Ex-Aide Details Clinton Calls From White House

WASHINGTON — Telephoning from the White House, President Clinton solicited money from several major Democratic contributors in 1994, according to new information provided to federal investigators by a former White House aide, The Times has learned.

Clinton placed the calls within a month of the 1994 midterm elections, when the Democratic National Committee was trying to preserve the party’s control of Congress and was seeking the money to pay for a television advertising campaign.

Harold M. Ickes, the former aide, has told federal authorities that he was present when Clinton made the calls from a room in the residence quarters, according to people familiar with the investigation.

The account, provided during questioning this week, is the first corroboration that Clinton personally solicited political donations from within the White House.

The propriety of such solicitations is the subject of intense debate. Many legal experts believe that partisan political activity in the working quarters of the White House might violate federal law. However, some experts believe that fund-raising in the residential portions of the mansion would be permissible. The applicable federal law, first written in 1883, does not address this point.

Regardless, the confirmation that Clinton personally solicited donors from the White House could inflame criticism that he and Democratic campaigners stretched the limits of propriety and abused the Executive Mansion for partisan purposes. Such a controversy already has focused on political “coffees” in the residence.

The Justice Department is reviewing the legality of fund-raising by both Clinton and Vice President Al Gore, who has said that he would not again solicit money from the White House. Atty. Gen. Janet Reno soon will decide whether to initiate a 90-day “preliminary review” of whether to seek appointment of an independent counsel to investigate their conduct.

White House officials said Thursday that they would not attempt to dispute Ickes’ account of the calls. Lanny J. Davis, a special White House counsel, asserted that any such calls “are entirely legal, regardless of where they were made from in the White House and regardless of whether they were for federal campaign funds or for non-federal campaign” purposes.

“The applicable law, in over 120 years, has never been applied, nor was it intended to be applied to calls made to private citizens in their homes or offices,” he said.

Speculation about Clinton’s calls to donors was heightened recently by the discovery of White House documents showing that the president had been asked to make fund-raising phone calls during the 1996 campaign. There has been no confirmation that he actually made them, though.

Ickes’ new recollection of the earlier, 1994 calls came after the discovery of documents from that year referring to the fund-raising effort.

According to the account provided to the federal investigators by the former deputy White House chief of staff, Ickes was with Clinton in a private, second-floor study in October 1994 when the president spoke by phone with several donors.

Clinton, after voicing his appreciation for the donors’ support, referred to the approach of the midterm elections. Clinton told those donors who seemed willing to write a check that a Democratic representative would follow up with them, according to those familiar with the Justice Department inquiry.

Reached Thursday night, Ickes, 58, declined to comment. Ickes met voluntarily with the federal investigators earlier in the day, officials said.

The president has said repeatedly that he cannot recall soliciting donors by phone from the White House but would not deny the possibility. At a news conference Monday at the United Nations, Clinton was asked: “Were the calls made, or were they not?”

The president answered, in part: “Let me just say this. I believe what the vice president did and what I did was legal and I am absolutely certain that we believe we were acting within the letter of the law. And I’m going to cooperate however I can to establish the facts.”

In recent weeks, internal White House documents have shown that Clinton was asked to make fund-raising calls on a number of occasions. In earlier congressional depositions, Ickes suggested that Clinton might have made fund-raising calls from the White House for the 1996 reelection campaign but that he was uncertain.

Ickes answered further questions for federal investigators about Clinton’s 1994 phone calls on Thursday.

Documents show that Clinton was prepared for the 1994 solicitations with call sheets provided by the Democratic National Committee. In separate memos, addressed to Ickes and dated Oct. 18, 1994, and Oct. 21, 1994, the DNC provided names and phone numbers of major donors, along with brief biographical information and a summary of their contribution history. Copies of the memos were obtained by The Times.

Seven of the people on the call sheets, either individually or through their companies, made a total of 11 contributions to the Democrats within about a month of Oct. 18, according to Federal Election Commission records. The total donated: $490,000.

On the Oct. 21 call sheet, Ickes has confirmed to investigators that he wrote, next to the name of one prospective donor, corporate executive Dennis Bakke of Virginia: “Likes BC, but will not contribute to DNC.”

Also on Oct. 21, two donors whose names appeared on the first call sheet made contributions. Phillip Frost, who is chairman of Ivax Corp., a Miami pharmaceutical firm, donated $5,000. On Oct. 26, Richard Jenrette, chairman of The Equitable Life Insurance Co. in New York City, gave $10,000, election records show. Neither Frost nor Jenrette returned phone calls Thursday.

Another donor on the Oct. 18 call sheet was Richard “Skip” Hayward, chairman of the Mashantucket Pequot Nation and a major Democratic donor. His tribe made two $50,000 contributions in November 1994. Hayward could not be reached for comment.

Two weeks after the Oct. 18 call list was provided to Clinton, John E. Connelly, chairman of a marketing firm in Pittsburgh, Pa., and a longtime Democratic donor, made two contributions totaling $200,000, according to FEC records. Another donor on that list, investment banker John Torkelson, gave $25,000 to the Democrats on Oct. 27, records show. Torkelson’s firm, Princeton Venture Research, gave two additional $25,000 donations on Nov. 2 and Nov. 14, 1994.

On the call sheet, next to Connelly’s name is an “X” and the word “call” circled in Ickes’ handwriting.

The figure $200,000 is handwritten next to Connelly’s name. Existence of the Oct. 18 call sheet was reported earlier this week by the New York Times.

Four of those listed on the call sheets said Thursday that they could not recall being telephoned or solicited by the president in late 1994.

Said Bernard Rapoport, a longtime Clinton supporter from Texas: “When [Clinton] calls up, he wants to know how Audrey [Rapoport’s wife] is, and about Ronnie, my son. . . . So, the conversation is 95% personal and 1% on that [fund-raising].”

The debate over the propriety of fund-raising in the White House is a fractious one. The 1883 law was originally intended to prevent federal officials from shaking down subordinates for campaign money. In a 1979 opinion, the Justice Department held that the law does not prohibit partisan political activities in the residence quarters of the White House.

“The Justice Department has ruled, and I think correctly, that soliciting and receiving contributions in the private quarters of the White House is not illegal,” said Jan W. Baran, a former general counsel for the Republican National Committee.

Times researcher Janet Lundblad in Los Angeles and staff writer Glenn F. Bunting in Washington contributed to this story.