Dole Aims More Bile At Clinton Glowering Candidate Paints Unsubstantiated Picture

A glowering Bob Dole - shouting “Where’s the outrage in America? Where’s the outrage?” Friday accused President Clinton of perusing FBI files and allowing ineligible immigrants to become citizens so they can vote.

Continuing an angry attack he began Thursday, Dole also blamed the news media for protecting Democrats and trying to “steal” the presidential election for Clinton.

Lagging well behind in the polls, the Republican nominee painted a dark and unsubstantiated picture of Clinton sifting through FBI files. Dole at times seemed to be seething on a stage in downtown Houston, at a rally also attended by Texas Republicans U.S. Sens. Phil Gramm and Kay Bailey Hutchison as well as Gov. George W. Bush.

“And then we have the president of the United States sitting down there with 900 FBI files. Might be yours. Might be yours,” Dole said.

This reference to last summer’s FBI files scandal, in which White House security officials obtained access to FBI background files on former Republican officials, was the first time Dole has lobbed such an allegation at Clinton. The president has said he first heard about the FBI files when the story broke in the news media.

Dole’s charge about immigrant naturalization was equally vague.

“And then we have all these new people coming into America, rushing through the immigration process and they find out that maybe as high as 10 percent are criminals. They want to get them ready for election day,” Dole said.

Dole apparently was referring to a near-tripling in the past year in applications for citizenship by immigrants already living in the country - apparently because of an attempt to clear a large backlog of immigrants eligible under the 1986 immigration act and immigrant concerns about provisions in this year’s act, which eliminates certain social benefits for non-citizens - as well as to a letter from the head of the FBI fingerprint lab saying that as many as 10 percent find positive matches in FBI criminal archives. Republicans have seized on this number, although INS and FBI officials have said the actual percentage of immigrants convicted of felonies is a far smaller number and many matches are because of reasons other than criminality.

But Dole saved his harshest language for the news media. Elaborating on angry charges he made Thursday in Florida, Dole said the news media is giving a free “transfusion” to the president every day, refusing to investigate scandals involving foreign campaign donations or to press Clinton on his refusal to rule out a pardon “for somebody who did business with him” in the Whitewater scandal.

“We are not going to let the media steal this election. We are going to win this election. The country belongs to the people, not the New York Times,” Dole said. “I don’t want to be partisan or anything, but this is serious business.”

Dole recited his now familiar list of assorted individuals with Asian surnames who have appeared in news reports for giving large campaign donations to the Democratic National Committee and accused reporters of not diligently tracking down these people to get to the bottom of the story.

“But nobody seems to care in the media, nobody seems to care,” Dole said. Referring to the Clinton administration, Dole said “if they weren’t getting propped up by the media every day, this election would have been over two weeks ago.”

At a stop in Dallas, Dole said the only way voters can escape “liberal bias” in the news media is to forsake it altogether.

“Don’t read that stuff. Don’t watch television. You make up your own mind. Don’t let them make up your mind for you,” Dole said.

Dole’s two-city swing through Texas is his first visit since June to this normally Republican state. Like his campaign stop Thursday in Alabama and a stop later Friday in Arizona, the visit was another signal of the trouble Dole’s campaign is having in holding on to states that in recent presidential elections have voted Republican.

The most recent Texas poll, conducted Oct. 7 to Oct. 19, shows Dole leading Clinton 42 percent to 39 percent, which is within the poll’s margin of error.

Dole’s apparent pique in Houston might have been triggered by a question shouted at him as he left a Houston hotel for his motorcade this morning. He was asked about a report in Friday’s New York Daily News saying he had had a long-term, extramarital affair with a Washington woman that began in 1968, nearly four years before the end of his first marriage.

Dole looked disbelievingly at the questioner, waved his arms dismissively and said: “You’re worse than they are.”

After extensive inquiries beginning in August, Washington Post reporters confirmed Dole’s relationship with the woman, who still lives in the Washington area. Dole campaign officials said the candidate would neither confirm nor deny any relationship.

Executive Editor Leonard Downie Jr. decided early this month not to publish a story on the subject.

“After completion of our reporting and extensive discussion with senior editors and reporters,” Downie said Friday, “I decided that the information we had about this personal relationship 28 years ago was not relevant to Robert J. Dole’s current candidacy for president and did not meet our standards for the publication of information about the private lives of public officials.”

In apparent reaction to the shouted question about the woman, the Dole campaign Friday began preventing print reporters from getting close enough to Dole to ask him questions or hear his remarks to supporters as he works the rope line after speeches. Reporters who refuse to obey this new dictum, the campaign said, will lose their privilege to rotate into the pool, which allows members of Dole’s large media contingent to have periodic close access to the candidate.