PROBE INTO FOREIGN DONATIONS IS UP TO CONGRESS BY DEFAULT

A few weeks before the election, top Democratic fund raisers said there were no problems with illegal donations from foreigners. Just before the election, the same fund raisers admitted there was a problem -- but only a minor one. After the election, they said the problem was even more widespread.

A few weeks before the election, President Clinton said he never discussed policy matters -- it was just social chit-chat -- with one of the questionable foreign donors to the Democratic coffers. After the election, the president conceded that he had, indeed, discussed policy in those conversations.

Before the election, Attorney General Janet Reno said the Justice Department would be taking a close look at the alleged improprieties involving large sums of foreign money that made its way into the Democratic coffers. After the election, Reno said there was no need for a special prosecutor. Instead, an internal "task force" would review the situation.

No wonder Republicans in Congress see the need to dig a little deeper. The pattern of before-the-election denials and pooh-poohing that turned into outright admissions after the election -- but so what? -- has created a situation that smacks of high-level smoke and mirrors, all designed to mislead the American public and subvert any nonpartisan effort to get to the bottom of the foreign donations scandal.

It would have been far better to have these allegations reviewed by a special prosecutor who would operate without political baggage. Instead, it will be the Republicans in Congress who will be cast as the partisan bloodhounds on a trail whose scent grows colder with every passing day.

But with so much at stake, what choice do the Republicans have? Who else is going to pursue what possibly is the most underhanded political behavior of this last decade of the 20th century? The White House won't do it. The Justice Department won't do it. And and self-examination by the Democrats won't engender much confidence among Americans -- who, by the way, are the ones who ought to be clamoring the loudest for an honest and thorough review.