ASHINGTON - After months of hearing Al Gore call him a pawn of New Jersey pharmaceutical interests, former Senator Bill Bradley used the vice president's ties to Tennessee's tobacco industry this week to label Gore a friend of ''Big Tobacco.''
Gore quickly responded by claiming to have ''led the fight against smoking'' and denying Bradley's charge.
But while Gore has helped lead the Clinton administration's efforts to reduce teen-age smoking in recent years, congressional and legal records have shown that as a member of Congress he regularly interceded on behalf of tobacco interests.
In 1984, for example, when the tobacco industry was mounting a losing fight against a bill to require stronger warning labels on cigarette packages and other tobacco products and advertising, then-Representative Gore championed a compromise that diluted the legislation.
In the 1990s, tobacco companies' internal files were subsequently produced in landmark class-action cases. The files reflect a high industry regard for Gore's efforts.
In a 1984 speech prepared by Arthur Stevens, the general counsel for Lorillard Tobacco, for a gathering of tobacco executives, the lawyer listed the ways that Gore's compromise had changed the labeling bill.
The tobacco industry was on the run, Stevens wrote, with ''nothing between'' the bill's passage but the ''frail defense'' of a handful of tobacco-state senators.
''We knew that our defense was virtually nonexistant,'' Stevens wrote. ''Rather than draw three cards to make a low inside straight, the industry dealt itself a new hand. We worked out a compromise. The final version was offered by Congressman Gore.
''How does the compromise differ?'' Stevens asked. ''Well, first, the warning statements are all attributed to the surgeon general - not the United States government. Second, the words `death' and `addiction' are dropped. Third, the ugly circle and arrow format - a virtual self-defacement - is out. Fourth, the requirement to submit a list of ingredients had been improved to provide for better confidentiality. Fifth, the provision of $100,000 in criminal penalties has been eliminated.''
The draft of the Stevens speech is posted on the Internet, at a Web site maintained by the foes of the tobacco industry.
At the time, Gore was running for the US Senate in Tennessee. He acknowledged then that ''the health community had to make significant concessions,'' but he voiced pride in his efforts to broker a compromise that resulted in tougher labeling than had been called for by the existing law.
''I ... want to congratulate the tobacco industry and all their representatives who helped make this compromise possible,'' Gore said at the time. ''This bill represents a progressive and courageous step by this industry that many did not expect. This has been a bitter pill to swallow, but in so doing they have made stiffer punitive legislation less likely in the years ahead... I applaud them for their efforts.''
Chris Lehane, the vice president's spokesman, defended Gore's overall record yesterday. ''If you look at what this administration has done, no one has fought big tobacco more vigorously at the national level in this administration than Al Gore,'' Lehane said. ''He has fought to protect our children.''
But tobacco is a sensitive issue for Gore, who comes from one of the nation's largest tobacco-growing states, with 100,000 tobacco farmers. Gore employs some of the tobacco industry's top political consultants, including a media adviser, Carter Eskew, in his campaign.
''I think it speaks a lot about Al Gore that he would have on his staff a top adviser who was critical to designing the tobacco industry's attack on the tobacco bill,'' said Gary Ruskin, who heads the Congressional Accountability Project. ''It is an enormous mistake.''
In 1996, Gore gave an emotional speech at the Democratic National Convention, describing in some detail his sister Nancy's ''unbearable pain'' and death from lung cancer in 1984.
Reporters quickly found that Gore had been a consistent supporter in Congress of the federal tobacco allotment program, and that he continued to accept campaign contributions from the tobacco industry, as well as federal tobacco allotment payments, for six years after his sister died.
At the time, Gore responded to the media's questions by saying ''emotional numbness'' caused him to continue to defend the tobacco industry and accept such payments.
As a presidential candidate in 1988, Gore opposed restrictions on tobacco advertising and defended the virtues of tobacco farming.
Gore told an audience in North Carolina that he was committed to the ''small farmers, tens of thousands of whom find it possible to remain on the farm because they have that extra few thousand dollars each year.''
Noting how the Gore family farm had relied on tobacco and federal price supports over the years, he said, ''I've plowed the ground, put in the seed beds, I've planted it, hoed it, wormed it, suckered it, cut it, spiked it, put it in the barns, stripped it, and sold it. I know what it's about, how important that way of life is.''
Bradley, in a news release posted on his Web site Tuesday, noted that in 1985 Gore had voted against an amendment that Bradley offered to stop the tobacco tax from dropping from 16 cents to 8 cents. The difference in revenue would have been devoted to Medicare.
In 1985, according to Senate voting records, Gore voted to support a federal program to sell 1.2 billion pounds of surplus tobacco at cut-rate prices to the tobacco companies. Bradley voted against it.
