Word: thompson
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...month before the curtain is supposed to rise, the Senate hearings on campaign-finance abuse are shaping up like the movie Titanic, an ambitious production that Hollywood can't seem to bring to the screen. By last week Thompson, an ex-actor who was chief Republican counsel in the Watergate hearings, was still looking for the basic elements of political spectacle: star witness, clear story line, boffo ending. Virtually every principal figure on the foreign-money side of the scandal plans to take the Fifth or has fled--bankrollers James Riady, Charlie Yah Lin Trie and Pauline Kanchanalak are living...
...Thompson may be hoping to fill in the blanks with a team of gumshoes he dispatched to Asia last Friday. But so far, committee sources tell TIME, the six investigators--two FBI agents, three G.O.P. staff members and one Democrat--have lined up appointments with only two bit players of the more than two dozen people they had hoped to interview. State Department officials tell TIME the China leg of the trip was canceled after the communist government refused to allow independent fact finding there. Instead Beijing promised to allow the team to meet with government officials to discuss...
Last week his committee got worse news. The most compelling new development in the foreign fund-raising scandal centers on a donation to Thompson's party. According to documents turned over to Senate investigators on Friday, then G.O.P. chairman Haley Barbour discussed the possibility of helping a Hong Kong tycoon get business in China if he forgave a $2.2 million loan to a Republican think tank. Barbour has denied this latest allegation...
...makings of a p.r. nightmare for the G.O.P. The oft-delayed opening of the hearings, last set for July 8, seems likely to slip again--perhaps to July 15 or even September. The Democrats can take much of the credit: first, they forced a strict Dec. 31 limit on Thompson's hearings and sharply cut the funds for Congressman Dan Burton's probe in the House...
...political aides and spokesmen--meet in the office of deputy chief of staff John Podesta to project where the Republicans are heading and how they can be headed off. They have managed this with the collaboration of Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle while still providing most of the documents Thompson has sought, as well as dozens of interviews. And playing offense, the Democrats have asked to subpoena records of G.O.P. groups to delve into their fund-raising tactics...