Caveat lector

Our current howler: Footing the Bill

Synopsis: O’Reilly was wrong about LaBella and Gore. Tonight, he should lay out the facts.

Commentary by Bill O'Reilly, Nancy Skinner
The O'Reilly Factor, Fox News Channel, 8/8/00

Commentary by Charles LaBella, Alan Colmes
Hannity & Colmes, Fox News Channel, 6/27/00

Commentary by Charles LaBella, Robert Litt
This Week, ABC, 6/11/00

It was two of our favorites, going hammer and tong—Nancy Skinner from Chicago's WLS, and Fox's tempestuous Bill O'Reilly. This time around, there's no doubt about it. Skinner won out on the facts:

SKINNER: Charles LaBella himself has stated several times that the reason he suggested a probe be undertaken was because more of a process issue, in his words, and that there is no direct evidence that Gore knew anything other than what he was told.

Skinner was discussing the luncheon at the Hsi Lai Buddhist temple, and the reason why LaBella, former head of the Justice Department's fund-raising probe, had recommended appointment of an independent counsel. As we pointed out recently, LaBella engaged in this exchange on the June 27 Hannity & Colmes (see THE DAILY HOWLER, 7/27/00)

COLMES (6/27): The fact of the matter, Mr. LaBella, there were two events, they were conflated into one event—

LABELLA: That's correct—

COLMES: Al Gore agreed to go to an event that was not a fund-raiser, the two got a little mixed up thanks to [John Huang]. So that's what happened, and there's no credible evidence Al Gore knew what happened at the Buddhist temple was a fund-raiser. Money was not solicited at the Buddhist temple, there were no signs around there, that's not what happened when he was there during a five-minute speech that he gave, right?

LABELLA: This is a great cross-examination, I gotta tell you, you guys are terrific. The fact is, when I was there, there was no evidence that I was aware of that Vice President Gore was aware of any of the conduit contributions that went on at the temple.

COLMES: Right.

Why then had LaBella recommended an independent investigation? On ABC's This Week, Robert Litt—another Justice official who had recommended a probe—had offered this explanation:

LITT (6/11): This was an extremely close issue. You have to remember that this is not a question really of whether the vice president committed a crime or whether he ought to be prosecuted. As the memo you put up on the screen a moment ago said, nobody really thought that was the case. As Chuck said, this was a process issue. Did it meet the technical legal threshold of the independent counsel statute?

The "Chuck" in Litt's statement was Chuck LaBella. This is what LaBella had said earlier in that show:

LABELLA (6/11): I think it was about process. I think many of us, as I've said before, most experienced prosecutors had the belief that many of the violations were very technical violations even if they were committed, were not the types of violations that would result in a prosecution. They just weren't. Experienced prosecutors came to that conclusion. The fact is, it was the process that was short-circuited in the bargain.

LaBella made a similar statement when he appeared on Hannity & Colmes:

LABELLA (6/27): You know I have never said anything other than I thought an investigation was warranted. I've also said that I thought at the end of the day the investigation would wash out the allegations because these are not the types of allegations that ultimately warrant prosecution or criminal sanctions.

We trust Bill O'Reilly, and we admire his passion. But we think he was essentially wrong last night. Here's the exchange which followed the comment from Skinner which we quoted above:

SKINNER [as quoted above]: Charles LaBella himself has stated several times that the reason he suggested a probe be undertaken was because more of a process issue, in his words, and that there is no direct evidence that Gore knew anything other than what he was told.

O'REILLY: Charles LaBella never said that at all. He said there was enough evidence to launch—

SKINNER: Absolutely. On your network, he said it. On Hannity & Colmes, he said it, just recently.

O'REILLY: No he—look, if I'm wrong I'll apologize tomorrow. But from our interview with Charles LaBella and his memo, he never said there was no evidence connecting the vice president. He said there was enough evidence to appoint a special prosecutor.

O'Reilly's presentation is difficult to reconcile with Labella's comments on Hannity & Colmes. According to O'Reilly, LaBella "never said there was no evidence connecting the vice president." On H & C, though, here's what Chuck said: "The fact is, when I was there, there was no evidence that I was aware of that Vice President Gore was aware of any of the conduit contributions that went on at the temple." We think O'Reilly's viewers ought to be made aware of LaBella's unambiguous statement.

For the record, there was another exchange last night on which O'Reilly plainly misfired. Earlier in his segment with Skinner, he clearly suggested that Gore was somehow complicit in the solicitation of funds at Hsi Lai for which Maria Hsiah has been tried and convicted:

SKINNER: [Gore] was told by his deputy that [the Hsi Lai luncheon] was community outreach, and no one, no one who testified said that he knew anything different than just that.

O'REILLY: Then why was Maria Hsiah, who set this deal up, convicted of illegal campaign finance activity?

The answer to that question has long been a matter of public record. Hsiah collected money at the temple the day after the luncheon which Gore attended. She was tried and convicted for that conduct. But in their opening statement at her trial, Hsiah's prosecutors explicitly stated that neither Gore nor the DNC had any knowledge of Hsiah's activity. This was reported in every newspaper at the time of Hsiah's trial this past March (see THE DAILY HOWLER, 3/16/00).

It's getting pretty late in the game for misinformation like this to be floating around. O'Reilly owes it to Gore—and to the voters—to straighten these facts out tonight.

Note to readers: We've been struggling for time in recent weeks due to our four-a-week columns for SpeakOut.com, and due to the Philly convention. We also lost some time to chance this week. And we'll be in LA for next week's convention. We simply can't do THE HOWLER from the conventions. Sorry for the broken schedules—we're howling as fast as we can.