Edition: U.S. / Global

Democrats Win First Round of Fund-Raising Inquiry

Published: July 13, 1997

With the initial week of campaign finance hearings behind them, Democrats are convinced that they won the first round by employing an aggressive strategy, shared by the White House, Senate minority leaders and the Democratic National Committee, to accuse the Republicans of recycling musty newspaper clippings.

Part of the Democrats' strategy was to scoop the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee hearings by selectively releasing damaging information in the last few months about their own fund-raising practices. By the time the hearings arrived, the Democrats repeated the mantra that irritated the Republicans all week: ''It's old news.''

One fax in the torrent from the Democratic National Committee declared that the Republican senators could have saved the $66,000 daily cost of the hearings and ''gotten the same information seven months ago from a 60-cent newspaper.''

From a second-floor conference room in the White House, a team of lawyers, supervised by Charles F. C. Ruff, the White House counsel, and Lanny Breuer, a special counsel, closely monitored the Senate hearings all week. Because the proceedings were often not televised, at least one White House lawyer sat in the Senate hearing room, taking detailed notes and using a cellular telephone to inform lawyers back at the White House of the latest developments.

Whenever a Republican senator made an accusation, the White House and Democratic National Committee quickly tried to refute it by releasing reams of prior statements by President Clinton and copies of newspaper clips. The White House tactics -- together with some Republican broadsides this week -- illustrate how something billed as a nonpartisan search for the truth almost instantly degenerated into a bitter partisan scuffle.

Republican Congressional investigators acknowledged that they had suffered a disappointing week, adding that they might have to rethink their strategy of trying to present a bipartisan face during the hearings. But White House officials insisted that, despite signs to the contrary, they had not coordinated their overall strategy or responses to the hearings with the Senate minority staff or the Democratic National Committee.

But Amy Weiss Tobe, the communications director for the Democratic National Committee, said that the committee had consulted with the White House on the hearings. ''Our lawyers talk with their lawyers,'' she said, adding that she had also spoken regularly with members of the White House team. She said the party had supplied information to the White House ''so they know where the truth lies in an accusation.'' She said there had also been ''a couple instances where we told the committee staff when there was something inaccurate that was said by a senator.''

Anxious to avoid any appearance of overconfidence, the Democrats, like the Republicans, were quick to point out that the hearings had just begun. ''We're just at week one; we've just had one witness,'' said a Democratic Senate aide, who, like most of the other officials, spoke only on the condition of anonymity. ''I won't stop being scared until Dec. 31,'' the day the Senate committee concludes its investigation.

Several White House officials decided months ago that ''holding things back never works,'' one official said. Publicly (and through selective leaks), the White House released damaging memorandums that had been sent to President Clinton and Vice President Al Gore.

''We genuinely believe that these hearings are about partisan politics,'' said an Administration official. ''Therefore, if we are going to get whacked, we are going to whack back.''

The avatar of the White House strategy could be seen pacing the hallway outside the hearing room. Any time he objected to a senator's charge, Lanny J. Davis, special counsel to the President, held an impromptu news conference. More than once, Mr. Davis handed out copies of months-old news articles, sometimes to the reporters who wrote them. That aggressiveness displeased some Democratic committee members, who said they did not like to have Mr. Davis spinning right outside their doors.

Still, the Democrats' tactics worked. One veteran Republican staff member said many of his colleagues had felt as if they were reeling all week. ''We have to begin controlling the agenda and understand the game we're in,'' he said.

For his part, Mr. Clinton was an ocean away last week, facing only two questions about the controversy at a news conference on Wednesday that was largely devoted to matters of international security. It was ''a happy coincidence'' that the President was in Europe as the hearings began, a White House aide said.

Michael D. McCurry, the White House press secretary, said that President Clinton had authorized his staff to disclose details of the Democrats' fund-raising practices after the election -- in the interests of candor, not scene-stealing.

''We were trying to continue to answer questions as best we could, and it obviously had the added effect of making a lot of what the committee is doing old news,'' Mr. McCurry said by telephone from Copenhagen.