Reno Outlines Independent Counsel Plan

WASHINGTON — Atty. Gen. Janet Reno said Friday she will resist partisan pressure and will decide, based on the law alone, whether an independent counsel is needed to investigate political fund-raising by President Clinton or Vice President Al Gore.

The separate Justice Department reviews she is overseeing, Reno said, focus exclusively on any telephone solicitations made from the White House by either leader.

Clinton maintains that he cannot recall making fund-raising calls from the White House but has not denied that it could have happened. Gore has acknowledged making more than 40 calls from the White House.

The Times reported Friday that Clinton did solicit several donors by phone in October 1994, according to information provided to federal investigators by a former senior White House aide, Harold M. Ickes.

Reno, appearing at a weekly media briefing, was asked if her reviews of Clinton and Gore, now in initial, 30-day stages, will be swayed by pressure from either the White House or Republicans. Some GOP lawmakers have called on her to resign or warned that she should expect impeachment proceedings if she does not recommend the naming of an independent counsel.

After waving off the possibility that the impeachment threats could amount to unlawful interference with a federal investigation, Reno turned pointedly serious.

“I think the important thing is, I’m just going to call it like I see it,” she said. “I am going to pursue it and let the evidence and the law dictate what I do. And if somebody wants to impeach me, then I’ll face that issue at that point, but that won’t be a factor in my consideration.”

Reno said she wants to ensure that the newly reshuffled investigative team of federal prosecutors and FBI agents has the necessary resources. Reno said that both she and FBI Director Louis J. Freeh will meet, as needed, with leaders of the investigative team.

The final decisions regarding reviews of the president and vice president, Reno said, “involve complex issues of law. They involve many facts. And they have great consequences, one way or the other.”

Reno appeared to signal that she will not resolve Clinton’s or Gore’s review based solely on a determination of whether either leader knowingly raised so-called “hard” political funds, which are subject to federal election law restrictions, from inside the White House.

This appeared to differ from the impression Reno left last spring, when she informed the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee that she would not move toward seeking an independent counsel probe of Gore’s phone calls. Reno suggested then that Gore could not have violated federal law because, she indicated, Gore raised only unregulated “soft” money.

On Friday, Reno made clear that the legal questions she is weighing regarding Clinton’s and Gore’s fund-raising are more numerous. For example, Reno acknowledged that the question of how the 1883 law against solicitations on federal property has been applied over the years may be relevant.

Reno acknowledged on Sept. 3 that she had opened a 30-day review of Gore.

On Sept. 20, Reno confirmed through aides that she had authorized a 30-day review of the president, following speculation that he may have made fund-raising calls from the White House. The Times on Friday reported that Clinton’s calls were made in the presence of Ickes from a study in the residential quarters.

White House aides sought Friday to emphasize that no federal official has ever been prosecuted for making a fund-raising call from a federal facility. Moreover, a 1979 opinion by the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel advised that partisan political activity in the residential quarters appeared to be lawful.

The legality of calls made by Clinton from the White House residence is “murky,” according to Trevor Potter, a Republican lawyer and past chairman of the Federal Election Commission. However, Potter said that because of the 1979 opinion, “this means that it is impossible to prosecute the president” based on what is known.

Times staff writer Jonathan Peterson in Houston contributed to this story.