Memo Portrays Gore As Actively Raising Funds Statements Contradict Image Of Vice President Unaware Of Details

Vice President Al Gore’s top aide wrote a memorandum of “talking points” for Gore to use at a 1996 White House fund-raising meeting to outline a strategy, which included telephone solicitations, for achieving the lofty financial goals of the Democratic Party.

The vice president’s aides said Thursday that the memorandum, written by his chief of staff, Ronald Klain, was given to Gore before he met with President Clinton and other chief fund-raising officials on Feb. 28, 1996, in the Map Room.

At the meeting, the aides said, Gore did not use the talking points, which included a suggestion that he trumpet his fund-raising successes. But they said he did deliver a pep talk about the importance of meeting the Democratic National Committee’s goal of raising $108 million.

The detail-laden, enthusiastic statements written for Gore appear to show him actively involved in not just the strategy but also the execution of an all-consuming fund-raising effort. The statements contradict the portrait of a vice president detached from the fine print of fund raising that his aides have drawn in recent weeks to try to distance him from the spreading Democratic scandal of the 1996 elections.

But the memo does not deal with the routine diversion of money from one Democratic account to another that could be used more directly to help the Clinton-Gore re-election campaign. This is an issue that has dogged Gore in recent days, and it may lead to the appointment of an independent counsel to investigate his fund-raising activities.

Written in large part with suggested words for him to use in the first person, the memo urged Gore to tell the meeting’s participants what it would take to reach their financial target: “So we can raise the money - BUT ONLY IF the president and I actually do the events, the calls, the coffees, etc.”

The White House has turned over the talking points memorandum to the Senate committee that is investigating campaign finance abuses.

At the time the memorandum was given to Gore, for use at the weekly White House strategy session, the vice president was making some of the 46 fund-raising calls that have come under scrutiny by Attorney General Janet Reno and the investigating Senate panel, the Governmental Affairs Committee.

In the memo, Gore was also advised to urge others to push to raise money in the eight months leading up to the November elections. The fund-raising task at hand was described as “huge.”

Ginny Terzano, Gore’s press secretary, took strong exception to a suggestion by Republican Senate investigators, who said the memorandum showed that Gore was steeped in details of Democratic fund-raising practices. Terzano said the fact that talking points had to be written for Gore showed how little he knew about the intricacies of the fund-raising operation.

“The memo doesn’t show that the vice president was immersed in the details,” she said. “If anything, it shows the opposite and that is why Ron Klain had to write talking points for the vice president.”

Terzano said that although Gore did not refer to the talking points at the meeting, he did speak in general terms about the need to raise money to pay for the Democrats’ television advertising campaign.

“Ron Klain recalls from the meeting that the vice president talked about how much we had accomplished already, as far as a political time line in meeting the DNC’s budget,” Terzano said. “He went on to say we have to stay on track and keep focused and we’re going to have to do certain political events to get the job done.”

Klain did not return calls Thursday.