Probe Finds No Ethics Breaches at Treasury : Whitewater: But the government inquiry calls some contacts between the department and White House ‘troubling.’ Senate hearings resume today.

Treasury Secretary Lloyd Bentsen, under fire from Republicans over his department’s conduct in the Whitewater affair, said Sunday an internal government review found no evidence that either he or his senior aides violated ethics rules in their contacts with the White House about a criminal investigation affecting the President and Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Bentsen released a lengthy report by the Office of Government Ethics, which called some of the contacts “troubling” but concluded that they breached no ethical guidelines.

“We turned the Treasury Department inside out to find every scrap of paper and every record that might conceivably have some bearing on this issue,” Bentsen told a news conference. But on the basis of what the independent inspectors found, he added, “I can reasonably conclude that the conduct of the people working here . . . did not, I repeat, did not violate the standards of ethical conduct for executive branch employees.”

The report was the third government review to conclude that White House and Treasury Department aides did nothing wrong by holding a series of discussions from September to February about the Resolution Trust Corp.’s investigation into Madison Guaranty Savings & Loan, a failed Arkansas thrift owned by James B. McDougal, the Clintons’ partner in the Ozarks development known as Whitewater.

Whitewater special counsel Robert B. Fiske Jr. has already concluded that the contacts violated no criminal laws. White House Counsel Lloyd N. Cutler has said that his own review found no ethical improprieties by the White House aides involved in the discussions.

But while Treasury Department officials clearly hoped that the latest findings would exonerate them before congressional hearings on the Whitewater affair resume today, the report failed to resolve a number of discrepancies that have emerged in the sometimes conflicting testimony of White House and Treasury Department aides concerning the extent and precise nature of the contacts.

Most of the discrepancies revolve around conflicting accounts of when Bentsen and Deputy Treasury Secretary Roger Altman learned of the contacts. Particularly controversial is what Altman and Treasury Department Counsel Jean Hanson told White House officials about the confidential RTC probe, which was examining allegations that federally insured deposits from Madison had been illegally diverted into the Whitewater venture.

Bentsen, Altman and Hanson will testify before the Senate Banking Committee beginning today. Hanson and White House Deputy Counsel Harold M. Ickes have already given sworn depositions that contradict some of what Bentsen and Altman have said about the information given to the White House.

Ickes, according to Republican members of the Banking Committee, told investigators that Altman gave the White House confidential information about the status of the RTC probe at a meeting Feb. 2.

That allegation was repeated on Sunday by the Senate panel’s ranking Republican, Alfonse M. D’Amato of New York. On NBC-TV’s “Meet the Press,” D’Amato called Altman “absolutely out of line” when, according to the Ickes deposition, he told White House aides at the Feb. 2 meeting that the RTC could not finish its Madison probe before a deadline for filing civil claims in the matter had expired at the end of the month.

Although the deadline was subsequently extended by Congress, any prior disclosure about the status of the probe would have violated RTC rules barring the communication of such information to anyone mentioned in its investigations. Although the Clintons were not named as subjects in the Madison probe, they were listed as potential witnesses.

“Roger Altman deliberately misled Congress” and through the White House aides “gave sensitive inside information to the President and Mrs. Clinton,” D’Amato charged, adding that the evidence was so “overwhelming” that he had no doubt that Altman “will be forced to resign.”

Altman, a close friend of Clinton’s, has denied passing along confidential information about the probe. Sen. Christopher J. Dodd of Connecticut, a Democratic member of the banking panel who appeared on the same program with D’Amato, came to Altman’s defense.

“This is not Watergate, this is not Iran-Contra . . .” Dodd said. “No one has suggested there has been obstruction of justice. Roger Altman . . . deserves to be heard.”

However, even Dodd conceded that the depositions contained “conflicting testimony about these contacts (and) what occurred at these meetings.”