ASHINGTON - Vice President Al Gore hotly denied knowing that an event he attended in 1996 at a Buddhist temple in California was a fund-raiser, saying, ''I sure as hell don't recall'' having any conversations that the event was to raise money, according to a transcript of his interview with federal prosecutors.
Yesterday Gore ordered his lawyer to release the 150-page transcript of the April interview after reports Thursday that the new head of a Justice Department task force on campaign fund-raising had recommended the appointment of an independent counsel to investigate the vice president's answers about his 1996 fund-raising activities.
Faced with the prospect that his presidential campaign might be damaged by the attention on his role in raising money for President Clinton's reelection campaign, Gore launched a counteroffensive, telling reporters aboard his plane, ''I want the truth to be known about this. I've told the truth.''
Yesterday, political observers speculated that Gore already may have suffered political damage from the disclosure that a special prosecutor had been recommended, even if one is never appointed. But the vice president's supporters denounced the motives of the Republican senator who announced that Robert Conrad, the supervising attorney for the task force, had made the recommendation.
Attorney General Janet Reno promised yesterday to conduct a thorough review of the case before deciding whether to accept Conrad's recommendation. But sensitive to the backdrop of election-year politics, she also made clear that she wanted to act quickly so as not to ''interfere with the democratic process.''
The questions in the April 18 interview with Gore focused primarily on his appearance at the Hsi Lai Temple in Los Angeles, though Conrad and two FBI agents who assisted also touched briefly on the White House fund-raising ''coffees'' and the batches of e-mails missing from the vice president's office.
Gore was also asked about his relationship with Maria Hsia, a longtime friend of the vice president's, who was convicted in March of hiding $109,000 in illegal contributions and then lying to federal regulators.
Hsia had accepted contributions from nuns and monks at the temple, then reimbursed them with temple funds. As a tax-exempt organization, the temple is not allowed to make poltiical contributions. Hsia is awaiting sentencing.
In often-testy exchanges occasionally broken up by what appeared to be forced levity, Gore denied knowing that the event at the Buddhist Temple was a fund-raiser. He insisted that he did not recall having any conversations with his staff about the temple event before leaving to attend it. Asked repeatedly about any conversations he might have had with anyone, staff or not, about the appearance, Gore bristled.
''I sure as hell don't recall having - I sure as hell did not have any conversatons with anyone saying, this is a fund-raising event,'' Gore said.
''As to whether or not I had any follow-up conversations that said, were we able to set up this event or not, I don't think I did. But I may have.''
The ''only connection'' Gore had to the possibility that the temple event was a fund-raiser was that ''members of a finance-related event were present at the event,'' the vice president said.
''I did not know that it was a fund-raiser,'' Gore insisted. ''And I do not know to this day that it was a fund-raiser.''
Gore was shown letters and memos that suggest the temple event might have a fund-raising component. While Gore admitted he knew finance officials from the Democratic National Committee were involved with the event, he did not view it as a fund-raiser.
Traveling yesterday on Air Force Two to San Francisco from Denver, Gore said he has always told the truth, always cooperated with investigators and wanted to provide the transcript so people could judge for themselves. He also acknowledged having ''made mistakes in fund-raising.''
''I think the truth is my friend in this,'' said Gore. ''The full truth and nothing but the truth. I don't want people to have the impression that I'm trying to hide anything.''
Gore suggested more than once that the timing of the leak about the recommendation was suspicious.
''Here we are, four months before a national election that takes place once every four years,'' he said, declining to elaborate.
Democratic sources sought to paint Conrad as a partisan, saying that he had contributed $250 to the 1996 reelection campaign of Senator Jesse Helms, a North Carolina Republican, and that he once had been hired by a former Helms aide, Tom Ashcraft, who was US attorney in North Carolina at the time, to be an assistant US attorney in the state.
Sources close to Reno say she is upset that Conrad's recommendation, made weeks ago and a closely guarded secret at the Justice Department, was leaked to Senator Arlen Specter, a Pennsylvania Republican, who told reporters about it Thursday. Specter is chairman of a Senate Judiciary subcommittee, and Conrad had testified Wednesday without disclosing whether he had made a recommendation for a special prosecutor.
Chris Lehane, Gore's press secretary, said, ''Arlen Specter has virtually turned the United States Senate into George W. Bush's press office. We're not going to put up with that kind of political skullduggery.''
Some sources close to the Justice Department said the recommendation of Conrad, who came to the job six months ago, is a continuation of a long-running internal feud over whether an independent counsel should be appointed to investigate Gore.
Reno, who suggested that the leak was an attempt to pressure her into asking that an independent counsel be named, is conducing an internal investigation over how the leak occurred. ''The worse thing you can do in an investigation is dribble it out, piece by piece, without presenting the whole and without completing the whole,'' Reno said. ''I don't want to present half-facts.''
Reno has twice rejected recommendations that an independent counsel investigate Gore, once for making fund-raising phone calls from his White House office and once for possible false statements about those calls. She alone can decided whether to seek a special prosecutor.
''What I want to do is to complete the overall investigation as expeditously as possible, be accountable as much as I possibly can, make the best decision I can, make it free of pressure from anybody, so that at least the American people can understand that the decision was made in the best manner I could and not by other people dictating or pressuring me into making the decision,'' Reno said at her weekly meeting with reporters.
''But nothing should be rushed, because too often, when we rush to justice, we don't get it,'' Reno said.
About the same time Reno spoke, George W. Bush, the Republican presidential candidate, said questions about Gore's fund-raising are ''indicative of what has gone on'' in the Clinton administration.
''People are sick and tired of all this stuff,'' the Texas governor said at a campaign stop in Alabama. ''The best way to make sure that it doesn't happen again is to start with a new administration.''
Thomas E. Mann, director of governmental studies at the Brookings Institution, said rather than appoint an independent counsel, Reno should leave the matter to voters.
''If she appoints a special counsel, all it does is put a cloud over Gore without sufficient time to resolve it,'' Mann said. ''This would be a death sentence, the capstone of the criminalization of politics.''
Mark Rozell, a professor of politics at Catholic University in Washington, said there appeared to be no new revelations, but kept the story alive was bad news for Gore.
''These allegations will divert his attention in his campaign away from his own message into defending himself,'' Rozell said. ''There's an old saying in politics, when you are explaining, you're losing - and he has explaining to do.''
Susan Milligan of the Globe Staff contributed to this report. Scales and Milligan reported from Washington; Zuckman from California.
