Gore and the $455,000 gardener

If there is ever an honest investigation of the foreign money that financed the 1996 Clinton-Gore campaign; Vice President Gore's conversation with Arief Wiriadinata; a man described tay the New York Times as "an Indonesian gardener who illegally contributed $455;000 to the Democratic Party;' may well lead to Core's indictment.

The charge would tae making false statements under oath in a deposition taken April 18, 20.

Unfortunately, for Gore, the conversation in question was captured an tape.

It is, in fact, on one of the videotapes of White House fundraising coffees that President Clinton in 1997 neglected for at Least six months to surrender in the face of requests and subpoenas from the Justice Department, Senate Governmental Affairs Committee and House Government Reform Committee. (Then-White House Special Counsel Lanny Davis characterized the administration's failure to produce the tapes as "an honest good-faith error.")

For another three years after the tapes had been surrendered, what Gore said to the "Indonesian gardener" was somewhat obscured because the copy of the tape provided to Congress was of poor quality and in a monaural audio format

Now, thanks to the dogged persistence of a handful of investigators, the House Government Reform Committee has finally gotten its hands on the original tape-which has brilliant video and is recorded in stereo. This indispensable piece of evidence at least suggests an explanation for why Gore may have risked making false statements under oath about something so seemingly innocuous as a cup of coffee with the President of the United States and a few of his friends.

To understand the predicament in which the ice President found himself during his April 18, 2000, deposition, it is necessary to start the story in 1995.

That year, Dick Morris was advising the White House that, to set the stage for victory in the 1996 campaign, the Democratic National Committee (DNC) would need to begin an aggressive campaign of so-called issue ads, promoting Clinton's agenda. The campaign would cost the DNC $1 million a week.

Some in the White House, including Harold Ickes, thought Morris was "nuts" Others thought he was right on target.

Gore was of the latter group. In a Nov.11,1997, interview with the FBI, Gore said that he had argued in small strategy meetings with the President and a few others that Morris's ad campaign could be successful if he and the President personally focused on raising funds for it. `The context of these small meetings," the FBI reports in its transcription of the interview, "was framed by the larger question `was it possible or feasible for the DNC to take on such a large media project and would the DNC be able to raise the large amount of money needed for the project?' Vice President Gore said the answer to this question was `yes' because the President was the titular head of the DNC. Traditionally, the incumbent is able to do more for his party. Vice President Gore stated that he and the President were willing to do more perky to raise money for the media campaign by making more fundraising trips and meeting with people to ask for contributions."

Talking points written for Gore by aide Ron Klain for just such a meeting, state: "So we can raise the money BUT

ONLY IF-the President and I actually do the events, the calls, the coffees, etc."

Gore advised the FBI of his technique for persuading donors to part with their money: "Vice President Gore stated that as a result of being involved in the fund-raising process, he has become aware that if you are asking someone to contribute it is better to allow the donor to make a firm connection to a result of their contribution," the FBI wrote. `Ihe media fund was a way of describing the need for extra money to be raised for television ads. It was easier to get people to contribute if they could tie their money to a specific thing, such as the television ads."

Gore used this technique at a meeting in San Francisco on Oct. 13, 1995, and again in Chicago, on Dec. 11, 1995. "Vice President Gore said that these meetings were an attempt to introduce the media fund `wholesale' to a group of people rather than through individual calls;' the FBI reported. "The people in attendance at the meetings were individuals who would be willing to contribute to the DNC media fund. . . . Vice President Gore stated that, during these meetings, the proposed television ads were shown to the attendees as a group and he made a pitch to them."

On Dec. 15, 1995, four days after Gore had made his "pitch" for the ads in Chicago, "the Indonesian gardener who illegally contributed $455,000 to the Democratic Party" showed up at the White House. He was there for coffee with the President. That very day, according to an accounting by congressional investigators,tthe gardener and his wife, Soraya, would make $50,000 in illegal contributions to the DNC.

Gore was also there that day. And so, too, was a cameraman from the White House Communications Agency-who caught the first few minutes of the coffee on the tape now in the possession of the House Government Reform Committee.