In those years, in those Spartan rooms, Albert Gore Jr. indulged his twin obsessions: saving the planet and raising cash. It was where he wrote his environmental credo, ““Earth in the Balance.’’ It was also a legal safe house from which he made fund-raising calls. By law and custom, Gore knew, you didn’t dial for dollars from your Senate office. Eager to repay a debt from his 1988 presidential campaign, and to raise money for his 1990 Senate race, Gore instead ““spent a lot of time over in the Methodist Building,’’ recalls a former top aide.
Last week history caught up with Al Gore at the Methodist Building. Suddenly he had a new use for the apartment: as temporary space for lawyers he’d hired to deal with an inquiry into fund-raising calls he made from the White House as vice president. Attorney General Janet Reno dismissed charges that President Clinton had sold White House access. But she requested at least 60 more days to decide whether to ask for an independent counsel to probe Gore’s calls. ““I remain confident that everything I did was legal and proper,’’ the vice president said.
He may be right, but it may not stop the march to a prosecutor. The relevant law–the Pendleton Act of 1883–bars solicitation of donations on federal property. Though prosecutors have never applied it to phone calls, Reno may ultimately have an independent counsel make that decision–and such prosecutors can expand their mandates at will. Meanwhile, even some of Gore’s friends wonder how such a cautious man could have made at least 46 cash calls from the West Wing. ““Why didn’t he go make the calls from the Methodist Building?’’ lamented one.
Well, he was busy. As a good soldier, he wanted to impress the boss–Clinton–with his fund-raising prowess. But there’s another, more important reason for Gore’s current predicament. Unlike Clinton, who doesn’t like to directly ask for cash, Gore is one of the most earnestly systematic fund raisers of his generation. He may have simply become too comfortable in the world of political money that had nurtured him.
Gore has long been eager to raise bucks from new sources and with on-the-edge methods. He was the first modern presidential candidate to run after a ““tryout’’ before a formal assembly of fat cats. He was one of the first presidential contenders to borrow campaign funds from a wide array of banks. And he was one of the first senators to tap the emerging market of Asian-American donors in California.
Gore’s serious obsession with money dates to 1987. Not yet 40, he’d toyed with the idea of running for president–and rejected it. Then he got a call from a group named Impac, a herd of fat cats that had been enticed into politics by Walter Mondale in 1984. Impac comprised 40 donors who wanted, in 1988, to pick their ““own’’ candidate. They rented a room at a D.C. hotel and interviewed candidates. Gore gave a stellar performance. Within a couple of months, he was in the race–backed by a promise that 16 Impac members would raise $250,000 each.
But the Impac guys didn’t all come through. As Southern primaries approached, Gore–desperate to avoid embarrassment in his home region–borrowed $1.5 million from five banks, four in Tennessee and one in Washington. In what was a novel move in 1988, Gore pledged to repay the loans in part with the proceeds of fund-raisers he hadn’t yet scheduled. He made sure the loans were repaid in full.
Then Gore had to begin all over again, this time raising money for his 1990 Senate re-election. And that’s where he found a new mother lode of money, among rising Asian-Americans. Gore’s entree to this world was Maria Hsia, a Los Angeles Democrat who ran a business helping Asians with immigration problems. Gore met her in 1988 at the Washington home of the late fund-raising doyenne, Pamela Harriman.
Soon Hsia was writing to Gore, according to documents obtained by NEWSWEEK. She asked if he would come on a trip to Taiwan, sponsored by the Pacific Leadership Council, which she had founded with James Riady and John Huang. ““I remember at Mrs. Harriman’s house when you mentioned to me that you would like to know the Asian community better and would like to be closer to them,’’ Hsia wrote on Nov. 22, 1988. ““If you decide to join the trip,’’ she wrote to Gore, ““I will persuave [sic] all my colleagues in the future to play a leader role in your future presidential race.’’ Though many senators were invited, Gore was the only one to make the trip.
The journey to Taiwan, NEWSWEEK has learned, was funded in part by $10,000 from Riady and Huang. Hsia became Gore’s chief fund raiser among West Coast Asians; Gore became Hsia’s principal contact with Capitol Hill and with companies in Tennessee, a New South state that Asians had already targeted for investment. She sponsored numerous fund-raising events for Gore, including one in 1989 with monks and nuns from the same L.A.-area temple later made famous by Gore’s visit in 1996. After the first visit, the temple master told his followers about how impressed he was with ““this handsome youth.’’ Hsia promised to make Gore ““one of the senators closest to the Asian-Pacific community,’’ in one letter obtained by NEWSWEEK. ““But for that to occur, we need time and a special commitment from each other.’’ Soon thereafter, their mutual-admiration society went to work. Gore’s staff helped Hsia arrange business deals in Tennessee, for which, according to her former business partner, she charged commissions. Gore supported an amendment to an immigration bill that benefited Hsia’s wealthy Asian clients.
In all this, there is no evidence Gore or Hsia did anything improper. But his close fund-raising contacts with Hsia could undercut his contention that he had no idea the event she arranged at the L.A. Buddhist temple was, in effect, a fundraiser. Still, the Justice Department isn’t interested in the Buddhist temple, or in Gore’s colorful fund-raising history. Cases are made by a specific act involving a specific person and a specific law. So Justice will focus exclusively on the phone calls Gore made from the White House, whether the law applied to them and whether Gore had reason to know as much. His advisers expect he will be interviewed by the FBI–and the bureau is already making plans for the session. In the meantime, Gore’s lawyers have now moved out of the Methodist Building and into downtown offices. They seemed to be prepared for a long haul.
