Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, March 28, 1992 TAG: 9203280298
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: The Washington Post
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
It was the second time in two days that allegations surfaced that Robb supporters may have inaccurately reported in FEC listings how money was spent as part of an aggressive "damage control" effort designed to combat reports that Robb, while governor, had affairs and attended parties where drugs were used.
Robb said Friday he had "absolutely no knowledge of any such activities" and that he would cooperate fully with federal investigators. Robb consistently has denied that he cheated on his wife or saw drugs being used.
Sources said investigators are trying to determine whether Robb aides in 1989 paid about $200 for phone records of Billy Franklin, a Virginia Beach private detective who compiled the material he gathered for the GOP into a book. At the time, Franklin was denying that he had been hired by Republicans.
If the phone records linked Franklin to the GOP, that information could have been used to bolster a complaint by Robb's election committee to the FEC that money paid to Franklin for his work should have been reported by Republicans as a campaign expense.
Franklin said Friday that an FBI agent and a state police officer visited him Wednesday and asked if any of his phone records from 1988 and 1989 had been stolen, discarded or misplaced.
After a check of his home and office phone receipts, Franklin said, he told the investigators that none was missing.
Franklin said that agents who questioned him did not mention the possibility that his records may have been bought. He recalled Friday that a couple of reporters told him in 1989 that someone was trying to link him through a record of his long-distance calls to a Richmond physician who first employed him to investigate Robb's private life.
Meanwhile, in an action believed to be related to another campaign filing to the FEC, former Robb aide Robert Watson testified before a federal grand jury in Norfolk for about two hours Friday.
Sources said prosecutors are investigating whether Robb's former chief of staff and others violated federal election law by allegedly failing to disclose that $500 of campaign funds was used to pay for a trip Watson made to Massachusetts in October 1990.
Watson traveled to Boston to question a woman, then a student at a college there, who was alleged to have had a relationship with Robb in the mid-1980s, sources said.
According to sources, former aides have told investigators that Robb's chief of staff at the time, David McCloud, approved the transaction. Watson was said to have been reimbursed for the plane fare with a check for $500, which was written to William Hutchens, a political consultant and part-time employee of the Robb for Senate campaign committee, who then gave the money to Watson.
Watson is cooperating with federal authorities as part of a plea agreement stemming from his part in distributing a transcription of an illegally recorded telephone conversation of Robb's political rival, Virginia Gov. Douglas Wilder.
by CNB