Senate Panel’s Subpoenas Meet Wide Resistance

WASHINGTON — “Greetings,” says the ominous document delivered to select groups and individuals all over Washington in recent months. But the niceties end right there. The official subpoena--signed by Sen. Fred Thompson (R-Tenn.), chairman of the committee conducting the Senate’s campaign fund-raising probe--quickly shifts to toughly worded legalese.

“In complying with this subpoena, you are required to produce all responsive documents that are in your possession, custody, or control, whether held by you or your past or present agents, employees, and representatives acting on your behalf,” it says.

“You also are required to produce documents that you have a legal right to obtain, documents that you have a right to copy or have access to, and documents that you have placed in the temporary possession, custody, or control of any third party.”

One would think that recipients of such high-powered bluntness would cower in fear, especially because noncompliance could bring a jail term.

Increasingly, however, those receiving Thompson’s missives are boldly challenging the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee’s authority. Their noncooperative response is frustrating committee investigators and increasing the likelihood that the investigation will reach its year-end deadline with much potential evidence unexamined.

The organizations taking on the Senate span the political spectrum, from the National Right to Life Committee to the AFL-CIO. Some argue that the Senate panel is overstepping the parameters of its investigation, which covers “illegal and improper activities in connection with the 1996 federal election campaign.” Others are raising more limited procedural concerns.

All are well aware of the committee’s Dec. 31 deadline, the nebulous nature of this investigation and the cumbersome process of citing someone for contempt.

Taken together, the resistance is creating a political headache for Thompson, who has butted heads with some Democratic fund-raisers and been criticized for not mustering equal outrage for those in his own party.

*

While the committee’s investigation is focused on wrongdoing at the Democratic National Committee and White House--the two entities that have provided the bulk of the documents now under review by investigators--the probe has branched out to include Republicans too, as well as numerous organizations at the periphery of the 1996 federal elections.

Senate investigators, for instance, intend to examine whether some private groups coordinated their activities with political parties--thereby requiring them to disclose their donors--and whether any engaged in partisan political activity forbidden under their tax-exempt status.

“The committee has a legitimate interest in the manner in which U.S. campaigns are conducted, especially in the way nonprofits have acted in full compliance with federal law,” said one Senate investigator.

For example, Republican senators want to know whether the Clinton-Gore campaign was working together with Defeat 209, a group organized to oppose Proposition 209, the ballot measure against affirmative action that passed last year in California. And Democrats are curious about any political activity by such conservative groups as the Heritage Foundation, the Better America Foundation and Citizens Against Government Waste.

*

To get at those core issues, the committee has subpoenaed from the groups all relevant financial reports, letters, diaries, working papers, e-mail and internal communications.

One of the most entrenched objectors to the Senate subpoenas has been the National Policy Forum, a GOP think tank accused of funneling foreign funds into the Republican National Committee during the heat of the 1994 congressional elections.

The Senate panel ordered the NPF to hand over a host of insider documents by April 30. After much back and forth, the forum has defiantly questioned the validity of the subpoena.

That has prompted Sen. John Glenn of Ohio, the panel’s ranking Democrat, to condemn NPF attorney Tom Wilson for what he called “utter disregard for the rules and procedures of the Senate.”

The forum, which was the focus of three days of hearings last month, has provided numerous documents to the committee--”purely as a matter of grace,” in Wilson’s words. But Wilson has also specifically stated that the records are not being produced in compliance with what he regards as an overly broad subpoena.

*

Wilson has cited court cases and internal congressional procedures that say “subpoenas issued by congressional committees must not exceed the scope of authority delegated to the committee” and that committees have no power to investigate “solely for the personal aggrandizement of the investigators or to ‘punish’ those investigated.”

Wilson also represents Americans for Tax Reform, a nonprofit group allied with the Republicans that is also resisting the committee. While the tax group, like the NPF, has provided the committee with documents, it also maintains that the committee’s order goes well beyond legal boundaries.

After some NPF officials refused to answer questions during depositions, Thompson ordered them to cooperate. But the chairman has not yet ordered Wilson to comply with the subpoenas, which has angered Democrats.

“The open defiance of a Senate subpoena by the NPF is an outrage, a real setback to this committee and a dangerous precedent for future congressional investigations,” said Jim Jordan, the committee’s Democratic spokesman.

Democrats also are struggling with the Republican National Committee, which has responded to its subpoena but has withheld numerous documents it considers privileged and redacted confidential portions of other papers. RNC officials insist that they are cooperating.

Republican senators, meanwhile, have complained vehemently about compliance by the White House and the DNC.

Thompson last month exploded at the White House for what he called a pattern of delay in producing records. He also has issued an order to the DNC overruling some of the party’s efforts to keep documents private. In the latest clash, the DNC handed over thousands of additional documents that it said staffers had overlooked in a filing cabinet.

“Coming on the heels of the White House slow-walking and delays,” Thompson fumed in an interview with the Washington Post, “if it ever turns out that there was an orchestrated cover-up and deliberate effort to obstruct the committee’s work, then we’re entering a new realm.”

The most recent sign of resistance comes from some of the two dozen nonprofit advocacy organizations that investigators intend to look at in the fall as part of their review of questionable campaign practices. Lawyers for some of the groups, on both the left and right, have spoken recently about mounting a joint challenge to the Senate committee’s effort.

Leading the opposition is James Bopp, the attorney for the National Right to Life Committee. He has requested an extension of the Aug. 22 deadline for compliance and sent a strongly worded memo to other subpoena recipients encouraging a united front in resisting the Senate’s reach.

“There are legal limits on the authority of the Senate to investigate private organizations that are engaged in legal conduct,” Bopp said in an interview. “Congress is not empowered by the Constitution to go on a massive fishing expedition.”

Bopp said the antiabortion group will hand over some documents to the committee. But he said it is unreasonable for the group to empty out its files of sensitive or confidential information that could fall into the hands of political opponents.

His objections to the subpoena’s broad reach, Bopp maintained, are not an effort to run out the clock until the inquiry expires. “They cannot expect private organizations to submit themselves to massive violations of privacy just because the committee has a deadline,” he said.

The AFL-CIO, meanwhile, has called the Senate panel’s request “a virtually unlimited search mission,” one that the union is resisting.

“The document subpoena directed to the AFL-CIO goes far beyond even the most generous interpretation of the committee’s mandate,” union lawyers Robert Weinberg and Robert Muse wrote in a letter to the committee.

They add: “As a general matter in a democracy, neither the legislative nor the executive branch of government has a license to rummage through all of the papers of individuals or their associations. . . . Inquiry into political activity by its nature works an intrusion on the constitutional rights of free speech and free association that are integral to a free and democratic political system.”

Lawyers for other groups--including the Sierra Club, the Heritage Foundation, the National Education Assn. and the Assn. of Trial Lawyers of America--are still reviewing their subpoenas’ fine print to determine whether they ought to empty out their file drawers or fire off a legal challenge.

The Christian Coalition, another subpoenaed group, said it has already been subjected to an extensive inquiry by the Federal Election Commission, one that did not turn up wrongdoing. “In principle, we’re ready to comply with the Senate,” said spokesman Arne Owens. “The only problem we see is finding enough copy machines.”

The volume of material the Senate is requesting could be staggering, prompting one official to suggest that the best strategy may be to give the committee absolutely everything--so much paperwork that investigators could not possibly review it all.

Times staff writer Mark Gladstone contributed to this story.