobbyist had not contributed to Clinton-Gore.
Another executive with telecommunications and other business interests told the Post “there were elements of a shakedown in the call” from Gore. Gore held a fund raiser at the home of a former MCI Communications Corp. lobbyist last year.
The new fund-raising revelations prompted Republican congressional leaders to turn up the heat on Attorney General Janet Reno to appoint an independent counsel to investigate Democratic fund-raising irregularities. Reno has rejected three requests for an independent counsel to date.
Yet, Whitewater special prosecutor Kenneth Starr subpoenaed documents from the White House to investigate payments from the Lippo Group to former Clinton administration associate attorney general Webster Hubbell while he was under investigation. Lippo is an Indonesian financial conglomerate with Chinese business interests that used to employ former Commerce trade official and Democratic fund-raiser John Huang.
The Democratic National Committee recently returned another $1.5 million in campaign contributions, including some from wireless firms, bringing to $3 million the total in refunded donations. Huang is responsible for raising many of the legally questionable donations.
Huang, who was successful in rounding up millions of dollars from Asian-Americans, has been accused of allowing China to conduct economic and political espionage on the United States.
Differences between majority Republicans and Democrats over funding has stalled work by a Senate panel investigating fund-raising. The Justice Department is undertaking its own probe.
