RENO CITED FOR CONTEMPT; HOUSE PANEL WANTS PAPERS.

Byline: David Hess Knight Ridder Newspapers

In an unprecedented move, a House committee voted Thursday to cite Attorney General Janet Reno for contempt of Congress in refusing to turn over confidential documents in a probe of alleged campaign finance violations.

Shortly after, Reno said she regretted the committee's action and that she would do her ``level best'' to reach an accord with the panel. But she also made it clear that she would continue to stand her ground in the dispute.

``I simply have to draw the line and stand up for what I believe to be a very important principle - that prosecutions in America must be free of political influence,'' she said.

Reno also said that for the committee to demand ``a document I'm reviewing while I've still not made a decision is a form of political tampering that no prosecutor in America can accept.''

The party-line vote, by the House Government Reform and Oversight Committee, moves the matter now to the House floor, where the whole membership must decide whether to support the committee's recommendation and send it on to federal prosecutors for enforcement.

Although a Senate subcommittee voted in 1984 to cite Attorney General William French Smith for contempt, that's as far as it got. So the House panel's action was the first instance ever for an attorney general - the top law enforcement official in the land - to be cited by a full committee and the matter sent to the floor for action.

Only once in the past 25 years has the House itself voted to pursue a recommendation of contempt against a Cabinet-level official, when Anne Gorsuch Burford, director of the Environmental Protection Agency for President Reagan, was cited. Burford eventually complied with Congress' request for agency documents and avoided punishment for defying a House subpoena.

Oversight committee Republicans appear to be banking on the same kind of response from Reno, who will have about a month to decide whether to give up the internal Justice Department investigative documents that the committee is demanding.

Reno is reviewing the documents to determine whether they contain information that might warrant the appointment of an independent counsel to take over a Justice Department investigation of fund-raising in the 1996 presidential campaign. She said she should have a decision on that issue by the end of this month.

But committee Republicans say any further delay in producing the documents would amount to foot-dragging and, said Rep. Steve LaTourette, R-Ohio, could give Reno the notion that ``she could run out the clock on the 105th Congress'' - which lapses officially Jan. 3, 1999.

Committee Chairman Dan Burton, R-Ind., told reporters after the panel's vote that he expects the House to act on the contempt citation shortly after it reconvenes from its summer recess Sept. 9.

``I hope she complies and gives us the documents before we have to vote (in the whole House),'' Burton said.

At a morning news conference before the committee met, however, Reno told reporters, ``One of the things that I try to do is to make sure that I don't let pressure push me over backwards or push me over frontwards.''

Should Reno continue to defy the House and be held in contempt by the U.S. District Court in Washington, she could face up to a year in prison and up to a $1,000 fine.

The two-day committee debate leading up to the historic vote was marked by pungent partisan exchanges between majority Republicans and dissenting Democrats who charged that the GOP was trying to coerce Reno into appointing an independent counsel to investigate alleged Democratic misconduct in the 1996 presidential election campaign.

Republicans insisted they were simply upholding Congress' constitutional obligation to ensure that the attorney general was enforcing a law that requires her to name a special prosecutor when high-ranking administration officials are under suspicion of violating the law. They also argued that Reno was obliged to cooperate with the committee by turning over subpoenaed documents at the panel's request.

But California Rep. Henry Waxman, the senior committee Democrat, accused Burton of ``trying to intimidate Reno, trying to strong-arm her on what's basically a disagreement over how to interpret (the independent counsel) law. This odious threat of contempt is beneath contempt.''

Burton said Reno ``has not budged an inch'' in complying with the committee's subpoena for internal documents that he said are essential to its role in overseeing the propriety of her management of the Justice Department.

And Rep. Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., said the ``Democrats' beating up Burton is an effort to shift the spotlight and divert attention from a matter that should be investigated. What this is about is the recalcitrance of this administration and the Justice Department.''

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Photo: (color) Reno