ASHINGTON - Vice President Al Gore could become the focus of a new investigation by a special counsel at the height of the presidential campaign if a recommendation reportedly made by a top Justice Department official is accepted by Attorney General Janet Reno.
Robert Conrad, the supervising attorney for the Justice Department task force on 1996 fund-raising, has recommended that Reno appoint a special counsel to examine Gore's solicitation of campaign contributions, according to Senator Arlen Specter, a Pennsylvania Republican.
Reno has rejected two similar recommendations in the past, and it was not clear whether she would act differently this time. A Justice Department official confirmed only that Conrad had made a preliminary recommendation, which is subject to review by other officials.
Still, even the possibility of a recommendation for an investigation plays into the hands of Republicans, who have made clear they intend to try to make Gore's fund-raising practices at a Buddhist Temple and elsewhere a major campaign issue. While Republican nominee-in-waiting George W. Bush has raised far more money than Gore in the current campaign, Bush aides have said the Texas governor raised his money legally while they contend that Gore solicited funds illegally in 1996.
There has been speculation about whether Reno would appoint a special counsel since Conrad interviewed President Clinton and Gore earlier this year about several fund-raising matters. The Gore probe has focused on these two key questions, according to knowledgeable officials:
Did Gore know he was raising funds when he made an appearance at the Hsi Lai Buddhist Temple in 1996? Republicans have ridiculed Gore for soliciting funds from temple members who have taken a vow of poverty and have noted that it is illegal to raise money from a tax-exempt organization. Gore initially said he thought he was doing ''community outreach'' but later said he knew the visit was related to fund-raising.
Did Gore knowingly raise regulated ''hard money'' at the White House? Gore has said he did raise unregulated ''soft money,'' saying famously that there is ''no controlling legal authority'' against such solicitations. But Justice Department officials and FBI agents have compiled documents that indicate Gore was at a 1995 meeting in which ''hard money'' solicitation was discussed. Gore told the investigators earlier this year that he may have missed that discussion because he was drinking a lot of iced tea during the meetings ''which could have necessitated a restroom break.''
Hard money refers to closely regulated contributions from individuals that may be spent directly on political campaigns. Soft money refers to largely unregulated donations to political parties that can be legally used only for get-out-the-vote and other party-building practices. Federal law is widely interpreted to forbid raising hard money but not soft money on public property.
Conrad and other Justice Department officials reportedly have been investigating Gore's explanation, which may have given rise to Conrad's recommendation that a special counsel be appointed. Even if a special counsel is appointed, it does not mean that there has been any conclusion about wrongdoing by Gore; it merely starts a new, broader investigation.
But that is exactly the kind of investigation that Gore does not want during the presidential campaign, and his aides yesterday sought to cast the matter as politically motivated.
''What we have heard is a Republican senator making his own announcement,'' said Gore spokesman James Kennedy, who stressed that the White House has received no information from the Justice Department about a possible investigation.
Gore, asked about the possibility of a new fund-raising investigation, said he knew nothing about it.
The Bush campaign seized on the opportunity to tie the news about Gore to the other investigations which have plagued the Clinton administration.
''Governor Bush believes that the American people are tired of all these scandals and investigations and the best way to make them go away is to elect someone new and different,'' said Bush spokesman Scott McClellan.
Specter said yesterday he has reason to believe that Conrad made the recommendation but declined to say how he came to that conclusion.
Specter has been pushing for years for the appointment of a special or independent counsel. Specter has held a number of hearings this year designed to put pressure on the Clinton administration to release memos in which Justice Department officials reportedly made similar recommendations to Reno.
Reno has twice rejected recommendations that she appoint an independent counsel to examine Gore's 1996 fund-raising practices, and the Gore campaign had hoped the matter was behind them. But during the presidential primaries, GOP candidate John McCain, the Arizona senator, relentlessly ridiculed Gore and said he was an obstacle to reform. The Republican National Committee or an independent group allied with the GOP is expected to run television commercials showing videotape of Gore at the Buddhist Temple and at the White House making his ''no controlling legal authority'' statement.
Reno has always stated that she decided against appointing a counsel in the case because there was not enough evidence to warrant a probe. Many Republicans have accused her of acting politically to protect Clinton and Gore, with some GOP senators calling for her resignation.
Republicans, noting that there is a much lower threshold for appointing a special counsel than for an indictment, said there is plenty of evidence to warrant a probe. They noted that a Gore aide attending a key meeting wrote a note that said the fund-raising should be ''65% soft/35% hard.'' In addition, when Justice investigators interviewed former White House chief of staff Leon Panetta about the meetings, he recalled that Gore had listened attentively.
Specter said his timing was not political, and that he would have preferred that a counsel was appointed in 1998 so that Gore would not have to face an investigation in the midst of a presidential campaign.
At a Wednesday hearing of the Senate Judiciary subcommittee on administrative oversight and the courts, Specter asked Conrad whether he had ''made or attempted to make a recommendation" on a special counsel.
Conrad said he didn't feel comfortable discussing the matter because it is ''something that pertains to an ongoing investigation.''
Material from the Associated Press was used in this report.
