Reprinted from The Washington Times , 5am -- April 14, 1998
Union refuses House subpoena
By Bill Sammon
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
The Teamsters said yesterday they will not release documents subpoenaed by a House panel on the union's payments of $152,883 to a private investigator who also quashed "bimbo eruptions" for President Clinton's 1992 campaign.
The union made the payments to lawyer Charles F.C. Ruff -- who is now White House counsel -- for the services of private investigator Jack Palladino, best known for silencing women who claimed extramarital affairs with Mr. Clinton.
Mr. Ruff has said he paid Mr. Palladino for "anti-corruption efforts" involving the union. But critics of Teamsters President Ron Carey said the money funded a smear campaign against Mr. Carey's political opponents.
They even suggested some of the funds may have been used to pay for Mr. Palladino's "bimbo eruptions" work during the Clinton campaign.
Yesterday, Mr. Ruff called such accusations "false and nonsensical," according to White House spokesman James Kennedy.
George Geller, an attorney for Teamsters presidential candidate James P. Hoffa, said it was not far-fetched to suggest that some of the money went toward Mr. Palladino's efforts to dissuade women from publicly discussing their affairs with Mr. Clinton. Mr. Hoffa was narrowly defeated for the Teamsters presidency in 1996 by Ron Carey, a major supporter of President Clinton.
"There's a pattern of evidence that suggests expense-sharing arrangements between the Clinton campaign and the Carey campaign," Mr. Geller said. "For example, the Clinton-Gore re-election committee appears to have subsidized the salary of Carey campaign manager Jere Nash."
The Clinton and Carey campaigns have exhibited a symbiotic relationship over the years. Mr. Carey, who was first elected in 1991, steered the union away from the Republican candidates it had endorsed in the previous three presidential elections and toward Mr. Clinton.
The Clinton administration, in turn, went out of its way to accommodate the Teamsters, even agreeing to "lean on" railroad executives who might ask union workers for concessions.
"We ask for and get, on almost a daily basis, help from the Clinton administration for one thing or another," wrote William W. Hamilton Jr., the union's political director, in a 1996 memo to Teamsters communications director Matt Witt.
Yesterday, Mr. Witt said the Teamsters have a legitimate need to shield documents that are protected by attorney-client privilege. He said Hoffa backers are trying "to spin this out" into a conspiracy involving the Clinton campaign.
"Knowing that they're asking for something that is privileged, they then feel free to make up whatever yarn they want about the documents," Mr. Witt said. "They ought to provide some shred of evidence or plausibility for why their charge ought to be taken seriously, and they have never done so."
According to Mr. Kennedy, Mr. Ruff has "nothing to do with" the turning over of documents to the subcommittee, chaired by Rep. Peter Hoekstra, Michigan Republican.
The documents are being sought from the Washington law firm of Covington and Burling, where Mr. Ruff was a partner until August 1995. From December 1993 until he left the firm, Mr. Ruff charged the union more than $250,000, including $152,883 for worked performed by Mr. Palladino.
The firm has "offered to cooperate with the subcommittee," said Chris Donesa, counsel for the oversight and investigations subcommittee of the Committee on Education and the Workforce. But it will not turn over documents unless authorized by the Teamsters.Copyright 1998 News World Communications, Inc.
Reprinted with permission of
The Washington Times.
To subscribe to the Washington Times National Weekly Edition, click this icon or call 800-363-9118.
