Al Gore's struggle with the truth.

The following editorial appeared in the Chicago Tribune on Thursday, 6-29:

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Attorney General Janet Reno seems to have made it clear she will once again reject calls for a special prosecutor to investigate Vice President Al Gore, a position that becomes more difficult to defend as the lineup recommending such a probe grows ever longer.

FBI Director Louis Freeh called for an investigation. So did Charles LaBella, the former head of the Justice Department's campaign finance task force.

Now, LaBella's successor, Robert Conrad, has recommended that an independent investigation be launched to ferret out whether Gore has been truthful about his role in 1996 campaign fundraising activities.

Reno rejected Freeh and LaBella, and now appears certain to reject Conrad.

There was a time when Reno was on firmer ground, when the appointment of a prosecutor would have set off one more expensive and open-ended investigation under the federal independent counsel law, the statute that set off the never-ending inquiries into the Iran-Contra and Whitewater scandals. But that argument is now moot. Congress, with sound reason, allowed the independent counsel law to expire. If Reno were to appoint a special prosecutor now, that prosecutor would have to answer to someone: Janet Reno.

But Reno won't budge. And so it appears that Gore will be spared the lingering embarrassment of being the subject of a special prosecutor's probe while he is running for president. That should provide him scant comfort, for Gore still has to go before another tribunal, the voters, and the questions about his truth-telling can't be sitting very well with them.

"I think the truth is my friend in this," Gore said after releasing a transcript of his April 18 interview with Conrad concerning White House coffees and the infamous Buddhist temple fund-raiser. But with friends like that, Gore might not need enemies. The transcript shows Gore being evasive, parsing words, having a puzzling problem with his memory, and taking great umbrage that his actions would be questioned. In short, he was exhibiting many of the least admirable qualities of the incumbent president.

It is, to be sure, difficult to get exercised about whether White House

coffees and Buddhist temple visits violated the law. Those events demonstrate two things, that the campaign finance laws are arcane and unenforceable, and that Al Gore's claim to now be "passionate" about the need for more such laws is plain laughable.

More troubling than the inventive money-grabbing schemes of Clinton-Gore 1996 is Gore 2000's inability to give a straight, plain answer. It's all too familiar.

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CARICATURE of Al Gore available from Faces in the News on PressLink Online.

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(c) 2000, Chicago Tribune.

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