WASHINGTON

BUSH TO AGENCIES: DON’T HIRE COLUMNISTS TO PROMOTE AGENDAS

President Bush yesterday ordered his Cabinet secretaries not to hire columnists to promote their agendas after disclosure that a second writer was paid to tout an administration initiative. The president said he expects his agency heads will “make sure that that practice doesn’t go forward.”

“All our Cabinet secretaries must realize that we will not be paying commentators to advance our agenda. Our agenda ought to be able to stand on its own two feet,” Mr. Bush said at a news conference. His remarks came a day after syndicated columnist Maggie Gallagher apologized to readers for not disclosing a $21,500 contract with the Health and Human Services Department to help create materials promoting the agency’s $300 million initiative to encourage marriage.

Mr. Bush also said the White House had been unaware that the Education Department paid commentator and columnist Armstrong Williams $240,000 to plug its policies. That contract came to light two weeks ago.

Mr. Bush said there “needs to be a nice independent relationship between the White House and the press, the administration and the press.” And he noted that “we have new leadership going into the Department of Education.”

Education Secretary Margaret Spellings started this week, replacing first-term Education Secretary Rod Paige. Mr. Paige had ordered an investigation into whether Mr. Williams should have disclosed the deal to produce television and radio ads promoting the No Child Left Behind Act.

– Associated Press

GROUP THREATENS TO SUE VATICAN OVER WWII RECORDS

A support group for Holocaust survivors and their children is giving the Vatican a week to open its records of children who converted to Catholicism in order to escape the Nazis during World War II – or it will file a lawsuit to try to compel the church to do so.

The group, Amcha, or the National Israeli Center for Psychosocial Support of Survivors of the Holocaust and the Second Generation, is announcing its legal move today in front of the Vatican’s embassy in Washington.

Rabbi Schmuel Herzfeld said the group is trying to find people who were the children of Jews during World War II and were taken in by the Catholic Church or private Catholic families, but who were never reunited with their relatives or told about their Jewish heritage after the war.

“We want to connect with them. We want to see who our relatives are,” Rabbi Herzfeld said. “The people who were murdered in Auschwitz would have wanted us to find their children. The Vatican has stonewalled everything.”

A lawyer who is handling the case for Amcha, David Schoen, said the lawsuit would likely be filed in federal court in Washington or New York, although the organization would like to avoid taking legal action if possible.

“My hope is that we don’t have to file a lawsuit at all, but we will be ready to file a lawsuit in a week if we have to,” he said. Requests for comment from the Vatican embassy were unsuccessful.

– Staff Reporter of the Sun

NORTHEAST

FORMER CLINTON FUND-RAISER RELEASED FROM JAIL

A California businessman who has accused officials in Senator Clinton’s 2000 Senate bid of campaign finance violations was granted bail last week by a federal judge and released.

Peter Paul, 56, spent nearly three-and-a-half years in custody as he awaited trial on stock-fraud charges related to the 2001 collapse of a publicly traded Internet company, Stan Lee Media.

After refusing several previous bail applications from Paul, a White Plains based judge, Leonard Wexler, ordered the businessman’s release on a bond of $1.2 million. Paul was freed from the Nassau County Jail on Friday, according to defense lawyer Joseph Conway. Paul spent two years in jail in Brazil before being extradited to America in 2003.

“He’s breathing some fresh air and getting reacquainted with his family,” Mr. Conway said. He said prosecutors on the case opposed Paul’s release. “We tried to convince the government. They never did consent,” the lawyer said.

A spokesman for the federal prosecutor’s office in Brooklyn, Robert Nardoza, declined to comment for this story.

In a lawsuit pending in California, Paul alleges that Mrs. Clinton’s campaign unlawfully understated costs he paid in connection with a star-studded Hollywood fundraiser in 2000. Paul’s story was bolstered last month when a federal indictment was unsealed charging the campaign’s finance chief, David Rosen, with four felony counts related to allegedly false reports filed with the Federal Election Commission.

On Monday, Mr. Rosen entered a plea of not guilty to the charges. An attorney for the senator, David Kendall, has denied any wrongdoing on the part of the campaign.

-Staff Reporter of the Sun