Panel, Clinton Aide Spar on Whitewater Testimony

Under intense questioning from Republican senators, a senior White House official gave contradictory testimony Thursday about a meeting at which Deputy Treasury Secretary Roger Altman briefed aides to President Clinton on a Whitewater-related investigation by the Resolution Trust Corp.

In prepared remarks read to the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee, White House Deputy Chief of Staff Harold M. Ickes sought to backtrack from testimony he had given in an earlier deposition that was particularly damaging to Altman, who is under fire because of allegations that he misled Congress about what transpired at the Feb. 2 meeting.

However, in a tense exchange with senators, Ickes later said several times that he stood by the testimony he had given in the July 24 deposition, when he said that Altman had informed the White House that the RTC could not finish its investigation of the failed Madison Guaranty Savings & Loan--which was owned by a one-time business partner of the President and First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton--before a deadline for the filing of civil complaints.

“If that’s my testimony, then I stand by it,” he said repeatedly as Sen. Alfonse M. D’Amato (R-N.Y.), the committee’s ranking minority member, read excerpts from the deposition and demanded to know whether they were true or false.

Because the Clintons were mentioned as possible witnesses in the RTC investigation, relaying any information about its status to the White House would have constituted a serious breach of RTC confidentiality rules. As it happened, Congress subsequently extended the Feb. 28 deadline until the end of 1995, making the issue moot.

Altman, who was serving as acting RTC chief at the time, testified about the meeting before the Senate panel on Feb. 24 and denied imparting any confidential information.

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In testimony earlier Thursday, other White House officials who took part in the Feb. 2 meeting all strenuously denied that Altman had discussed the status of the Whitewater investigation.

Their accounts, however, appeared to conflict with what Ickes told the committee in his deposition--a discrepancy that Republican senators cited as they argued that both Altman and the White House had not told the truth about what transpired at the meeting.

At hearings during the last week, the House Banking, Finance and Urban Affairs Committee and the Senate panel have been examining the propriety of the meeting and some 40 other discussions between White House and Treasury Department officials during a six-month period ending in late February of this year as the RTC worked to complete its investigation of Madison Guaranty.

The Feb. 2 meeting, which Ickes attended with then-White House Counsel Bernard Nussbaum and other senior White House officials, has been the subject of particular scrutiny because of the discrepancies that have emerged between Altman’s and Ickes’ recollections of what was discussed.

Ickes sought to reconcile those conflicts Thursday by arguing that GOP senators had misconstrued the remarks he made in his deposition. He said he neither asked for nor received any information from Altman that was “secret or confidential.”

He also complained that he was denied the opportunity to consult his notes of the meeting before answering questions about it at his deposition and said he had only conveyed his “impression” of what Altman had said and could not recall his “exact words.”

He also said he is “completely deaf” in his right ear and was not sitting close enough to Altman to be certain that he clearly heard everything that was said.

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Clearly disturbed, Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) noted that the discrepancies between the participants’ accounts of the meeting “go to the core of whether something improper may have happened” in any of the White House-Treasury meetings. “If your earlier testimony is true, then there is a serious question about the transfer of information to the President and the First Lady,” he said.

“All I can say is that I’ve testified to the best of my memory,” Ickes replied. “I do not recall what people said exactly, but that was the gist.”

As the Whitewater hearings neared their conclusion, Ickes testimony appeared to deepen the difficulties faced by Altman, who has been accused by senators from both parties of giving them misleading testimony when he appeared before the Senate committee earlier this year.

Relying in part on Ickes’ deposition, Republicans have charged that Altman not only lied to Congress about what occurred at the meeting but that he improperly conveyed to the White House confidential information about the status of the RTC inquiry.

Those difficulties multiplied on Thursday, the next to last day of the hearings, when several other White House aides testified that they “regretted” Altman’s failure to tell the whole truth about the Feb. 2 meeting when he was first asked about Whitewater meetings by the Senate committee on Feb. 24.

The aides said they realized almost immediately that Altman had made serious omissions when he testified about the meeting in February--neglecting, among other things, to inform the senators that he also had discussed the question of disqualifying himself from overseeing the Madison Guaranty case but had run into opposition from Nussbaum and the other officials present.

Appearing before the panel late in the evening, Nussbaum also ran into fierce criticism from both Democrats and Republicans over the “recusal” issue.

“I don’t believe you had any right whatsoever to interject yourself in Roger Altman’s decision to recuse himself,” said Committee Chairman Sen. Donald W. Riegle Jr. (D-Mich.). “You had no right. . . . You crossed the line in a case involving the President.”

In long hours of testimony during the last week, virtually every other White House official who attended the Feb. 2 meeting denied, in nearly identical accounts, that Altman did anything more than give them the same “procedural briefing” that he already had given to members of Congress.

Asked about Ickes’ deposition, they all said that he was “mistaken” and suggested that the Ickes would clarify what he had meant to say when he testified.

But as Ickes sat grim-faced before the panel, responding to questions about his conflicting testimony, it became apparent that the discrepancies between various officials’ recollections of events were only growing.

With many of those discrepancies centering around Altman’s conduct, Democrats and Republicans pressed Ickes and five other presidential aides who testified Thursday to explain why the White House failed to correct Altman’s Feb. 24 testimony.

Most of the questioning centered on why Altman failed to mention that he had announced his intention to disqualify himself from overseeing the Madison Guaranty case at the Feb. 2 meeting. Altman raised the issue at the end of the meeting, but agreed to reconsider after Nussbaum questioned whether it was necessary. He finally recused himself formally from the case on Feb. 25.

White House officials have admitted that they realized almost immediately that Altman had made serious omissions when he testified about the Feb. 2 meeting at the earlier Senate hearing.

John Podesta, the Administration aide who was charged with seeing that Altman correct the testimony, testified that the White House was “very concerned” about the omissions and had asked Altman to promptly amplify the record.

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But in three belated attempts to clarify his testimony with letters to the committee, Altman never mentioned the issue of recusal.

“It seems to me the ball was dropped,” Sen. Richard H. Bryan (D-Nev.) told Podesta. “Short of hitting somebody between the eyes with a 2-by-4, I don’t know how much more clearly it could have been imparted . . . that there (was) a problem with the testimony.”

In the House, where Whitewater hearings also continued, Treasury Secretary Lloyd Bentsen defended Altman against mounting GOP demands for his resignation. Both he and the President still have confidence in Altman, Bentsen added.

The Republicans refused to give up, however, as Rep. Peter T. King (R-N.Y.) told Bentsen that Altman ought to be forced to step down for “tailoring the truth” in his testimony to Congress.

KCET to Preempt Shows for Hearings

The Whitewater hearings will be broadcast live today on KCET-TV, Channel 28, beginning at 6:30 a.m. The station made its decision to preempt regularly scheduled programming after the deadline for printing the TV listings that appear in Calendar.