Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, May 31, 1994 TAG: 9405310069
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A2 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium
Missing from the 1986 campaign report - the only one on the public record detailing Clinton's fund-raiser - is any mention of four donations totaling $12,000.
Federal savings and loan investigators have alleged in a criminal referral that those donations - most of which were in the form of cashier's checks - were diverted illegally from an S&L owned by Clinton's Whitewater business partner, James McDougal.
The existence of the May 1986 report, obtained by The Associated Press, has not been reported since the Whitewater affair began in 1992. And the fact that Clinton's campaign appears to have reported some donations from the controversial fund-raiser and not others is also new.
The Associated Press reported Monday that investigators alleged in a criminal referral last year that McDougal used a complex loan transaction at Madison Guaranty Savings & Loan to divert money to the campaign.
The referral, now in the hands of Whitewater special prosecutor Robert Fiske, named McDougal, the Clinton campaign fund and Charles Peacock III, an Arkansas businessman who received the loan, as suspects. All three have denied wrongdoing.
Rep. Jim Leach, R-Iowa, a leading Whitewater critic in Congress, said Friday that the 1986 donation report raises "perplexing questions" about whether the campaign had any knowledge of the suspect donations.
"To the extent any funds were transferred from an insolvent S&L to the Clinton campaign, the end effect is deferred public financing of a gubernatorial election," he said. "The federal taxpayer, after all, had to pick up the tab for the eventual failure of Madison."
But Betsey Wright, who served both as Clinton's gubernatorial chief of staff and campaign manager, said the failure to list those donations is easily explained: Those that didn't appear on the 1986 report were used to retire 1984 debts.
Any donations collected for 1984 should have been itemized on separate reports - none of which exist on the public record.
Wright emphatically stated that the campaign had no reason to hide any contributions because it believed all were legal.
At least two of the people listed on the cashier's checks as donating $3,000 each to Clinton - former Sen. J. William Fulbright and college student Ken Peacock - have said they did not give the money attributed to them and did not attend the fund-raiser.
The fund-raiser was hosted by McDougal on April 4, 1985, in Madison S&L's lobby.
The May 1986 campaign report shows that at least $8,000 of the donations raised that day did not go to retire the 1984 loan, but instead went to provide early money for Clinton's 1986 re-election bid. That is why they appear on the report, which was filed by Clinton's 1986 campaign.
At least an additional $14,000 in donations from the fund-raiser were left off the report.
They include the $12,000 in checks that federal investigators allege were diverted illegally from the S&L and $2,000 donated by Chris Wade, a real estate agent who worked on Whitewater.
Keywords:
POLITICS
by CNB