Aides: Gore Didn’t Know Of Fund-Raiser Staffers Knew Temple Event Was More Than ‘Outreach’

Seeking to pre-empt Senate hearings that resume Thursday, aides to Vice President Al Gore Tuesday offered their most detailed account yet of how Gore came to participate in a controversial fund-raiser at a California Buddhist temple and what he knew about it beforehand.

Aides to the vice president acknowledged that several members of his staff - including one unnamed member of his traveling party - knew in advance that the 1996 luncheon was designed to raise money for the Democrats.

They also conceded that the vice president’s files are rife with internal documents describing the event as a fund-raiser, and that some of those documents should have alerted senior staffers about the true nature of the luncheon and its potential for sparking controversy.

But the aides, who spoke to journalists on condition of anonymity, insisted that Gore himself had no idea money would be raised at the event and offered internal documents to support that contention. They also asserted that Gore was completely unaware of an alleged scheme by two organizers of the luncheon, John Huang and Maria Hsia, to jack up the yield afterward by illegally laundering contributions through nuns, monks and devotees of the temple.

Some of those nuns are expected to testify under a grant of immunity from prosecution Thursday when the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee resumes its hearings on campaign finance abuses after a monthlong break.

After delving into the temple fund-raiser, the committee plans to shift its focus to an exploration of the degree to which the Clinton White House controlled the Democratic National Committee during last year’s campaign. Former DNC Chairman Donald Fowler is scheduled to testify next week, with the combative former White House deputy chief of staff, Harold Ickes, likely to take the stand later in the month.

At least one member of the vice president’s staff is expected to testify about Gore’s role in the temple event after the nuns tell their stories. But the committee has not asked Gore himself to appear, and aides say he has no plans to request such an appearance.

“There is no reason for him to go up there,” said one Gore aide. “It would just turn into a political circus. He has nothing new to offer.”

Nonetheless, no single event has caused Gore more embarrassment than his appearance at the Hsi Lai Temple in Hacienda Heights, a Los Angeles suburb, on April 29, 1996. And given the strong likelihood that Gore will run for president in three years, the affair is of far more than historical significance.

Gore has offered varying accounts of the luncheon and his understanding of it. After first calling it a “community outreach event,” he acknowledged that it was “finance-related” and that holding it at a place of worship was therefore inappropriate. But Gore continued to assert that he did not know in advance that contributions would be solicited or collected at the lunch.

Gore’s aides Tuesday reiterated that account and said it would be borne out by a detailed examination of the record. They acknowledged that six separate documents from the vice president’s files apparently refer to the event as a fund-raiser, including one that contains a potential range for ticket prices - $1,000 to $5,000 per head - and another by Huang that was written after he had supposedly assured Gore’s chief of staff that no money would be raised at the temple.

The aides attempted to resolve the apparent contradiction by explaining that two events, rather than one, were originally planned for Gore’s visit to the Los Angeles area on that day. One, organized by Huang, was to be a traditional fund-raiser at a restaurant in Monterey Park. The second, arranged by Hsia, was the stop at Hsi Lai - whose leader, Hsing Yun, had met with Gore in Washington the previous month and invited him to visit the temple.

But the Monterey Park event was canceled, in part because it did not appear to be generating much in the way of money commitments, the aides said. The two events were then collapsed into one, they said, with some Gore staffers aware of the fact that money would now be raised at the temple, and others - as well as Gore himself - left in the dark.