Trooper Faces Dilemma as Clinton Suit Co-Defendant : Courts: Denying allegations would contradict his past stories. Confirming them would embarrass President.

It is a hallmark of the controversies surrounding Bill Clinton that some of his oldest Arkansas acquaintances have caused him the most embarrassment. But few, if any, have been in a position to damage the President’s reputation as much as Danny Lee Ferguson.

Ferguson, a veteran Arkansas state trooper, was named recently as co-defendant in a lawsuit filed by Paula Corbin Jones accusing Clinton of sexual harassment. Jones claims that Clinton, then governor of Arkansas, arranged to have Ferguson, his bodyguard, bring her to a hotel room in 1991 for the purpose of oral sex.

Jones’ suit may be a source of jokes on late-night television, but it is no laughing matter for Ferguson. Knowing he must respond to the suit, he has hired a lawyer and spent many hours in anguished discussion with his wife, Sheila, also a trooper.

Ferguson’s dilemma is this: If he affirms Jones’ allegations, he will seriously embarrass the President and more deeply embroil himself in a growing national controversy. If he denies them, he will be contradicting a story he first told privately to friends, fellow troopers and reporters months ago.

It is a Hobson’s choice that Ferguson clearly would prefer to avoid. Even though Ferguson has sometimes toyed with the idea of becoming a national celebrity by going public with his tales of life as Clinton’s bodyguard, a sense of loyalty to his former employer and fear of losing his job have kept him from doing so.

In a recent interview, he expressed the hope that the case would be dropped or thrown out of court, sparing him further action and anxiety. If that does not happen, he said he fears he will be forced “to tell the truth.”

That is a prospect that, depending on Ferguson’s credibility, would be fraught with unpredictable consequences for all involved. In prior conversations, for example, Ferguson has not only acknowledged elements of the Jones story but has described a number of other extramarital encounters involving Clinton that he helped to arrange or witnessed.

It is clear that Jones’ attorneys intend to try bolstering their client’s account by seeking to show that the conduct she describes was consistent with a pattern of behavior by Clinton and his bodyguards. Ferguson could hold a key to that line of inquiry too.

This is not the first time the lanky, 41-year-old trooper has found himself in such a bind.

Late last summer, Ferguson was among a group of former Clinton bodyguards who began meeting with reporters for The Times and, later, the conservative magazine American Spectator, to discuss going public with accounts of the former governor’s alleged sexual exploits.

Before he had decided whether to go on the record with his accounts, Ferguson says he received a series of telephone calls from the President seeking to “shut down” the story by persuading the troopers not to talk. During those telephone conversations, Ferguson said, Clinton offered him a choice of federal jobs.

Later, under what his friends described as “intense pressure” from Clinton aides, Ferguson would say there was no “explicit” link between the job offers and the request for silence.

Ferguson said he declined the job offers. After the White House contacts, however, he also decided not to allow his name to be used in the early published accounts.

But anonymity is no longer an option for Ferguson. Jones’ sexual-harassment lawsuit named him as a principal figure.

Under rules of the federal court in which her suit was filed, defendants have 20 days to respond to the allegations leveled against them. Bill Bristow of Jonesboro, Ark., a well-respected trial lawyer whom Ferguson has hired to represent him, said he and his client are pondering whether to make “a general, rather vague response, or a detailed response.” Bristow declined to elaborate.

As Bristow sees it, if Ferguson is called to testify in this case, he risks being asked not only about Jones’ encounter with Clinton, but also about other instances in which troopers allegedly helped Clinton arrange or conceal extramarital affairs.

For its part, the White House has insisted that the alleged encounter with Jones never happened. It has also discounted the allegations of other sexual escapades made by other state troopers as the work of opportunists seeking financial gain from peddling lurid stories and of Clinton enemies devoted to fomenting rumors to destroy him.

Ferguson’s options would seem limited, primarily because he has told so many people a story similar in some respects to the one alleged by Jones in her suit. In fact, it was Ferguson--not Jones--who first provided an account of the alleged May, 1991, encounter between Clinton and Jones.

In an interview with The Times last summer, Ferguson recalled that Clinton had directed him to approach a woman who was working behind the registration desk at a seminar of the Arkansas Industrial Development Corp. at the Excelsior Hotel in Little Rock. Ferguson said the governor told him that the woman had “that come-hither look” and that he wanted to meet her privately.

Acting on Clinton’s orders, Ferguson said, he first secured a room by telling the hotel manager that the governor was expecting an important call from the White House and needed a private room. Then he invited the woman to meet the governor there.

In her lawsuit, Jones said she was reassured by Ferguson who said: “It’s OK; we do this all the time for the governor.”

She said she found the governor waiting inside with the door slightly ajar. After some small talk, she said, Clinton pulled her close to him, praised her hair and “curves” and then attempted to kiss her neck. Jones said she protested, but the governor responded by dropping his pants and asking for oral sex.

Jones said she then fled the room. As she left, she recalled that Clinton beseeched her: “Let’s keep this between ourselves.”

Although Jones’ and Ferguson’s stories agree in some details, they do not on one point potentially important to the legal case. Jones contends in her suit that she rejected the governor’s advances and left without speaking to Ferguson in the hallway. The trooper recalls, however, that she told him as she was walking away “straightening her dress” that if the governor wanted her to be his steady girlfriend, “I’ll be there any time.”

Jones says she spent no more than 15 minutes in the room; Ferguson says it was about half an hour.

Jones said she did not decide to file suit until she read the unnamed trooper’s account of a woman identified only as “Paula” in the American Spectator and feared many people would know it referred to her. She said she acted to salvage her reputation.

In the suit, Jones said she met Ferguson again by chance at a restaurant in North Little Rock after the American Spectator article appeared. During their conversation, Jones claims, Ferguson supported her version of the 1991 episode.

What worries Ferguson almost as much as being called to testify about the alleged encounter is the question of how he is going to pay his legal bills. A man who appears to live at the brink of his modest means, he noted during an interview that neither Clinton nor Jones are shouldering the full burden of their legal fees.

In an interview last December, Ferguson said the White House had leaned on him, even asking him “to lie” to Times reporters. He declined to say whether that request came from Clinton or others close to the President. He said he refused the request. “I won’t lie for Bill Clinton,” Ferguson said repeatedly during conversations with reporters.

Making matters even more uncomfortable for the trooper, he continues to serve as a member of current Gov. Jim Guy Tucker’s security detail--as does his wife. The couple wonders whether that can continue if he becomes embroiled in the Jones case testimony.