Path: bloom-picayune.mit.edu!snorkelwacker.mit.edu!americast.com!americast.com!americast-post Newsgroups: americast.twt.news From: americast-post@AmeriCast.Com Organization: American Cybercasting Approved: americast-post@AmeriCast.com Subject: Perot claims GOP plot to smear his daughter Date: Mon, 26 Oct 92 14:37:03 EST Message-ID: \SE A \HD Perot claims GOP plot to smear his daughter \SH Says he left race to protect her \BY Major Garrett \CR THE WASHINGTON TIMES \DT FLEMINGTON, N.J. FLEMINGTON, N.J. - Independent presidential candidate Ross Perot yesterday hurled shocking but unsubstantiated charges that the Bush campaign plotted to "smear" his daughter's reputation, disrupt her summer wedding and bug his Dallas campaign headquarters. Mr. Perot leveled the charges at the first two mass rallies of his late-blooming campaign, yesterday in New Jersey and Pennsylvania. The story broke in yesterday morning's Boston Herald and was repeated in a taped interview last night on CBS-TV's "60 Minutes." The White House rejected the charges as "preposterous." Mr. Perot said he learned of the alleged operation through Republican sources and suspended his campaign to spare his daughter and family unnecessary grief. "They were going to smear her with a fake photograph that they had done with a computer where you put a head on another body and they were actually going to have people in the church to disrupt her wedding," the Herald quoted Mr. Perot as saying. He said the picture was going to be given to supermarket tabloids. Mr. Perot told the Herald that he gave the FBI a 20-minute videotape of a Dallas meeting between a senior Bush-Quayle adviser and a former CIA contract employee hired to bug Perot headquarters. Mr. Perot acknowleged in the CBS interview that one of his sources was Scott Barnes, whom the FBI has described as a publicity hound for trying to interest the government in spurious stories about POWs and MIAs. The Texan said two other Republican sources corroborated Mr. Barnes' story. He would not name the other sources and did not provide any evidence to support his allegations. Nor could Mr. Perot explain how he got hold of the videotape. CBS reported that the head of the Dallas FBI office has found no evidence of wiretapping. ABC News reported last week that Mr. Perot has offered no evidence to support his sworn congressional testimony that the Black Panthers tried to assassinate him at his Dallas home in the early 1970s. Some of Mr. Perot's former volunteers have charged that the Texan has improperly investigated their credit records. Federal authorities are investigating the charges. Word of Mr. Perot's charges stunned the Bush-Quayle campaign, which issued a swift denial. White House spokesman Marlin Fitzwater dismissed the allegations. "It didn't happen. It's just crazy," Mr. Fitzwater said after a Bush-Quayle stop in Detroit. "Perot has been told directly and personally it didn't happen. The stuff about his daughter is just crazy; it's preposterous." Bush-Quayle officials also released a 16-page transcript of general counsel Bobby Burchfield's interview with CBS correspondent Lesley Stahl denying Mr. Perot's charges. "After a thorough investigation of all these allegations, there is absolutely nothing to them," Mr. Burchfield said in the Oct. 22 interview, which was released yesterday in Billings, Mont., where Mr. Bush was campaigning. Mr. Perot leveled the charges again before an adoring crowd of about 12,000 at the Flemington Fairgrounds and Speedway in central New Jersey. The candidate spoke from a makeshift platform while thousands crowded beneath him on the infield and others screamed from the grandstand. Mr. Perot said GOP operatives used computer imaging to create a picture of his daughter Carolyn that would have embarrassed her had it ever been published. He called it an attempted "smear" and said he had obtained information that Republicans were planning to disrupt her Aug. 23 wedding. He said he had told his daughter about the plot after her honeymoon. He said she responded: "OK, the wedding's over. Get back in the race." As he related the story, one man screamed that the perpetrators, and possibly the president himself, should be jailed. The crowd booed lustily when Mr. Perot said the alleged skulduggery drove him from the race in July. No one in the crowd appeared willing to question his story, and Mr. Perot darted from the grandstand and into a waiting helicopter before reporters, who had been sequestered behind thousands of spectators in the infield, could reach him. "I believe him," said Kathy Cheskiewitz, 37, of Orange, Pa. "Absolutely." "We've always felt there was something we didn't know about," said Beverly Bice, 44, of Alden, Pa. The two rode with about 40 others in a chartered bus for more than two hours from central Pennsylvania to see Mr. Perot. "He is the answer to all of our nation's problems," Mrs. Bice said. As for Mr. Bush's strong denials, Mrs. Cheskiewitz said the president has no credibility. "I don't trust him," she said. "I don't believe him. I would expect a denial." True or false, the story fit an immediate need for the Perot campaign, which has has trouble explaining the candidate's abrupt departure from the race July 16. And it conveniently reinforces his followers' long-held suspicions that forces beyond Mr. Perot's control forced him to drop out - not his distate for the rough-and-tumble of presidential politics. The tactic of leveling headline-grabbing charges late in a campaign is familiar in local politics, but rarely has it been practiced so brazenly at the national level. It is unclear if the public, which appears to be warming to Mr. Perot in the campaign's last days, will view the story as plausible but unproved fact or pure fiction. At the Pittsburgh rally, Mr. Perot begin to back away from the story. "I cannot prove that any of that happened," he said. "I just got these reports. Don't spend five more minutes fretting about it. That's history." * Frank J. Murray, traveling with the Bush campaign, contributed to this report. This article is copyright 1992 The Washington Times. Redistribution to other sites is not permitted except by arrangement with American Cybercasting Corporation. For more information, send-email to usa@AmeriCast.COM