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Subject: Aides Struggle to Push Perot Charges of GOP Tricks Off Center Stage<By Michael
Date: Wed, 28 Oct 92 04:28:31 EST
Message-ID: <29.1992Oct28.042831@AmeriCast.com>

Aides Struggle to Push Perot Charges of GOP Tricks Off Center
Stage<By Michael Isikoff=Washington Post Staff Writer=

DALLAS, Oct. 27 - Ross Perot's top campaign aides today struggled
to squelch the controversy over the independent presidential
candidate's allegations of Republican dirty tricks, insisting
Perot will stick to the issues for the rest of the campaign and
no longer take questions on "negative" stories about his charac-
ter.

But their efforts came amid new questions about Perot's explana-
tion of his decision to go public with allegations of GOP plots
to disrupt his daughter's wedding and wiretap his office even
while acknowledging he had no evidence to support them.

Perot, in a contentious news conference Monday, said he agreed to
make his charges in a public forum only after he was told by re-
porters for CBS television's "60 Minutes" that the program would
air a story about the alleged Republican plots anyway on its show
last Sunday.

"I didn't want '60 Minutes' to run it," Perot said. "I didn't
give them the story. I told '60 Minutes' when they first called
me, I said, approach this with great skepticism."

But Don Hewitt, executive producer of the show, said that for
three or four weeks before the show Perot had been urging him to
obtain a piece of evidence the Texas billionaire contended gave
credence to the purported plot: a videotape of a meeting between
James Oberwetter, chairman of the Bush-Quayle campaign in Texas,
and Scott Barnes, a former police officer who told Perot he had
been hired by Republicans to wiretap his office. Congressional
staffers and others who know Barnes call him unreliable and a
publicity seeker with a history of dispensing outlandish stories.

The FBI has concluded there never was a plot to bug Perot's of-
fice and all contacts between Barnes and the Bush-Quayle campaign
were initiated by Barnes. It was also unclear today who made the
videotape and why. Hewitt said Perot urged him to contact a Brit-
ish Broadcasting Corp. producer named David Taylor to see the
tape. Taylor, a Washington-based journalist who has frequently
used Barnes as a news source, did not return a telephone call.

"Perot told me to look at the tape in the posseession of David
Taylor," Hewitt said.

He said Perot told him, the tape "will convince you that Barnes
and Oberwetter were not strangers . . . they were sitting there
on the bench in friendly conversation. Perot considered it defin-
itive visual evidence."

Oberwetter said today that a man be believes was Barnes - posing
as a "Howard Parsons" - came to his Dallas office last August,
insisted on meeting outside and offered him purportedly damaging
documents and tapes on Perot.

"I told him I was very uncomfortable with him approaching me,"
said Oberwetter, emphasizing that he refused the material and
suggested "Parsons" take it to the news media instead.

Hewitt said he talked repeatedly to Perot about the story
throughout the month and found the Texas billionaire "of two
minds" about the matter.

"I can't say he was egging us on," Hewitt said. "He said I don't
want you to do the story but then he said you ought to get the
tape. . . . He protested, but said if you get that tape you'll
see."

President Bush in his first public comments about the matter to-
day described Perot's nationally televised charges that Republi-
cans had sought to disrupt his daughter's wedding as "crazy."

"I mean an allegation that we would wittingly or in any other way
try to break up a man's daughter's wedding, particularly (a man)
not even in the presidential race at that time - what in the
world would be the reason for that?" Bush said on NBC's "Today"
show. "And I mean, I don't understand it."

While Perot remained hidden from public view today, senior aides
Sharon Holman and Orson Swindle told reporters here they expect
new attacks on Perot's character and integrity in the waning days
of the campaign.

"We're not going to play that game, we're not going to partici-
pate," Holman said. Instead, she said, the campaign will try to
refocus public attention on its main message: That Perot can win
the American prisoners of war "were totally convinced the pro-
tests being conducted against the U.S. war in Vietnam prolonged
the war."<

-Perot aide Orson Swindle> election Tuesday and a vote for him
will not be wasted.

Perot will seek to press the case himself Wednesday in a rare
campaign appearance in Denver, his aides announced late today.

Meanwhile, Perot's running mate, former Vietnam prisoner of war
James B. Stockdale, said in an interview with the Idaho Statesman
in Boise that demonstrations against the Vietnam War by young
Americans such as Bill Clinton hurt the U.S. war effort, costing
thousands of additional American lives and prolonging the cap-
tivity of prisoners of war.  Asked about those comments today,
Swindle - Perot's top campaign aide and another former POW - said
he agreed with Stockdale although he acknowledged he had not con-
sulted with Perot on the issue.

He and his POW colleagues "were totally convinced the protests
being conducted against the U.S. war in Vietnam prolonged the
war," Swindle said. "We heard it from our captors over and over
and over again. They were encouraged."

Meanwhile, Holman today offered a spirited defense of Perot's
anger at the Monday news conference where he defended his coon-
duct in airing his GOP dirty tricks charges and attacked the news
media for "twisted" stories challenging his integiry.

"Most politicians who have been in this business for years and
years and years might have reacted differently than Mr. Perot did
yesterday," Holman said. "I think most normal Americans would be
just as incensed when their integrity is attacked, when they hear
their children are being attacked. We've never claimed to be
slick, we've never claimed to be polished politicians. Perhaps it
wasn't conventional, but it was honest."<Staff writers Bob Wood-
ward in Washington and Ruth Marcus with President Bush contribut-
ed to this report.< 02:22 10-28C9999-----

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.

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