Path: bloom-picayune.mit.edu!snorkelwacker.mit.edu!americast.com!americast.com!americast-post Newsgroups: americast.wpost From: americast-post@AmeriCast.Com Organization: American Cybercasting Approved: americast-post@AmeriCast.com Subject: 'Odd and Disturbing' On Monday, Sept. 28, three days before he reentered the race for the presidency, Ross Perot played host at a Dallas hotel to high-powered visiting delegations of Democrats and Republicans. In separate, closed-door meetings, the leaders of the George Bush and Bill Clinton campaigns described their policy proposals to the assemblage of Perot volunteer coordinators from around the country and answered their questions. Then each group held a news conference with Perot. At the afternoon news conference, following the Republican presentation, John King of the Associated Press was doing his job by asking Robert M. Teeter, the chairman of the Bush-Quayle cam- paign and head of the GOP delegation, to reaffirm or recant some unflattering comments Teeter had made about Perot early in the summer before Perot staged his abrupt (and temporary) withdrawal from the contest. As Teeter was trying to fend off King's questions, Perot walked over from the side of the stage, threw a protective arm around Teeter's shoulders and uttered a couple of "no hard feelings" sentiments that took Teeter off the hook. Sitting there among the reporters, I found the scene both odd and funny. Teeter, a cerebral and reserved guy I have known for 25 years or more, has a nice, quiet sense of humor, but he is not one who goes in much for hugs, pats, arm punches or other forms of male locker-room camaraderie. And I was pretty sure I detected in his expression the awkwardness he felt at being locked into Perot's good-natured embrace while a national audience on CNN watched. That scene flashed through my mind as I watched a grim-faced, thin-lipped Perot on CBS's "60 Minutes" Sunday night blame "the key people" in the Bush-Quayle campaign for hatching a plot last June to smear his daughter with a doctored photo and then disrupt her summer wedding. "This was run at the top," he said. As CBS correspondent Lesley Stahl made abundantly clear, Perot himself offers no proof of these allegations, which he attributes largely to unnamed Republican friends of his. Teeter and cam- paign counsel Bobby Burchfield flatly deny them, as does the White House. One source of the allegations is a man named Scott Barnes, who, according to "60 Minutes," was once convicted of electronic eavesdropping and who was described by the FBI as a publicity hound and concocter of tall tales. Barnes claims he was shown the altered photograph by someone who invoked Teeter's name and also says he was recruited by the Bush-Quayle campaign to wiretap Perot's office. When the FBI was brought into the case, it found no evidence to support the charges. The FBI got Perot to make a tape of his own voice, which was then offered to the Bush-Quayle campaign as a phone tap in a "sting operation." Bush's Texas campaign chairman, Jim Oberwetter, threw the undercover FBI agent with the tape out of his office and called the cops. Yet it is on the basis of this supposed plot that Perot now says he quit the race last July. When he left, he became the object of national derision, and he crushed the hopes of tens of thousands of supporters. Yet three days before he came back into the con- test, he warmly welcomed Teeter and the Republican delegation and went out of his way to show he harbored no grudge against Teeter. Teeter says Perot never mentioned the supposed plot to him when they were together in Dallas. Maybe this is normal behavior, but many, I think, will find it both odd and disturbing. Let us assume, for the moment, that Perot in fact did receive warnings of dirty tricks from people more credible than Barnes. Why would he not have blown the whis- tle on the supposed culprits and denounced their shenanigans - just as Bill Clinton has raised hell about the State Department's rummaging in his and his mother's passport files? Perot's answer to Stahl is that "I didn't want to destroy Caroline's wedding. . . . I couldn't prove it (the plot), but it was a risk I was not willing to take." All of us can understand a father's desire not to have a daughter's wedding marred, but Perot obviously had the resources to prevent that. In fact, he says he did employ private security forces to see that there were no incidents. Quitting the race was an extreme reaction to a dubious provoca- tion. It meant capitulating to those he blames for the plot, and it meant breaking his word to those who had turned to him for leadership. Given the growth in his support since he reentered the race, that July decision can be seen as one that may have cost him a chance to win the presidency. One has to ask if a President Perot, given intelligence reports of a similarly unverifiable character, would make decisions of an equally impulsive kind. Would Perot overreact as seriously as he appears to have done in this case? When you're picking the commander in chief of the world's larg- est nuclear arsenal, there is no more important question. Perot needs to answer that question much better than he did at his press conference yesterday. 02:27 10-27C9999----- Copyright 1992, The Washington Post. This story is from the Washington Post's Capitol Edition On-Line and is not to be ar- chived or redistributed. For more information, send-email to American Cybercasting Cor- poration (usa@AmeriCast.COM)