Tuesday February 27 6:45 AM ET Report: Clinton Spoke Up for Friends in CBS Dispute

NEW YORK (Reuters) - While he was still president, Bill Clinton telephoned the chief executive of television network CBS seeking to help two old friends in a million-dollar billing dispute, The Wall Street Journal reported in its online edition on Tuesday.

Citing people in the entertainment industry familiar with the matter, the paper said Clinton was seeking to help TV producers Harry Thomason and Linda Bloodworth-Thomason.

It was several months before the flurry of requests for presidential pardons from Clinton, some of which have erupted into a scandal enveloping the former president and his wife Hillary, a U.S. senator from New York.

The Thomasons and their company, Mozark Productions, were involved in a squabble with CBS over payment for an aborted comedy series when Clinton called CBS's chief executive, Leslie Moonves, according to two accounts, the paper said.

Soon thereafter, CBS, a unit of Viacom Inc., resolved the dispute by paying Mozark around $1 million, according to the report.

A CBS spokesman, Chris Ender, declined to comment, the newspaper said, and the Thomasons did not return several phone calls to their offices and to a lawyer.

Bill Clinton's spokeswoman, Julia Payne, told The Wall Street Journal she had no knowledge of any ``private conversation'' between the former president and Moonves.

Harry Thomason acknowledged last week that he had asked Clinton to pardon convicted tax evaders Robert Fain and James Manning before leaving office, a request the president granted.

SHAKEDOWN: CLINTON CALLED MOONVES IN MILLION DOLLAR SITCOM DISPUTE

-- Ain't Gonna Happen (Not Here Not@ever.com), February 27, 2001