The Economics Section - Page A4
- Daily Republican News Archive - February 25, 1997
President Clinton's Excellent
by Staff Journalists, The Daily Republican Newspaper
Lincoln Bedroom Idea!
Related Document:
- The White House List of Who Were Feted There!
WASHINGTON DESK - A written notation scribbled by president Clinton has drawn the ire of Congressional investigators. In spite of Clinton's recent denials, it has now been made clear that Clinton gave his enthusiastic approval to a top aide's plan to use White House visits to encourage big donors. The White House admitted these facts today.
The president made a written notation on a memo from Terence McAuliffe, finance chairman for the Clinton-Gore Campaign, according to AP reports from officials, speaking only on condition of anonymity.
McAuliffe said today that his memo did not specifically propose overnight White House stays but did recommend that Democratic donors demoralized after the 1994 election losses get into the White House for visits.
'I was going to be finance chairman of the re-election committee and we needed to get past supporters into see you (the president) and some time to motivate these past supporters,' McAuliffe said in an interview.
McAuliffe said the memo in response to a request from the president, identified 10 large Democratic donors.
The McAuliffe memo was among dozens of documents former White House deputy chief of staff Harold Ickes took with him when he left his job and which he recently turned over to congressional investigators, according to individuals familiar with them.
Clinton's handwritten response to the McAuliffe memo indicates that 'the president was enthusiastic about having friends and supporters stay at the White House and was willing to include those who had been and would be very supportive,' an official said.
The Ickes' papers provide the most public detail to date of 'an overall program whereby the president and vice president were to be actively involved in generating financial and political support as a result of White House events' one official said.
For weeks, Clinton has been addressing questions about reports that dozens of prominent Democratic donors, some who gave upwards of $100,000 each, were rewarded with overnight stays in the Lincoln Bedroom.
Clinton defended the practice in a recent interview.
On Monday, Clinton presided over a dinner held by the Democratic Business Council that brought in $500,000 for the Democratic National Committee. Party officials said 65 percent of the contributions represented 'soft money' the kind given without a dollar ceiling to help parties, not individual candidates.
Harold Ickes was let go by the president after the re-election campaign. Ickes turned over the papers to the House Government Reform and Oversight Committee. The sources said Ickes took the papers with him when he left because of their political nature.