Janet Reno's last chance

RONALD Reagans attorney general Ed Meese asked for an independent counsel within two weeks of his initial inquiry into the Iran -Contra affair. As Landmark Legal Foundations Mark R. Levin has pointed out, this was before any credible evidence of wrongdoing had emerged. By contrast, Janet Reno has spent most of this year finding legalistic ways to avoid asking for a counsel in a case involving well-documented highly questionable activity at the highest levels of the Clinton Administration, including fundraising calls by the President and Vice President that clearly violated federal law. Even Miss Renos latest decision to open 30-day preliminary inquiries looks like a delaying tactic intended to give Clintons and Gores newly hired lawyers a chance to squirm out of their legal fix.

As soon as President Clinton claimed memory loss about whether he had made fundraising calls, it should have been clear to everyone that he had made them. Now it appears that he was asked by his staff to make three times as many calls as had first been revealed the same pattern of escalating calls as in the Gore case. Bill Clinton and Al Gore may turn out to be the highest-ranking telemarketers in the country. Not only is this unseemly, it is illegal. Title 18, Section 607, of the federal code prohibits fundraising on federal property. The law was originally intended to keep federal office-holders from dunning federal employees for contributions. But by 1980 Congress understood the law to bar any fundraising on federal property, and the Justice Department has concurred in that interpretation. Even though it is a crime, the offense is as Administration apologists are quick to point out a relatively minor one (it has almost never been prosecuted). But the fundraising calls are important because they have become the easiest way to prove to Janet Reno that laws were broken by persons covered by the independent-counsel statute. Once a counsel is appointed (which now looks unavoidable), his mandate surely would include investigating the broader scandals with their whiff of bribery, whether what the contributions bought was access, favors, or even federal policy.

This is the aspect of the scandal that the now-aborted Thompson hearings had been trying to bring to public light. In Roger Tamraz oilman and unrepentant big-time Clinton contributor, who wanted the Administration to endorse his idea of building a Central Asian pipeline the Thompson Committee had found a face for all the low-lifes and hustlers who were the darlings of the Clinton fundraising apparatus in 1995 - 96. Wanted by Interpol, labeled unreliable by Clintons own national-security staff, Tamraz nonetheless found himself receiving the attentions of Democratic National Committee Chairman Don Fowler, the Energy Department, and even the CIA, once he had ponied up $300,000 to the Democrats. Tamraz made it into the White House six times, and says his only regret now is that he didnt give $600,000. Despite this juicy testimony plus the revelation that the FBI has evidence that Los Angeles businessman and Democratic contributor Ted Sioeng acted as a Chinese agent during last years election Thompson has decided to wind up his hearings by harassing the Christian Coalition and National Right to Life Committee in pursuit of campaign-finance reform.

At least an independent counsel could pick up the work Thompson has (for now) abandoned. An independent counsel running loose in Clintons second term would ensure that he never rises above the rank of Franklin Pierce, but this just might save Janet Reno from being remembered in the same breath as John Mitchell.