WASHINGTON (AP) - As Congress pressed its investigation of Democrats, Teamsters and foreign money yesterday, Attorney General Janet Reno flashed uncharacteristic frustration at the White House's delayed disclosure of fund-raising videotapes.
"I was mad," Reno said, describing her reaction Saturday to word about the tapes' existence. She added that the episode has strained her relationship with the White House, and she volunteered that her decision against seeking an independent prosecutor to look at Clinton's role in the coffees could still be reversed.
But the tapes themselves probably wouldn't have made a difference in that decision, she said.
"Where the White House has a responsibility to produce documents, it's very, very frustrating when they are produced in a delayed fashion," Reno said at a news conference. "And I also thought we should have been told immediately."
At the Capitol, Senate and House committees both continued full-bore in their investigations of Democratic fund-raising practices:
At the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee hearing, questioning focused on an alleged scheme - illegal if true - to swap donations between the Teamsters and the Democratic Party. Former fund-raiser Mark Thomann testified he was asked by his boss, Richard Sullivan, to consider arranging a $100,000 donation from a foreigner to the union but backed away out of concerns about the legality of such a transaction.
Thomann disputed the earlier testimony of Sullivan, the Democratic Party's former finance director, who had said he did not ask anyone to raise money for the re-election campaign of Teamsters President Ron Carey.
Simultaneously, the House Government Reform and Oversight Committee took the first public testimony in its late-starting investigation. Witness No. 1, Manlin Foung, sister of Democratic fund-raiser Yah Lin "Charlie" Trie, testified that her brother twice arranged for reimbursements after she and a friend, Joseph Landon, wrote checks for Democratic National Committee functions.
For instance, she said she was reimbursed the same day she wrote a $10,000 check in August 1996 for a Democratic birthday bash for Clinton in New York, which she did not attend. Committee investigators contend this money came from the Bank of China in Macau.
"I have no knowledge of laundering," she testified. "To me, I'd simply done my brother a favor. I don't know anything. I didn't even know what the DNC was."
Trie, who has gone abroad, is a former Little Rock, Ark., restaurateur and longtime friend of Clinton. His sister testified under a grant of immunity from prosecution based on what she said.
The pot was stirred further by Reno, who is rarely so forthcoming at her weekly meeting with reporters. She has been under daily pressure from Republicans to recommend the appointment of an independent counsel to investigate the legality of both Clinton and Vice President Al Gore's fund-raising calls.
"No one can shout loud enough or write a headline big enough or use words shrill enough to keep me from doing what I think is the right thing on this investigation," she said.
Asked if the episode had strained relations with the White House, she said, "Anytime somebody gets upset and mad at what happened, there perhaps is a strain."
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