Pro-choicers cite Thompson aid

Fred Thompson, the actor and former Tennessee senator weighing a presidential bid as an anti-abortion Republican, accepted a lobbying assignment from a family-planning group to persuade the first Bush White House to ease a controversial abortion restriction, according to a 1991 document and five people familiar with the matter.

A Thompson spokesman denied Thompson did the lobbying work. But minutes of a 1991 board meeting of the National Family Planning and Reproductive Health Association show the group hired Thompson that year.

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

The abortion "gag rule" was a major political flash point at the time. Thompson's lobbying would clash with the anti-abortion movement he is trying to rally behind his all-but-declared campaign for president.

Thompson spokesman Mark Corallo denied 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 Sununu, the White House official Thompson was hired to contact, said he had no memory of any 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 of the board's meeting of Sept. 14, 1991, a copy of which DeSarno provided, 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 Barnes of Maryland, a colleague at the lobbying and law firm where Thompson worked, said DeSarno had asked him to recommend someone for the lobbying work, and he had suggested Thompson. He said it was "absolutely bizarre" for Thompson to deny he lobbied against the abortion-counseling rule.

"I talked to him while he was doing it," said Barnes, a Democrat.

Sununu, who in 1991 was the White House chief of staff and the president's point man on the abortion rule, said in a telephone interview: "I don't recall him ever lobbying me on that at all. ... In fact, I know that never happened."

In response to Sununu's denial, DeSarno said Thompson "owes [the family-planning association] a bunch of money" if he never talked to him, as he said he had.

At the time, Thompson was a lobbyist and lawyer "of counsel" to Arent Fox Kintner Plotkin & Kahn, a Washington firm. DeSarno said the association paid the firm for Thompson's work. Marc Fleischaker, chairman of Arent Fox, declined to comment.

Best known for playing a district attorney on NBC's "Law & Order," Thompson worked as a part-time lobbyist over nearly three decades, before and after his Senate term.

The abortion "gag rule" had been upheld by the Supreme Court earlier in 1991 and was eliminated in 1993 by President Clinton.

In addition to Barnes and DeSarno, three other people — Susan Cohen, Bill Hamilton and Sarah Szanton — said they recalled Thompson lobbying against the "gag rule" on behalf of the family-planning association. At the time Cohen was on the association's board of directors, Hamilton worked with Planned Parenthood and Szanton worked for DeSarno.