ASHINGTON - It is an odd paradox of American political life: When you're among the most powerful men in the country, other people are running your day-to-day life.
Ask Al Gore, who told federal prosecutors investigating his fund-raising activities that he was often out of the loop when it came to scheduling the activities that got him into trouble.
Did he know who was paying for a trip he took to Taiwan in 1989, hosted by a group including his friend and supporter, Maria Hsia? ''I don't believe I did.''
Did he remember a thank-you letter to Hsia and her husband, carrying not only his signature but a handwritten note at the bottom? ''Well, I don't recall anything about it,'' Gore said about the couple he called two ''great friends'' in the note.
The transcript of the vice president's answers to a Justice Department prosecutor in April reveals the hyperscheduled, sometimes chaotic side of Gore's life.
Gore described workdays crammed with so many events, requests for appearances and demands on his time, that he sometimes did not even know where he was going next.
Gore would look at a letter presented to him by the investigators and say he did not know whether he had actually signed it or even seen it before it was machine-signed.
That thank-you note to Hsia and her husband, in which he promised, ''See you soon'' in a postscript? Just ''a routine thank-you letter,'' Gore said, that ''had no special significance.''
Even Gore's personal friends fall victim to the impersonal system of mass-produced correspondence.
`I'm embarrassed to tell you that some people have received as many as 12 different copies of my Christmas cards each year,'' Gore said, since he and his wife, Tipper, did not want to leave out anyone. ''Every January my wife and I hear about it from puzzled friends.''
The day when Gore visited the Los Angeles Buddhist temple was ''so cram-packed that I did not have a chance at the beginning of the day to read completely through the briefing memos for every event,'' Gore told the investigators.
After delivering a speech to the American Cable Television Association, Gore said he flipped open his notebook to see where he was headed next.
''My immediate impression was good, they finally ... were able to work out this visit to the Hsi Lai Temple. This ought to be interesting,'' Gore explained.
''Little did I know.''
