Lawmaker Charges Fiske Is Aiding GOP on Whitewater : Congress: House Banking Committee Chairman Henry Gonzalez assails counsel for refusing to testify at hearings. Probe chief denies allegation.

House Banking Committee Chairman Henry B. Gonzalez (D-Tex.) assailed Special Counsel Robert B. Fiske Jr. on Friday for refusing to testify at Whitewater hearings scheduled for later this month and accused him of secretly providing information to Republican committee members for partisan attacks on President Clinton.

Furious over what he called a “premeditated Republican plan to do in the President,” Gonzalez said he will proceed “full-speed ahead” with the hearings as scheduled on July 26, “despite the fact Fiske has breached his commitment to cooperate with the committee.”

Gonzalez’s allegations, coupled with statements by Republican committee members that they will try to expand the scope of the inquiry, seem certain to turn the hearings into an acrimonious confrontation.

Gonzalez, now in his 33rd year in the House, charged that “the Republicans’ main interest is in getting the President and his wife no matter what.” He said he would “rein in” any Republicans who try to go beyond the scope of the investigation outlined in a House resolution.

“I was present for the assassination of one President, and I won’t be a party to the attempted assassination of another,” said the Texas congressman, who was in Dallas when President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in 1963. “The Republicans might as well have gotten a hit man; they’ve already attempted to assassinate Clinton’s character.”

Rep. Jim Leach (R-Iowa), the committee’s ranking minority member and GOP point man on the Whitewater matter, denied Republicans were making partisan attacks on Clinton. “My position,” he said, “is that no individual is above the law and there ought to be fair and responsible accountability. We are just interested in full disclosure.”

As to Fiske, Gonzalez has repeatedly asked the special counsel to testify, which would help the committee in confining its hearings to subjects the counsel has finished investigating.

Fiske, arguing that it would be inappropriate for him to testify, insisted Friday that he has already outlined the status of his investigation in a series of letters to Gonzalez.

And the special counsel adamantly denied having given information secretly to Republican members. He acknowledged, however, that he met twice with Rep. William F. Clinger Jr. (R-Pa.) and agreed to let him see a U.S. Park Police report on White House aide Vincent Foster’s suicide “as long as he agreed not to make it public.” Fiske said he acted to avoid a lawsuit seeking disclosure of the records.

Gonzalez said that in curbing the Republicans during the Whitewater hearings, he would follow the same standards he said he had applied to a 1989 Banking Committee inquiry into the involvement of then-President George Bush’s son, Neil, with a Colorado savings and loan.

“If it’s improper questioning, I’ll rein it in. I reined in the Democrats when they tried to be prosecutorial in questioning Neil Bush--and his father, the President thanked me not once but three times for conducting a fair and impartial hearing,” Gonzalez said, referring to the committee’s probe of Silverado Savings & Loan. “Now the Republicans are trying to make it political and prosecutorial.”

A senior Clinton Administration official said the White House agrees with Gonzalez that “Republicans are out to get the President no matter what,” but that it disagrees with his characterization of Fiske, a Republican who was appointed to the counsel post by Atty. Gen. Janet Reno.

“We find Fiske to be very thorough, comprehensive and serious,” said the official, who declined to be identified.

But he said Republicans are faced with “a dicey political risk of trying to strike a delicate balance between being seen as doing their constitutional duty of seeing that there are no improprieties in White House operations and looking like they are making a petty, vindictive political attack that is resulting in gridlock.”

In a lengthy interview with The Times, Gonzalez also expressed irritation that Fiske now says his report on the handling of Foster’s papers after the aide’s death last July 20 will not be ready until some time in late August.

Earlier, Fiske had indicated that this phase of his investigation would be completed in time for the Banking Committee to begin looking into the records-handling issue in its hearings.

Leach, who met with Fiske for 90 minutes on Friday, said he also had tried to persuade the special counsel to be the lead-off witness for the hearings.

“The minority as well as the majority wanted him to appear,” Leach said in an interview. “But the majority wanted him to outline the parameters of his investigation so the committee would know what it couldn’t ask. We’d like him to appear to defend his report” affirming that Foster’s death was a suicide.

After Fiske refused to budge from his position against appearing, Leach said he told Gonzalez he had grave doubts about subpoenaing the counsel and compelling him to testify.

Gonzalez, who earlier had indicated he might subpoena Fiske, said that after talking with Leach, “I’m not going to subpoena him and make this a side-issue if Leach doesn’t feel strongly enough to compel him as a witness to testify and make this bipartisan.”

In a July 7 letter to Gonzalez, released by the congressman to The Times on Friday, Fiske asked that the committee not seek the testimony of a number of witnesses whose testimony he said is pertinent to his ongoing investigation.

They include government officials, Resolution Trust Corp. officials, and a confidential witness identified only as “C.W.,” the person who first discovered Foster’s body in a park overlooking the Potomac River.