WASHINGTON - Attorney General Janet Reno said yesterday that law, not politics, led her to decide against appointing a special prosecutor to examine Vice President Al Gore's truthfulness on campaign finance questions.
Gore's answers about White House coffees and a 1996 campaign event at a Buddhist temple reflect ''neither false statements nor perjury,'' Reno told reporters. ''Fundamental ambiguities in the question and how it's understood by the person answering the question make a perjury charge or a false statement charge impossible to prove.''
At her weekly news briefing, Reno detailed her view of the sometimes contentious April exchange between Gore and Robert J. Conrad Jr., head of the Justice Department's campaign finance unit. The interview focused on the controversial coffees and on Gore's insistence that he did not believe the Hsi Lai Temple event was a fund-raiser.
Conrad concluded that Gore's answers were dubious enough to warrant further investigation by an independent prosecutor. Reno, who asserted that Conrad was not alone in his views, overruled him.
''I have concluded,'' Reno said, ''that there is no reasonable possibility that further investigation could develop evidence that would support the filing of charges for making a willful false statement.''
The attorney general's decision, the third time she has declined to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate Gore, was made as news and attitudes have been breaking the vice president's way since last week's Democratic convention. Several polls suggest that Gore has overtaken Governor George W. Bush of Texas in the race for the White House.
A wider Justice Department investigation into 1996 fund-raising practices will continue.
Gore spokesman Chris Lehane described the campaign as ''pleased'' with the Justice Department's decision. Instead of elaborating, Lehane switched topics.
In the Bush camp, public reaction was similarly muted. Campaign spokesman Dan Bartlett said, ''If the American people want to rid Washington of the scandals and investigation, they can simply choose a new administration that will bring a fresh start.''
Senator Arlen Specter, the Pennsylvania Republican who leaked word of Conrad's recommendation in June, accused Reno yesterday of protecting Gore, first by failing to investigate promptly the allegations of irregularities, then by declining to name a special prosecutor.
''As to what happens to Mr. Gore,'' Specter said in a written statement, ''we will leave it to the voters to decide the issue of the vice president's honesty.''
