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Thompson lobbied for abortion-rights group, it says

A spokesman for the GOP presidential hopeful says he
did no such work. An ex-colleague calls the denial
'bizarre.
'
By Michael Finnegan
Times Staff Writer

July 7, 2007

Fred D. Thompson, who is campaigning for president as
an antiabortion Republican, accepted an assignment
from a family-planning group to lobby the first Bush
White House to ease a controversial abortion
restriction, according to a 1991 document and several
people familiar with the matter. 

A spokesman for the former Tennessee senator denied
that Thompson did the lobbying work. But the minutes
of a 1991 board meeting of the National Family
Planning and Reproductive Health Assn. say that the
group hired Thompson that year.

His task was to urge the administration of President
George H. W. Bush to withdraw or relax a rule that
barred abortion counseling at clinics that received
federal money, according to the records and to people
who worked on the matter.

The abortion "gag rule" was then a major political
flashpoint. Lobbying against the rule would have
placed Thompson at odds with the antiabortion movement
that he is now trying to rally behind his expected
declaration of a presidential bid. 

Thompson spokesman Mark Corallo adamantly denied that
Thompson worked for the family planning group. "Fred
Thompson did not lobby for this group, period," he
said in an e-mail. 

In a telephone interview, he added: "There's no
documents to prove it, there's no billing records, and
Thompson says he has no recollection of it, says it
didn't happen." In a separate interview, John H.
Sununu, the White House official whom the family
planning group wanted to contact, said he had no
memory of the lobbying and doubted it took place.

But Judith DeSarno, who was president of the family
planning association in 1991, said Thompson lobbied
for the group for several months.

Minutes from the board's meeting of Sept. 14, 1991 — a
copy of which DeSarno gave to The Times — say: "Judy
[DeSarno] reported that the association had hired Fred
Thompson Esq. as counsel to aid us in discussions with
the administration" on the abortion counseling rule.

Former Rep. Michael D. Barnes (D-Md.), a colleague at
the lobbying and law firm where Thompson worked, said
that DeSarno had asked him to recommend someone for
the lobbying work and that he had suggested Thompson.
He said it was "absolutely bizarre" for Thompson to
deny that he lobbied against the abortion counseling
rule.

"I talked to him while he was doing it, and I talked
to [DeSarno] about the fact that she was very pleased
with the work that he was doing for her organization,"
said Barnes. "I have strong, total recollection of
that. This is not something I dreamed up or she
dreamed up. This is fact."

DeSarno said that Thompson, after being hired,
reported to her that he had held multiple
conversations about the abortion rule with Sununu, who
was then the White House chief of staff and the
president's point man on the rule.

Thompson kept her updated on his progress in telephone
conversations and over meals at Washington
restaurants, including dinner at Galileo and lunch at
the Monocle, she said. At one of the meals, she
recalled, Thompson told her that Sununu had just given
him tickets for a VIP tour of the White House for a
Thompson son and his wife.

"It would be an odd thing for me to construct that
thing out of whole cloth," DeSarno said. "It happened,
and I think it's quite astonishing they're denying
it."

Sununu said in a telephone interview: "I don't recall
him ever lobbying me on that at all. I don't think
that ever happened. In fact, I know that never
happened." He added that he had "absolutely no idea"
whether Thompson had met with anybody else at the
White House, but said it would have been a waste of
time, given the president's opposition to abortion
rights.

In response to Sununu's denial, DeSarno said Thompson
"owes NFPRHA a bunch of money" if he never talked to
Sununu as he said he had.

At the time, Thompson was a lobbyist and lawyer "of
counsel" to the Washington firm of Arent Fox Kintner
Plotkin & Kahn.

DeSarno said the family planning association paid the
firm for Thompson's work. Marc L. Fleischaker,
chairman of Arent Fox, declined to comment.

Corallo, the spokesman for Thompson, was asked Friday
about the board minutes and the five people who said
they recalled Thompson accepting the lobbying
assignment. He responded in an e-mail, saying that
Thompson "may have been consulted by one of [his]
firm's partners who represented this group in 1991."

Corallo said it was "not unusual for one lawyer on one
side of an issue to be asked to give advice to
colleagues for clients who engage in conduct or
activities with which they personally disagree."

Any work that Thompson did to challenge the abortion
rule could complicate his appeals to conservatives in
the contest for the Republican presidential
nomination. He reportedly plans to join the race this
month.

For weeks, Thompson has tried to pick up support from
religious conservatives dissatisfied with the top GOP
White House contenders, some of whom have backed
abortion rights. In a videotaped message to the
National Right to Life Convention in Kansas City last
month, Thompson said the group's issues were "ever
more profound to me as the years go by."

A senator from December 1994 to January 2003, Thompson
voted along antiabortion lines, but his statements
have occasionally raised questions about his attitude
toward the cause.

On Fox News last month, he was asked why he checked a
box on a questionnaire in his 1994 Senate campaign
beside a statement saying that abortion "should be
legal in all circumstances for the first three
months."

"I don't remember that box," Thompson replied. "You
know, it was a long time ago, and I don't know if I
filled it out or my staff, based on what they thought
my position was, filled it out."

The Tennessean newspaper reported that Thompson, when
filling out a 1996 Christian Coalition survey, marked
himself as "opposed" to a constitutional amendment
protecting "the sanctity of human life." 

The newspaper said he included a handwritten notation
saying: "I do not believe abortion should be
criminalized. This battle will be won in the hearts
and souls of the American people."

In recent weeks, Thompson has described himself as
fundamentally "pro-life," saying the issue has "meant
a little more to me" since seeing the sonogram of his
now-3-year-old daughter.

Best known for playing a district attorney on NBC's
"Law and Order," Thompson worked as a part-time
lobbyist over nearly three decades, both before and
after his Senate service. His clients included a
General Electric aircraft-engine maker, Westinghouse
Electric Corp. and the Equitas insurance company.

DeSarno and others said the family planning group
hired Thompson shortly after the Supreme Court upheld
the "gag rule" in 1991. 

That ruling led to a protracted tussle between Bush
and Congress. The rule was eliminated in 1993 by
President Clinton on his third day in office.

In addition to Barnes and DeSarno, three other people
said they recalled Thompson lobbying against the rule
on behalf of the family planning association.

Susan Cohen, a member of the association's board of
directors in 1991, said in reference to DeSarno and
Thompson: "We were looking, of course, for a
Republican who might have some inroads to the White
House at that time, and so that's how she came upon
contacting him." 

Said Bill Hamilton, who then directed the Washington
office of the Planned Parenthood Federation of
America, a group that was DeSarno's main ally in
lobbying on the abortion counseling rule: "I
definitely recall her reaching out to [Thompson] and
engaging him in some way, and trying to squeeze the
White House through him." 

Sarah L. Szanton, who worked for DeSarno as director
of government relations for the family planning
association, agreed that Thompson "consulted on our
behalf against the gag rule."

"I remember that he did it," Szanton said. "I just
knew he was part of the good fight."

The National Family Planning and Reproductive Health
Assn. is a Washington nonprofit organization that
represents family planning clinics and other groups.
It advocates "reproductive freedom" and broad access
to birth control.



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

michael.finnegan at latimes.com


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