1990 Accident Raises Doubts on 2 Troopers’ Credibility : Arkansas: Insurance firm lawyer accuses them of lying. But lawmen maintain incident should not cloud believability on Clinton allegations.

Questions were raised Thursday about the credibility of two Arkansas state troopers who have accused President Clinton of using them to facilitate and conceal extramarital affairs while he was governor of Arkansas.

The charges, which were made by a Little Rock, Ark., lawyer, raised questions about the truthfulness of Troopers Larry G. Patterson and Roger L. Perry, two of the four former Clinton bodyguards who have made accusations against the President.

The charges involved a December, 1990, accident in which Patterson drove a state police car into a tree, and Perry and a female passenger were injured.

Little Rock lawyer Roy G. Sanders, who represents Patterson’s insurance company, told reporters Thursday that Patterson and Perry both lied to state police investigators and the insurance company about the accident.

“In my opinion, they have no credibility,” Sanders told the Washington Post. “They gave false statements for financial reasons to protect Patterson’s job and for an insurance claim.”

Patterson first told state police investigators that he had been using the state police car to go to dinner at a restaurant while on a break from working for the Arkansas State Police Assn. He also said he had only one beer prior to the crash, which Perry initially supported.

As a result of those statements, Patterson was suspended from his state police post for five days.

Sanders said statements he later took in a lawsuit filed by Perry to collect a $100,000 claim against the insurance company for medical expenses showed that Patterson had misled state investigators. In fact, Sanders said, Patterson was on a date with the female trooper and he had several drinks at the restaurant and later at a nightclub.

Perry later admitted in a deposition that the troopers had “somewhere around four or five” drinks with double shots of bourbon.

The troopers both insisted Thursday that their misrepresentations in connection with the incident should not undermine their credibility regarding their accusations against Clinton.

Both Patterson and Perry signed affidavits detailing the incidents of Clinton’s alleged extramarital affairs as governor, and those charges were supported by two other state troopers.

Despite the accident, Col. Tommy Goodwin, director of the Arkansas State Police, told The Times last week that Patterson and Perry were responsible troopers. He said he had no reason to question the credibility of either man, so far as their duties were concerned.