Dole Says Reno ‘Dragging Feet’ on Inquiry : Ethics: GOP Senate leader urges her to name an independent counsel to probe Clinton’s links to failed S&L.; She has backed using career prosecutors.

Atty. Gen. Janet Reno should stop “dragging her feet” and appoint an independent counsel to investigate President Clinton’s possible links to a failed savings and loan firm in Arkansas, Senate Minority Leader Bob Dole said Sunday.

“I think it’s high time she did what she knows she should do,” Dole said.

“For the President’s sake and for the sake of the integrity of the attorney general’s office she should move,” the Kansas Republican said on NBC-TV’s “Meet the Press.” He said Reno had “wasted a lot of time dragging her feet.”

Reno has said that career prosecutors, and not a specially appointed counsel, should handle the case of Madison Guaranty Savings & Loan Assn., the failed thrift owned by Clinton friend James McDougal.

Federal investigators are looking into the costly collapse of the S&L; and whether any funds from the thrift were illegally diverted to Whitewater Development Corp., a real estate venture owned jointly by the Clinton family and McDougal when Clinton was governor of Arkansas.

Also being examined is whether any Madison Guaranty money was inappropriately routed to Clinton’s 1984 gubernatorial campaign.

Muddying the waters, the file on the Clinton’s Whitewater investment was removed from the office of White House lawyer Vincent Foster just after Foster killed himself last July.

The documents were believed to be missing until the White House disclosed that they were in the hands of Clinton’s personal attorney.

The President has since ordered the file turned over to federal investigators.

Dole and other Republicans have criticized the Democratic-controlled banking and finance committees in Congress for playing politics in refusing to launch inquiries.

But senior White House adviser George Stephanopoulos, appearing on ABC-TV’s “This Week With David Brinkley,” spoke Sunday of a “remarkable conversion” of Republicans now seeking to resurrect the lapsed special counsel law.

“Now that they sense that there might be some perceived political advantage to going after this, they’re all for it all of a sudden,” he said.

GOP lawmakers, embittered by the drawn-out independent counsel investigation of the Iran-Contra affair during the Ronald Reagan Administration, have fought renewal of legislation reauthorizing the appointment of counsels.

Stephanopoulos said the Whitewater issue was examined during the 1992 presidential campaign and Clinton has now turned over to the Justice Department all documents related to the real estate company.

“No laws were broken. The Justice Department will show that, but there is no need at this time for an independent counsel,” he said.

House Minority Whip Newt Gingrich of Georgia, also speaking on ABC, said there was “no question” that an independent counsel was warranted, and “the longer the Clintons avoid doing that, the more, frankly, people are going to suspect there is a reason they don’t want an independent counsel.”