Wryly Defiant, Ickes Invokes Reagan, Bush and
Jay Leno
After weeks of hearings, senators investigating 1996 campaign
finance practices came face-to-face today with the man they believed stretched the law and
then leapt through loopholes to help raise tens of millions of dollars for President
Clinton.
What they and their television audience got was
an earful about how legal and proper the President's fund-raising was -- and about the
debt Mr. Clinton owed to Republican Presidents for showing him the ropes.
"In having the White House actively involved in campaign
matters, the Clinton White House merely followed well established Republican
precedent," said Harold M. Ickes, the former White House deputy chief of staff. He
lectured the senators about calls he said President Reagan made to contributors from the
Oval Office and on weekly campaign meetings he said were held in the Bush White House,
accusing them of pursuing partisan aims by zeroing in on Mr. Clinton and Vice President Al
Gore.
In a pugnacious, half-hour opening statement that
quoted the comedian Jay Leno as well as former Reagan White House operatives like Lyn
Nofziger and Ed Rollins, Mr. Ickes, who was pushed out of the White House
after the election when Mr. Clinton passed him over for promotion, proved himself every
bit as combative and loyal to his old boss as Republican investigators had expected.
"I know that it is customary for witnesses
to express their great pleasure to appear before you," Mr. Ickes began, in gruff
greeting to the senators, "but because I am under oath, I am unable to say I share
that sentiment."
As he entered and exited the hearing room lugging a boxy brown
briefcase, Mr. Ickes complained to reporters that he was running out of
cab fare, apparently in reference to his going back and forth to the Capitol after his
testimony was delayed.
Mr. Ickes's testimony was pushed past 3 P.M.
because of committee bickering earlier, followed by Senate votes on whether to change the
campaign finance law the White House is accused of evading. Senator Fred Thompson, the
Tennessee Republican who heads the committee investigating campaign finance practices, called a recess as soon as Mr. Ickes wrapped up.
Republicans said that they were satisfied that Mr. Thompson had
generated enough news early in the day to shoulder Mr. Ickes's defense
out of the spotlight. One Republican aide said the Republicans were "very glad to be
able to push off Ickes's statement until late afternoon, and have a fresh news
day to take our whacks at him tomorrow."
The aide added that, while Senators planned to press Mr. Ickes
about a range of finance practices, they expected a formidable witness. "We really
haven't been making war cries that we're going to come out of this with
his scalp," he said.
Michael J. Madigan, the chief counsel to the Senate Governmental
Affairs Committee, said that he hoped to complete questioning of Mr.
Ickes on Wednesday.
It was Mr. Ickes, a famously compulsive jotter of notes and filer
of memorandums, who supplied investigators with documents showing how thoroughly Mr.
Clinton had involved himself in Democratic fund-raising. Mr. Ickes, who boasted today of
his political training from "campaigns for district leader of part
of an Assembly district in New York City to 11 Presidential campaigns," has emerged
in the hearings as the President's omnipresent operative, calling shots as the Democratic
National Committee raised money.
Senate investigators twice took depositions from Mr. Ickes, but Republicans appeared reluctant to call him to testify,
and today he demonstrated why.
"I want to state categorically that I know of no violation of
law or inappropriate action by the President or the Vice President," Mr. Ickes said.
Broadening his defense as he spoke, Mr. Ickes added the words "or
inappropriate action" to a prepared text, replete with footnotes, that had been
distributed to reporters.
Mr. Ickes added that he knew of no law-breaking
by any members of the staff at the White House, in the Clinton-Gore campaign, or in the
Democratic National Committee.
White House aides were delighted with the performance of Mr.
Ickes, who even appended to his prepared remarks a defense of Attorney General Janet Reno
for having "integrity of the highest order."
Taking a page from Mr. Clinton, Mr. Ickes said that the system of
campaign finance needed attention, not the 1996 campaign practices. "Your complaint
is with the law, not with us," he said.
Mr. Ickes, whose wife sat behind him in the
hearing room, acknowledged that mistakes were made in the campaign, without naming anyone.
But he said that Democrats were driven to compete with a "Republican money
machine" that still raised $222 million more than the Democrats raised -- $558
million to the Democrats' $336 million.
"We regularly consulted highly regarded legal counsel at the
White House, the Democratic National Committee and the Clinton-Gore
re-election campaign," Mr. Ickes said. He paused after each word as he added,
"And we followed their advice."
A lawyer, Mr. Ickes proceeded to swat aside
several charges leveled by Republicans.
Mr. Ickes said that before asking Mr. Clinton to
make fund raising calls, he checked with the White House counsel's office "and was
told that he could make those calls from the White House -- preferably from the
Residence." He added, "To my knowledge, the President made few
of those calls I asked him to make."
Mr. Ickes then quoted Mr. Leno on the absurdity of the President
calling from elsewhere. "What's he supposed to do," he quoted Mr. Leno as saying
on "The Tonight Show," as Mr. Thompson began to grin, "go to the pay phone at the 7 Eleven?"
"Certainly," added Mr. Ickes, who
studied past campaigns run from the White House, "President Reagan
recognized this when he phoned contributors from the Oval Office."
He quoted Mr. Rollins, the Reagan aide, as saying that he
dispensed favors like appointments to advisory commissions to Republican Congressmen to
help them get re-elected in 1982. He described how James A. Baker 3d, as chief of staff,
ran campaign operations from the White House for Mr. Reagan and then for Mr. Bush.
Mr. Ickes argued that it was legal for the President to help plan advertising paid for by the national or state
parties, and equally legal for national, state and local parties to transfer money among
themselves. He said that White House staff could legally direct contributors to proper
recipients for their money. And he said the President was entitled to have contributors
stay overnight at the White House.
"It simply is not illegal or untoward for a President or a Vice President to grant access to supporters," Mr. Ickes said, acidly noting that it was also not illegal for the Republicans to invite big contributors "to dine at the Capitol to meet with Congressional leaders."