DeSarno said that Thompson, after being hired, reported to her that he had held multiple conversations about the abortion rule with Sununu, who was then the White House chief of staff and the president's point man on the rule.
Thompson kept her updated on his progress in telephone conversations and over meals at Washington restaurants, including dinner at Galileo and lunch at the Monocle, she said. At one of the meals, she recalled, Thompson told her that Sununu had just given him tickets for a VIP tour of the White House for a Thompson son and his wife.
"It would be an odd thing for me to construct that thing out of whole cloth," DeSarno said. "It happened, and I think it's quite astonishing they're denying it."
Sununu said in a telephone interview: "I don't recall him ever lobbying me on that at all. I don't think that ever happened. In fact, I know that never happened." He added that he had "absolutely no idea" whether Thompson had met with anybody else at the White House, but said it would have been a waste of time, given the president's opposition to abortion rights.
In response to Sununu's denial, DeSarno said Thompson "owes NFPRHA a bunch of money" if he never talked to Sununu as he said he had.
At the time, Thompson was a lobbyist and lawyer "of counsel" to the Washington firm of Arent Fox Kintner Plotkin & Kahn.
DeSarno said the family planning association paid the firm for Thompson's work. Marc L. Fleischaker, chairman of Arent Fox, declined to comment.
Corallo, the spokesman for Thompson, was asked Friday about the board minutes and the five people who said they recalled Thompson accepting the lobbying assignment. He responded in an e-mail, saying that Thompson "may have been consulted by one of [his] firm's partners who represented this group in 1991."
Corallo said it was "not unusual for one lawyer on one side of an issue to be asked to give advice to colleagues for clients who engage in conduct or activities with which they personally disagree."
Any work that Thompson did to challenge the abortion rule could complicate his appeals to conservatives in the contest for the Republican presidential nomination. He reportedly plans to join the race this month.
For weeks, Thompson has tried to pick up support from religious conservatives dissatisfied with the top GOP White House contenders, some of whom have backed abortion rights. In a videotaped message to the National Right to Life Convention in Kansas City last month, Thompson said the group's issues were "ever more profound to me as the years go by."
