Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, March 13, 1995 TAG: 9503130100
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium
The documents are important because the speaker plans to go on the offensive this week, releasing the ethics committee letter that conditionally approved the tax-deductible financing and teaching of the course, ``Renewing American Civilization.''
The Aug. 3, 1993, committee letter, obtained by The Associated Press, was carefully and narrowly crafted to approve only the tax-deductible educational activity described to the committee by Gingrich, who was then Republican whip. Information on Gingrich's contacts with the ethics committee came from congressional sources who declined to be identified publicly.
Gingrich described the course in letters he sent the committee May 12 and July 21, 1993, which were also obtained by the AP. Those letters did not mention the central role in promoting and financing the course by Gingrich's political committee - GOPAC.
In the letters, Gingrich promised there would be no mass mailings, although documents show GOPAC did such mailings. Gingrich wrote that the course would be non-partisan and not attack President Clinton. Yet GOPAC documents described the course's goal as recruiting 200,000 conservative activists and in some cases bitterly denounced Clinton.
The GOPAC effort was under way for more than two months before Gingrich sought approval for the course. Gingrich, who began teaching the course in late 1993, gave his last lecture at Reinhardt College in Waleska, Ga., on Saturday. He said he has 20 hours of lectures on videotape that can be distributed to teach others about his philosophy of government.
The ethics committee caught up with the GOPAC role when the course was challenged as a partisan activity - not eligible for tax-deductible financing - in a complaint filed in September 1994. Former Democratic Rep. Ben Jones of Georgia, who filed the complaint, provided dozens of GOPAC documents. Two months later, Jones lost his bid to unseat Gingrich from his suburban Atlanta district.
On Oct. 31, 1994, then-committee chairman Rep. James McDermott, D-Wash., and the ranking Republican - former Rep. Fred Grandy of Iowa - wrote Gingrich about his omissions. They said the documents supplied by Jones ``reflect the involvement of GOPAC and GOPAC employees in developing and raising funds for the course. GOPAC's role in seeking funding for the course was not disclosed to the committee in your letters.''
The committee then cited some two dozen of the GOPAC documents, all written before the panel approved the course - several dated before Gingrich initially contacted the committee for approval.
The committee leaders also said the documents ``raise questions as to whether the course was ... exclusively educational in nature, or ... partisan political activity intended to benefit Republican candidates.''
Gingrich spokesman Tony Blankley said Sunday that the GOPAC role was not relevant because the course itself was nonpartisan.
``The New York Times recently cited academics who characterized the class as not partisan,'' Blankley said. ``Anybody who sees all 20 hours of the class would have to agree with that proposition.
``If the class is nonpartisan, though ideological, all of the references [to GOPAC] are irrelevant to the point Newt was making to the committee: that the class will not be a partisan activity.''
Blankley said Gingrich's promise not to do mass mailings referred only to taxpayer-financed mailings, not to mailings paid from private funds. And he added that Gingrich's pledge not to attack Clinton meant he would not do so in the class - a promise the speaker has kept.
In the committee's 1993 approval letter, McDermott and Grandy wrote Gingrich that since he said he would not be compensated, he did not need committee approval to teach.
by CNB