Veep keeps Temple tale alive by changing his story

June 28, 2000

WASHINGTON — The National Press Club barflies are particularly
grumpy these days. They can’t understand why a White House scandal story
that broke four years ago is still news.

“Temple in a teapot,” they grouse. They were hoping to skip over it
and just cover the coronation of the next Democratic president.

But their pick, Al Gore, keeps changing his story. And that’s kept
alive the embarrassing (not to mention criminal) story of a vice
president shaking down Buddhist nuns and monks.

Gore’s version of what went down at the Hsi Lai Temple in 1996 has
shifted from categorical denial (It was “not a fund-raiser”) to
dissembling (“It was a community outreach event”) to hair-splitting (OK,
it may have been “finance related”) to back-stabbing (“David Strauss
told me this was a community outreach event”), and back to categorical
denial (“I did not know it was a fund-raiser”).

He made the latest denial April 18 in sworn statements to FBI agents.

But he also added a galling new twist to his story. Under oath, he
actually now claims that he didn’t know he was even going to the Temple
until he was en route to the event from the Los Angeles airport.

“After I caught my breath in the car, I took out my notebook and
flipped to the next event,” Gore
testified. “And my immediate impression was, good, they finally were
able to work out this visit to the Hsi Lai Temple.”

Please, Mr. Vice President, quit while you’re ahead.

Gore’s scheduler, Kim Tilley, confirmed the April 29 Temple
“fund-raiser” with Gore way back on March 15 — just hours after Gore
met with Temple master Hsing Yun in the White House. And Gore
acknowledged the booking of the “fund-raiser” in an e-mailed reply to
Tilley the same day.

In her Senate deposition, Tilley said the vice president understood
the Temple visit to be a fund-raiser. (So, by the way, did David
Strauss, Gore’s then-chief of staff, the aide he’s now blaming for
misleading him.)

Was the event ever canceled or rescheduled? Nope. It was always set
for April 29 at the Hsi Lai Temple in Hacienda Heights, Calif.

A flurry of White House e-mails obtained through subpoena shows
Gore’s staff making plans for the Temple “fund-raiser.” They even
discussed “ticket prices.”

One e-mail from Gore staffer John Emerson listed Gore’s travel
itinerary for April 29. “LA — DNC
funder for lunch; then to San Jose for TV workshop event and funder,” he
wrote another staffer, Bill Wise. The message was sent April 24 — less
than a week before the event was to occur.

But don’t stop there.

On April 26, Gore was given briefing notes from the Democratic
National Committee informing him that the DNC luncheon he would attend
on April 29 was at the Hsi Lai Temple.

That was the Friday before the Monday fund-raiser. Maybe Gore just
forgot about it over the weekend, busy schedule that he keeps (even
though he had no other trips to Los Angeles planned between March 15 and
April 29).

Not likely. Caren Solomon and other Gore staffers who flew with him
to Los Angeles, were among those who discussed scheduling the Temple
fund-raiser in earlier e-mails.

So how can Gore claim the event was sprung on him in the back seat of
the limo whisking him to the Temple? He can’t.

But he did. That’s his story, and he’s sticking to it. And that’s why
the story keeps sticking to him — like bad Karma.