Gore's E-Mail Trail
Newly disclosed White House e-mail messages bolster the argument made by opponents of Vice President Al Gore that a Buddhist temple event he attended was a political fundraiser.
The long-missing messages, provided Friday to the House Government Reform Committee chaired by Rep. Dan Burton, R-Ind., also show that Gore's office was informed of an offer from a businessman to raise $250,000 if a White House coffee were arranged with President Clinton.
Gore critics have maintained for four years that the temple event and the coffees, 21 of which had the vice president as host, were fundraisers. The White House has always denied that they were fundraisers.
The newly disclosed e-mail is part of a batch of over 100,000 e-mail messages that the White House never properly archived. As a result, the messages weren't reviewed to determine whether they should have been sent under subpoena to investigators on topics ranging from fund raising to Whitewater and impeachment.
They were reconstructed recently from backup tapes and are being turned over to Congress. They were provided this summer to Independent Counsel Robert Ray and the Justice Department, which had subpoenaed them.
While the e-mail provides new ammunition to Gore's opponents, the White House says the material in the e-mail contains “nothing of significance.” Spokesman Jim Kennedy said the Gore staffer who referred to the temple event as a fund-raiser was questioned about it in Congress three years ago.
“There is nothing in this material that sheds any new light on this old debate,” said Kennedy.
Karen Hughes, spokeswoman for Republican presidential candidate George W. Bush, said the newly disclosed e-mail material is “yet another piece of evidence that calls into question the vice president's credibility when he says he didn't know that a fund-raising event was a fund-raising event.”
The e-mail shows the Gore staff considered the April 1996 event at the Hsi Lai Buddhist temple near Los Angeles to be a fundraiser. Gore originally claimed it was a community outreach. He later said he knew it was donor-related.
“Currently, we are committed in San Jose and LA for fund-raising events,” said one staff e-mail on April 9, 1996, three weeks before the event. That message included a draft official schedule for two fund-raisers that day - one at the temple and one in San Jose.