Bush To Media: `You're Perpetuating The Sleaze' -- Report Of Infidelity A Lie, President Says

WASHINGTON - For years, White House and political reporters have wondered when President Bush would be asked THE question.

Yesterday turned out to be the day as Bush was asked twice about long-circulated rumors of marital infidelity. One question came with Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin at his side in Kennebunkport, the other came in an interview in the Oval Office.

During an extraordinary day for politics and the press, Bush was confronted with a New York Post report that he and a former female aide had a sexual liaison at a private cottage in Switzerland in 1984.

He denounced the allegation as "sleazy" and "a lie."

`SIMPLY NOT TRUE'

Bush later refused to answer a question about whether he had ever committed adultery. "You're perpetuating the sleaze by even asking the question," he told NBC interviewer Stone Phillips. "I don't think you ought to do that and I'm not going to answer the question."

It was the first time in memory that any president had been asked publicly about marital infidelity, an issue that nearly derailed Democrat Bill Clinton's presidential campaign earlier this year.

Bush campaign aides charged that the allegations were publicized after reporters were tipped off by the Clinton campaign. "It's very clear who has been peddling this stuff," said Bush campaign spokeswoman Torie Clarke. "It's the Clinton campaign."

George Stephanopoulos, communications director for the Clinton campaign, called Clarke's statement "simply not true."

Clinton denounced the questioning of Bush, saying, "I didn't like it when it was done to me, and I don't like it when it's done to him."

What prompted the extraordinary questions was the New York Post report that a former U.S. ambassador had confided before his death that he arranged for Bush and the aide to stay in adjoining bedrooms at a guest house in Geneva.

The aide was identified as Jennifer Fitzgerald, who was Bush's appointments secretary at the time and is now deputy chief of protocol in the State Department.

The rumors that Bush and Fitzgerald had an affair have been circulating for years, but have never been substantiated despite investigations by a number of news organizations. The flurry of speculation prompted Bush's oldest son, George W. Bush, to tell Newsweek in 1988 that "the answer to the big A question is N-O."

The same year, an aide to Democratic presidential nominee Michael Dukakis was fired for raising the issue with reporters.

More recently, Hillary Clinton referred to the rumors in an interview published in the magazine Vanity Fair in May. She questioned why Bush was not being subjected to the same scrutiny as her husband.

Bush was first asked about the report at a morning news conference at his seaside compound in Maine, where he had just finished hosting a meeting with Rabin.

With Rabin at a microphone next to him and First Lady Barbara Bush about 20 feet away, Bush heatedly refuted the newspaper account.

"Fortunately, I did not see the New York Post," Barbara Bush said after the news conference.

Later in Washington, Bush was asked about the issue during a taped interview with NBC's "Dateline."

"I don't think it's fair. I think it perpetuates sleaze . . . ," Bush said. "Suddenly, after years in public service and a very happy marriage, I am hit by a wave of questions like yours sitting here today. And I should think you'd be a little ashamed of yourself. . . . It just drags down the political process."

The questioning is sure to trigger a new round of criticism of the media for its treatment of the private lives of politicians.

"It's an absolute outrage, just unforgivable," said University of Virginia professor Larry Sabato, author of "Feeding Frenzy," a book about the media's behavior in the 1988 campaign. "I'm sure they're presenting this as a crisis of the Bush campaign instead of what it really is, a crisis in the ethics of the press in this country."

The New York Post based its story on a new book that cites the allegations about Bush and Fitzgerald. The book, "The Power House" by Susan Trento, is about Washington lobbyist Robert Keith Gray.

FOOTNOTE IN A BOOK

In a footnote, it says that the former U.S. ambassador to disarmament talks in Geneva had disclosed that he made arrangements for Bush and Fitzgerald to room next to each other while Bush was in Switzerland on official business. Barbara Bush was said to be on a book tour in the United States.

In the book, Trento says that the late ambassador, Louis Fields, told her husband in 1986 that it was clear that Bush and Fitzgerald "were romantically involved and this was not a business visit. . . . It made me very uncomfortable."

Joseph Trento, a former CNN investigative reporter, confirmed the account in an interview yesterday with Knight-Ridder Newspapers.

"He was a very frightened man," Trento said of Fields. "He was a guy who left the protection of the government and it suddenly dawned on him he had damaging information about the vice president of the United States."

Trento's account was backed up by William Joyce, an attorney who worked in the same law firm as Fields after the ambassador left the government. Joyce said he and Trento were discussing a case in his office when Fields wandered in and struck up a conversation with Trento.

"I was absolutely stunned when I first heard him say it," said Joyce, a self-described Bush supporter. "I still am absolutely mystified as to why he said it. He was a great friend of Bush's. His wall was covered with photographs of him with Bush. . . . I frankly didn't know whether to believe it or not. It was so strange."

NO WITNESSES

The New York Post reported that Trento, upon learning that Fields was dying of cancer in 1988, asked then-CNN colleague Jay Gourley to interview Fields and verify the account.

Gourley, in an interview with Knight-Ridder, said that Fields was horrified that his story about Bush might become public. "He was begging me not to do the story," said Gourley. He said Fields had thought his conversation with Trento had been off the record.

Gourley said that Fields had told him the relationship between Bush and Fitzgerald "gave the appearance of being a sexual liaison," but that "he did not witness any adultery."

Now a newsletter editor, Gourley attracted attention in 1975 for rummaging through Henry Kissinger's back-alley trash while on assignment for the National Enquirer. Gourley said Trento dislikes Bush and believes Bush, a former CIA director, is part of a conspiracy of former CIA employees trying to exert undue influence over the government's foreign policies.

Word of Fields' allegation shocked several friends and associates. Aside from his law partner, none had heard Fields tell the story. Some said he was inclined to boast of his relationship with Bush and to point to several photos of the two taken in large social settings.

"He told me several times that he knew Bush quite well," said arms-control specialist Robert Kupperman, who served with Fields at the State Department early in the Reagan administration.

"He never had a break with George Bush or with the party, so I can't see his even making the allegation," said a director who served with Fields on the board of the First Commercial Bank in Arlington, Va. "This is not the Louis Fields I knew."