Altman Lied About Probe Contacts, GOP Senators Say : Whitewater: Attacks confirm they will focus bulk of fire at hearings at Treasury aide. They allege that he gave White House confidential information.

Deputy Treasury Secretary Roger Altman “deliberately lied” to Congress about the nature and extent of information he gave to the White House on the federal investigation of a failed Arkansas savings and loan with ties to President Clinton, several Republican senators charged Friday.

As the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee opened its hearings into the Whitewater controversy, GOP lawmakers quickly confirmed that they intend to direct most of their fire at Altman because of questions that have arisen about his role in a series of controversial contacts between White House officials and federal regulators looking into the failure of Madison Guaranty Savings & Loan.

From critical comments--even by several Democrats on the panel--it also became clear that the Administration is in for a much rougher time during the Senate hearings than it has experienced so far in the House, where parallel hearings took place this week.

Altman, a close personal friend of Clinton since their college days, “has become the eye of the storm,” said Sen. Connie Mack (R-Fla.).

Although the White House has vowed to stand behind Altman, speculation was growing among lawmakers that his career may not be able to withstand many more questions about his involvement in Whitewater-related matters.

The latest allegation--that he provided confidential information about the status of the investigation to the White House at a crucial time during an inquiry by the Resolution Trust Corp.--could be particularly damaging, they added.

Altman was swept into the center of the controversy earlier this month when discrepancies emerged between his earlier testimony before the Senate panel and sworn statements since given to investigators by one of his senior aides, Treasury Department Counsel Jean Hanson.

Contradicting Altman’s earlier assertions that he did not learn of the contacts until March of this year, Hanson said that Altman had instructed her the previous September to keep White House officials informed about the RTC inquiry into allegations that Madison Guaranty funds had been illegally diverted both to Clinton’s 1985 Arkansas gubernatorial campaign and to the Whitewater Development Corp., an Ozarks real estate project.

Clinton and his wife, Hillary Rodham Clinton, were partners with Madison Guaranty owner James B. McDougal in the 1970s resort development.

More than 20 meetings and phone conversations took place between Hanson and other regulators and White House officials during a six-month period ending in February. The congressional panels are interested in the meetings because of suggestions that the White House might have sought to interfere with the RTC investigation or to obtain confidential information about it.

In testimony before the House Banking, Finance and Urban Affairs Committee this week, White House Counsel Lloyd N. Cutler and the 10 former and current White House aides who participated in the contacts all denied that Administration officials had sought to impede the investigation and said that the only information they received from the regulators could have been obtained from news reports.

Cutler said that the contacts violated no ethics rules because their only purpose was to help the White House prepare for queries from reporters as the Whitewater story was unfolding.

But as the Senate hearings began, Sen. Alfonse M. D’Amato (R-N.Y.) said that the committee had taken a deposition from a senior White House aide who testified that Altman had provided him and other officials at a Feb. 2 meeting with a key piece of confidential information that had not appeared in news accounts.

Citing a deposition by White House Deputy Chief of Staff Harold M. Ickes as his source, D’Amato said that Altman had told a White House meeting that the RTC would not be able to complete its Madison Guaranty inquiry before the expiration of a deadline for filing civil claims at the end of February.

Had Congress not later extended the deadline to the end of 1995, White House knowledge that the RTC was not prepared to file suit could have undermined the case by removing any incentive for the Clintons to cooperate with federal investigators until after the statute of limitations for civil complaints had expired, D’Amato contended.

“This evidence makes it clear that Mr. Altman deliberately lied to Congress regarding the Feb. 2 White House meeting,” he charged.

Reacting to D’Amato’s charges, Altman issued a brief statement denying that he had given Ickes or any other officials at the meeting any information about the status of the RTC investigation.

“Sen. D’Amato’s statement today is simply incorrect. I did not have any such information. No information of any kind was provided on the status of the investigation,” Altman said.

A senior Treasury Department official added that, while he had not seen Ickes’ deposition, the “most accurate” account of what transpired at the Feb. 2 meeting was the one that Cutler gave to the House committee on Tuesday. In that account, Cutler reaffirmed what Altman said about the meeting when he first testified before the Senate committee on Feb. 24.

The meeting, Cutler said, was requested by Altman solely to give White House officials “the same information related to the statute of limitations issue that the RTC had been providing to the Congress and the press.” It was purely a procedural briefing that did not discuss either the status or “the substance or merits of the Madison (Guaranty) matter,” he added.

Other officials also noted that at that time the Administration also supported the extension of the statute of limitations, which affected not only the Madison Guaranty case but hundreds of other civil cases that the government was pursuing against failed S&Ls.;

But other GOP senators joined D’Amato in insisting that the Ickes deposition--which has not been made public but from which they cited excerpts--proves that Altman misled them when he testified in late February.

Ickes, they said, quoting from the deposition, asked Altman about “the progress of the inquiry being conducted by the RTC.” Altman answered, according to the excerpts, that it was “going to take a longer period of time to conclude” and that it was “unlikely that the investigation could be completed and a recommendation made by the general counsel prior to the expiration of the statute of limitations.”

Altman, who is scheduled to testify at the Senate hearings Tuesday, will “have a lot of explaining to do,” conceded a Democratic committee aide.

Several Democratic senators, while saying that Altman should be given a chance to explain himself before he is publicly accused, admitted to serious doubts about some of the contacts in which Altman was involved.

“Although it appears no criminal violations have occurred, I am deeply troubled by the conduct of some of the Administration aides,” said Sen. Richard H. Bryan (D-Nev.), a member of the Senate banking panel who also chairs the Senate Ethics Committee.

While D’Amato’s charges highlighted the opening of the Senate hearings, the lawmakers spent most of the day reviewing the investigation of Whitewater special counsel Robert B. Fiske Jr. into the death of White House Deputy Counsel Vincent Foster last June.

Because he was working on Whitewater-related matters at the time, Foster’s death precipitated controversy--as well as a host of conspiracy theories. But both Republicans and Democrats on the committee declared their support for Fiske’s conclusion that Foster committed suicide as a result of depression unrelated to the Whitewater controversy.

Under questioning from the committee, federal investigators from both the FBI and the U.S. Park Police said they had found no evidence that the death of Foster, who was found in a public park with a gun still in his hand, was anything but a suicide.