
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SATURDAY, June 12, 1993                   TAG: 9306120167
SECTION: NATL/INTL                    PAGE: A-3   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: The Washington Post
DATELINE: WASHINGTON                                LENGTH: Short

WHITE HOUSE DENIES MAKING IRS THREAT

Senate and House GOP leaders Friday called for congressional investigations or special prosecutor investigations of the Clinton administration's firing of the seven employees of its travel office. But the White House said it will rely on its internal review to determine the facts.

Senate Minority Leader Robert Dole, R-Kan., renewed his criticism of the administration after a report in The Washington Post on Thursday that a White House lawyer raised the possibility of using the Internal Revenue Service to investigate alleged travel office wrongdoing. The White House denied anyone there directly contacted the IRS. The firm that handled most of the White House airplane charter business was presented with an administrative IRS summons in the midst of the travel office controversy.

Dole Friday called on Sen. David Pryor, D-Ark., Clinton's friend and chairman of the Senate subcommittee that oversees the IRS, to conduct an investigation.

In the House, four Republican leaders - Robert H. Michel and Henry J. Hyde, Ill.; Newt Gingrich, Ga.; and Dick Armey, Texas - called on House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dan Rostenkowski, D-Ill., to investigation what they called an apparent effort by "senior White House officials to politicize the Internal Revenue Service."

The White House explanation of what transpired, combined with the May 21 audit of UltrAir, the charter airline, "defy credulity," a letter from the four stated.

Dole, in a news conference, complained, "The only people looking into this are the ones who got the White House into the mess in the first place."

by CNB