A Prudent Period of Delay : Give Fiske a clear shot--then Congress can do its thing

Whitewater is heating up. In pleading guilty to federal felony counts of conspiracy and mail fraud and agreeing to cooperate with Whitewater investigators, former Arkansas municipal judge David Hale now becomes a key figure in the investigation, and potentially a key accuser against President Clinton.

Whitewater Special Counsel Robert B. Fiske Jr. lays great stress on Hale’s cooperation. Among other things, the onetime operator of a federally backed fund to make loans to disadvantaged borrowers alleges that he was pressured in the mid-1980s by then-Gov. Bill Clinton to make loans to some of Clinton’s political pals. Among these was $300,000 to Susan McDougal, at the time the wife of the owner of Madisan Guaranty Savings & Loan. Hale’s claim could tie Clinton to potential criminal conduct.

An allegation, of course, is not a statement of fact, and much more than Hale’s word will be needed to back up the claim that Clinton acted improperly. Moreover, Hale, facing up to 10 years in prison and hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines, has a heavy stake in satisfying the Whitewater investigators. Sentencing on his guilty pleas has been delayed for 120 days while he is questioned and testifies before a special grand jury. The investigators, if they are pleased with his level of cooperation, could recommend that the court show leniency.

As with any allegation the burden of proof rests on the accuser. In the absence of corroboration Hale’s charges prove nothing. But it’s also important to note that Fiske, a man who chooses his words very carefully, sees Hale’s cooperation as “a significant contribution to our investigation.”

The purpose of the special counsel is to lift an investigation above the political suspicions that are invited whenever the executive branch investigates itself. But sheltering an investigation from the possibly wild-charging politics of the executive’s opponents in Congress is also a reasonable consideration.

Congress has voted to conduct hearings into the Whitewater affair, as it should. But the near-unanimous vote in the House, following the Senate’s earlier unanimous vote, leaves the timing open. What’s shaping up is a prudent period of delay to allow Fiske to make progress with his investigation.

Prudent, though, doesn’t mean indefinite. The White House’s extraordinarily clumsy handling of the Whitewater affair has, fairly or not, served to feed doubts and raise questions that can probably now be answered only by full-scale--and responsible--public hearings.

The President, who is firm in denying any wrongdoing, ought to see that it’s in his interests to get those hearings out of the way as soon as possible. At his scheduled press conference today, Clinton has the chance to say just that.