Outside Aid Sought In Gingrich Probe Extent Of Outside Counsel’s Authority May Create Conflict

The House Ethics Committee, effectively concluding that it must hire an outside counsel for its investigation of Speaker Newt Gingrich, has decided to begin interviewing lawyers for the position. But this consensus could break down in a dispute over the breadth of the outside counsel’s mandate.

Democrats have pressed for broad investigating authority, recalling how former Speaker Jim Wright was brought down in 1989 not on the charges Gingrich had leveled against him, but on others turned up by Richard Phelan, the outside counsel.

The Ethics Committee wants outside help because the next issue before it is a course Gingrich taught at Kennesaw State College in Georgia in 1993. His critics have charged that Gingrich or his associates improperly used tax-exempt money to underwrite the course, which they contend was a partisan enterprise designed to produce Republican volunteers.

A more limited inquiry could address only questions of tax law. A broader inquiry could investigate activities of GOPAC, a political action committee Gingrich headed whose officials were involved in the course, and the Progress and Freedom Foundation, which raised money for it.

The reach of the investigation is not only a question for the committee, but for any lawyer who is asked to take the job and is mindful of maintaining a reputation for independence. So when the committee meets on Tuesday with James M. Cole its first candidate, it may find itself answering as many questions from candidates as it asks.

Cole, a Washington lawyer, assisted a retired federal judge, Malcolm R. Wilkey, in his inquiry into the House bank scandal in 1991.

Rep. Nancy L. Johnson, the Connecticut Republican who heads the committee, would not answer directly when asked if the committee was about to hire an outside counsel. But she said: “I have always said different charges would need different approaches. We are now deciding how to deal with the course.” In a July 13 interview, she identified the college course as the sort of complicated issue for which the committee might seek outside help.

Rep. Jim McDermott of Washington, the senior Democrat on the committee of five Republicans and five Democrats, said: “We are trying to figure out what kind of help we need and who could best give it to us. And we are in that process.”

Even this much information is hard to drag out of the committee, whose secrecy rules prompted one member to insist on anonymity when he said only “All options are before us.”

The committee also has been investigating Gingrich’s book contract with HarperCollins.