ASHINGTON - It is one of the more serious charges anyone could level against a potential commander in chief: that Al Gore voted to send America's sons and daughters to war based on selfish political motives.
But that is just the allegation that Alan Simpson, former Republican senator from Wyoming and current director of the Institute of Politics at Harvard, is willing to make.
In the wake of Gore's victory in the New Hampshire primary Tuesday, Simpson, long a Gore critic, revived a charge that he and then-Senator Bob Dole first made during the 1992 presidential campaign. They said Gore's decision to vote for US intervention in the Persian Gulf War was based, at least in part, on which side would give him the better prime time speaking opportunity during the televised Senate debate.
''If you are talking about who people are, and about their character,'' Simpson said in an interview, ''I never saw such a thing happen with anybody else.''
Gore supporters are outraged that Simpson has unearthed what they dismiss as a canard. ''It is wrong. It is irresponsible. The people who say it are nuts,'' said Marla Romash, an adviser to Gore who was on his Senate staff at the time of the Gulf War vote.
Gore's two biographers, both of whom have dug up material that is critical of the vice president on other matters, said Simpson's charges are not supported by the facts. Indeed, both conclude that Gore's vote should be viewed as an act of moral and political courage.
Simpson raised the issue Tuesday during an appearance on the CNBC talk show ''Hardball,'' where he was joined by John Sununu, the former White House chief of staff. Yesterday, the Bradley campaign was reportedly circulating transcripts of the broadcast.
Simpson and Sununu both alleged that Gore ''shopped'' his vote, to see which side would give him the longer prime slot in which to speak when the Senate debate neared its climax on Jan. 12, 1991.
Gore denied the allegation when the Republicans leveled it in 1992 and again, through a spokesman, this week.
By Gore's telling, he inquired of both sides about the schedule for debate while he was still undecided and struggling with his conscience over the vote. He alerted the opposing leaders as a matter of logistics and senatorial courtesy, not political calculation, the Gore campaign said.
''I was with him at midnight when he walked out the door of the office, after a long conversation, and he still had not made up his mind,'' Romash said. ''It was routine in the Senate at that time to notify the leader of which side you were going to speak to request time. He notified Dole and [Senator George] Mitchell, knowing he might come down on either side.''
The episode began on Friday, Jan. 11, Simpson said in an interview, as he and Dole were sitting in the Senate cloakroom.
Dole was then the Republican leader, and Simpson the Republican whip. The vote was tight, with most Republicans in favor of a resolution giving President Bush congressional approval to go to war with Iraq to free Kuwait from Iraqi occupation.
Most Senate Democrats, however, had lined up behind Mitchell, the majority leader, and behind the chairman of the Armed Services Committee, Sam Nunn of Georgia, who introduced a competing resolution that favored the continued use of economic sanctions against Iraq.
According to Dole and Simpson, Gore approached the two GOP leaders and asked, ''How much time will you give me?''
''How much time did you get from the other side?'' Dole asked.
''Seven minutes,'' Gore replied.
''I'll give you 15 minutes,'' Dole said, and Simpson then offered Gore an additional five minutes of his time.
''Let me think about it,'' Gore said.
From that brief conversation, recounted this week by Simpson, he and Dole drew the conclusion that Gore was looking to trade his vote for a prime speaking opportunity.
Mitchell was angry, Simpson said, when Dole asked for extra time to accommodate Gore's request. Simpson began referring to Gore as ''Prime-time Al.''
Gore eventually spoke for 20 minutes during the final day of debate, and voted with the Republicans, who prevailed by a 52-47 margin. Nine other Democrats joined him.
Two of Simpson's former aides said this week that they did not witness the conversation between Gore and the GOP leaders, but remember Dole and Simpson talking about it soon thereafter.
A Democratic floor aide at the time, however, said Simpson's charges were ludicrous. Not only was there no Senate flap about Gore's vote, the aide said, but ''it is transparently obvious that Senator Mitchell would have given Senator Gore any time he wanted. It was a close vote. If Senator Gore had asked for 20 minutes he would have gotten them.''
Nunn, Mitchell, and Mitchell's former aides declined opportunities to comment.
Gore's two biographers, however, side with the vice president. Former ABC reporter Bob Zelnick, now a professor of journalism at Boston University, said that he looked into the episode when researching his biography of Gore, which is otherwise critical of the candidate.
Zelnick's sources in the Senate, whom he would not reveal, shot down the ''shopping'' story and told him that Gore acted out of principle, not expediency, in the Persian Gulf debate. With just a few hours to go, Zelnick said, Gore was still consulting with Martin Peretz, a friend who publishes The New Republic magazine, and then-Representative Steve Solarz of New York, about the wisdom of war in the gulf.
In the end, Zelnick writes in his book that Gore's vote ''deserves to be recognized as an act of conscience and moral courage.''
And Bill Turque, a Newsweek reporter whose forthcoming book on Gore contains embarrassing material about the candidate's use of marijuana, said he thought Simpson and Sununu were engaged in ''a bunch of election season spin.'' Turque said he ''found nothing'' to substantiate Simpson's allegation and agreed with Zelnick that Gore's vote on the Gulf War was ''probably the most courageous vote he ever cast.''
