Gramm Denies Discussion Packwood’s Diary Indicates Conspiracy To Break Laws

Sen. Phil Gramm, R-Texas, Friday disputed an entry in Sen. Bob Packwood’s diary suggesting that he and Gramm discussed ways to skirt federal election law to pump $100,000 into Packwood’s 1992 re-election campaign.

In a letter to the Ethics Committee, Gramm said the diary entry “reflects an obvious misunderstanding of the election law” regarding contributions by the National Republican Senatorial Committee and other national party committees to state party organizations for get-out-the-vote and party-building activities.

Gramm was NRSC chairman at the time of the incident.

The Senate Ethics Committee on Thursday asked Gramm to explain a March 6, 1992, diary entry in which Packwood wrote, “What was said in that room would be enough to convict us all of something,” describing a brief meeting with Gramm in Oregon following a Packwood campaign event.

Packwood added, “I think that’s a felony, I’m not sure. This is an area of the law I don’t want to know.”

“Nothing wrong was done,” Gramm, a Republican presidential candidate, told reporters Friday. “What Sen. Packwood is doing in his diaries I don’t know.”

Under federal election law, a national party organization can contribute a maximum of $17,500 to an individual Senate candidate during a campaign, but can spend much more for state party activities, provided the money is not used to directly influence the outcome of a federal election.

Packwood, who was in the midst of a tough campaign, wrote in his diary after the meeting that “He (Gramm) says, now, of course you know there can’t be any legal connection between this money and Sen. Packwood, but we know that it will be used for his benefit.”

However, after the Senate ethics committee subpoenaed his diaries as part of its investigation of allegations of sexual and official misconduct, Packwood altered the entry, dropping references to potentially illegal campaign contributions and deleting Gramm’s name and mention of the $100,000 contribution.

When the ethics committee confronted him with evidence that he had altered the original entry, Packwood disavowed it, saying he had been wrong, that no crime had been committed and that he had made the comments in jest.

In 1992, the NRSC contributed $17,500 to Packwood’s campaign and spent an additional $120,092 for state GOP party activities in Oregon, according to the Federal Election Commission.