Freeh Says Reno Clearly Misread Prosecutor Law

July 16, 1998

Freeh Says Reno Clearly Misread Prosecutor Law

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Coverage of the Campaign Finance Inquiry into Clinton's Re-election Effort

By NEIL A. LEWIS

ASHINGTON -- FBI Director Louis Freeh forcefully warned Attorney General Janet Reno that she was misreading the law by not seeking an independent counsel to investigate campaign fund raising by the Clinton administration, Sen. Fred Thompson told a Senate committee on Wednesday.
"It is difficult to imagine a more compelling situation for appointing an independent counsel," Freeh wrote in a memorandum, Thompson said. The Republican Tennessee senator said he was briefed on the memo in June by a senior FBI official.
With Reno appearing as a witness before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday, Thompson and others used the disagreement between her and Freeh to press again for an outside investigation of campaign finance practices involving White House officials.
Although Freeh's rift with Reno over the appointment of a special prosecutor had been publicly disclosed last winter, Thompson angered Reno on Wednesday by confronting her with specific language and details from Freeh's memo that had not been publicly released. The Justice Department had repeatedly rebuffed requests by Congress to release Freeh's memo, even going so far as to defy a subpoena issued by a House committee investigating campaign finance.
Freeh's 22-page memorandum was written in November 1997. Thompson, who was chairman of the Senate panel that had investigated campaign finance abuses, characterized Freeh's memo as a broad-based and unforgiving critique of the attorney general's interpretation of the independent counsel law. The statute is designed to avoid the appearance of a conflict of interest when an attorney general may have to investigate matters relating to the president who appointed her or him.
Freeh, the senator said, "pointed out that their investigation, the FBI's investigation, had led them to the highest levels of the White House, including the vice president and the president, and therefore the Department of Justice must look at the Independent Counsel Statute."
He added that FBI officials told him that Freeh's memo also described Reno's decision not to seek an independent counsel as starkly inconsistent with her actions in seeking to have independent counsels named in other investigations.
At the hearing Wednesday, Reno told Thompson that he was wrong to reveal the contents of the memorandum. "Our understanding was that the briefing was supposed to be confidential," said Reno, with a measure of anger.
Thompson said he was briefed June 19 by FBI general counsel Larry Parkinson and there had been no admonition to keep it private. Reno rebuffed any notion that she was trying to shield President Clinton or Vice President Al Gore from a criminal investigation over fund-raising telephone calls they made in the 1996 election.

As she had in the past, Reno defended her need to keep confidential discussions among law enforcement officials whose opinions she relied on. And she again defended her decision to leave the campaign finance investigation in the hands of officials in the Justice Department she heads.
"I'm the one that you confirmed as attorney general," she testified. "I've got to make the legal decisions. I've got to be able to rely on the people within the Justice Department to give me full, honest opinions, and to discuss those and to have those discussed when the decision has to be mine and I need to rely on good, honest give and take where they pull no punches and tell me what they think because I've got people giving me all sorts of opinions and I want to continue that, because that's the type of Justice Department that I have operated.

"But the bottom line for me is, I'm going to call it like I see it, based on the evidence and the law." Reno also noted that her Department had indicted 11 people in the campaign finance investigation.
Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., complained that the department had charged the donors, but none of the recipients in the White House or the Democratic Party.
Reno's appearance before the Judiciary Committee was supposed to be aimed at general oversight of the Justice Department and she spoke about more routine matters in a long opening statement. She finished her prepared remarks by talking about recent funerals she had attended of Border Patrol agents and how those officers represented the best in the nation.
But that was quickly brushed aside as the hearing room became a partisan free-fire zone, turning to the issue of Reno's judgment not to seek the appointment of an independent counsel to investigate the President and his subordinates.
Reno's appearances before the committee have taken on the characteristics of a ritual with each side playing by-now familiar roles. She remains stolid, or as her critics would say, stubborn, in her refusal to engage, deflecting questions with well-practiced answers. Republican senators become exasperated and impatient while Democratic senators rush to praise her performance in office.
But her practiced composure appeared to have been pierced momentarily Wednesday in a colloquy with Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, who is chairman of the Judiciary Committee and a relentless if courteous critic of her decision not to appoint an independent counsel.
Reno told Hatch that her decisions were based solely on the law.
Hatch retorted: "Then I am calling on you to do the right thing based on the law." Reno responded, "Anybody who says I'm protecting anybody ought to listen to the criticism I get when I name independent counsels."
Reno then adopted an uncharacteristically meek tone and told Hatch: "You don't have to be so fierce with me."
Thompson said that the Freeh memorandum had seven sections, all disagreeing with Reno's conclusions. He said that Freeh noted that the independent counsel law has two sections, one which requires the appointment of an independent counsel when there is credible evidence that a senior official may have committed a crime and an optional section where the Attorney General feels there is a conflict of interest.
"The ultimate conclusion by Mr. Freeh is that the statute should be triggered under both the mandatory and discretionary provisions of the statute," the senator said.

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