President Moves to Show Skeptics He’s Cooperating

President Clinton, his credibility sinking fast in the Whitewater controversy, Thursday sought to convince a skeptical public that he has nothing to hide, fielding still more questions about the failed real estate development and pledging to fully cooperate with inquiries.

Clinton declared that he had already provided special counsel Robert B. Fiske Jr. with tax returns and 14,000 documents and made available every Administration witness he has sought. The President also said he will release his tax returns dating back to 1977.

However, opinion polls show that continuing reports of alleged Whitewater improprieties and the President’s efforts in the past to divert attention from the controversy have left a strong public impression of a cover-up that his assurances may have done little to dispel.

Clinton complained that the public is not aware he is fully cooperating. He seemed resigned to seeing Whitewater continue as a major controversy that he would have to confront while going “back to work doing what I was hired to do.”

“Because of the steady drumbeat of daily Whitewater stories,” declared a senior Clinton aide shortly before the press conference, “we haven’t been able to break through to the national audience and convince them we are cooperating with the special counsel.”

Clinton scheduled the press conference as new polls showed Whitewater seriously eroding his popular support. A Times Mirror poll released Thursday showed about two-thirds of Americans of all political stripes--73% of Republicans, 67% of Independents and 59% of Democrats--believe Clinton and First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton are guilty of at least some wrongdoing. Only 15% believe they are guilty of serious offenses, while 52% said they think the Clintons are guilty of only minor offenses.

The survey, which a senior Clinton aide called stunning, also showed that 52% believe the White House has covered up information damaging to the Clintons.

The President insisted time and again that he has fully cooperated in the Whitewater investigation and said that he and Mrs. Clinton are prepared to answer all questions by the special counsel.

Rarely has a sitting President been questioned in a criminal investigation but Clinton said he would cooperate with Fiske “in whatever way he decides is appropriate.”

Administration sources suggested that Fiske would take a deposition from both Clintons. A special counsel took a deposition from President Jimmy Carter in 1980 in an investigation that cleared Carter and his brother, Billy, of any wrongdoing in connection with Billy Carter’s dealings with Libya.

Clinton, hoping to stabilize a presidency badly shaken by Whitewater, also insisted at his press conference that, despite all the media attention, the controversy has not interfered with the Administration’s pursuit of a heavy agenda of domestic and foreign issues.

He suggested that away from the media spotlight it is business as usual for health care reform and other issues and that “our Administration is preoccupied with the business we were sent here to do for the American people.”

Indeed, the White House has continued to work on health care and other major issues. But the Times Mirror poll, conducted March 16-21 among 2,001 adults, showed that 81% of Americans think the controversy is disrupting the government’s effectiveness. The poll had an error margin of plus or minus 2 percentage points.

And Clinton aides privately have acknowledged that Whitewater has demoralized the President’s staff, absorbed much of its time and energy, and distracted it from work on health care reform and other major issues.

“It’s not a happy place to be these days and it’s not just political, it’s personal,” said one aide. “People are getting hurt and and seeing their friends subpoenaed and put on the griddle.”

Clinton could find comfort in one category of the Times Mirror poll--that 55% of Americans believe the media are paying too much attention to Whitewater. But the way he was bombarded with Whitewater questions at the press conference left little doubt that there will be no letup in media attention to the controversy.

People at the White House, said one official, “are resigned to the fact that there seems to be no end to Whitewater, it’ll just go on and on and on and we’ll just have to deal with it.”

Clinton, speaking forcefully, repeatedly sought to convince the public that he already has been fully cooperative with the special counsel and cited comments from respected public figures who agree: Sam Dash, who served as counsel for the Senate Watergate Committee during the scandal that dogged the Richard Nixon Adminstration, and Sen. Daniel K. Inouye (D-Hawaii), who served on that committee.

Dash, he said, “contrasted our conduct with previous presidents and said we had been highly ethical.”

Clinton quoted Inouye as saying: “I’ve been experienced in these investigations. You folks have claimed no executive privilege. You’ve fully cooperated. No one can quarrel with that.”

The President obviously was perturbed by his plunge in the polls. After rising to the high 50s earlier in the year, he has dropped to the mid-40s in the latest surveys. But he said that, after reading reports that the media devoted three times as much coverage to Whitewater as to health care, “I’m amazed that there hasn’t been more change in the polls.”

Playing to the audience outside the Washington Beltway, he frequently jabbed at the press during the conference and said: “I think what the American people are really upset about is the thought that this investment that we made 16 years ago (in Whitewater) that lost money that did not involve savings and loans might somehow divert any of us from doing the work of the country--getting the economy going. . . . “