Clintons Say They Funded Half of Venture : Whitewater: President and First Lady maintain that they contributed almost as much money to the project as partner James B. McDougal.

President Clinton and First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton say in sworn statements made public Friday that they contributed almost as much money as Arkansas businessman James B. McDougal to the failed Whitewater resort development project, denying suggestions that the venture was a sweetheart deal in which McDougal put up most of the money.

In their most detailed response so far to the welter of Whitewater accusations, the Clintons insisted that they were “passive investors” in a corporation run by McDougal, a political supporter of Clinton during his days as Arkansas governor.

The Resolution Trust Corp., the federal agency assigned to clean up the savings and loan debacle, made public 55 pages of answers by the President and 77 pages of answers by the First Lady to questions posed by corporation attorneys about the Whitewater investment and its relationship to the collapse of a savings and loan owned by McDougal.

While professing ignorance about McDougal’s precise contributions to the corporation, the Clintons pointed to a letter from McDougal in 1986 that implied that total losses for the corporation were about $90,000, a figure, the Clintons said, indicating that both couples had put up similar amounts of money. The Clintons maintain that they covered $46,600 of the losses.

In addition to the questions and answers, the RTC released hundreds of pages of letters, bank statements and other documents relating to the real estate project and its finances.

Perhaps most striking about the documents is the small scale of the investment. For instance, a letter, dated Aug. 5, 1982, from Madison Bank & Trust of Kingston, Ark., complains that the Clintons are paying only $285.13 per month on a $28,000 loan, $88.20 less than the amount needed to cover interest payments. It was not clear whether the Clintons subsequently increased their payments.

The answers were filed under oath but there was no cross-examination. Both the President and the First Lady flatly denied charges that McDougal and his wife, Susan, put up most of the money and assumed most of the risks as a favor to the then-governor. The Clintons and the McDougals each owned half of the corporation’s stock.

Mrs. Clinton also denied McDougal’s claim that the failed Madison Guaranty Savings & Loan Assn. paid a $2,000-a-month retainer, for which it received minimal services, to the Rose Law Firm of Little Rock, of which Mrs. Clinton was a partner at the time.

In the questioning, the RTC attorney asked Mrs. Clinton to respond to this assertion: “Cumulatively, through fiscal year 1986, the McDougals expended $128,523 and the Clintons expended $35,967 (of which none was paid after fiscal year 1981).”

Mrs. Clinton replied: “I don’t know what the McDougals cumulatively expended through fiscal year 1986, the sources of these expenditures or their nature, but I believe that . . . my husband and I cumulatively expended at least $37,849.93 on the WDC [Whitewater Development Corp.] project through calendar year 1986.”

Later in the deposition, the RTC attorney asked: “Why did you spend so much less on the project than did the McDougals?”

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“I’m not sure we did in fact ultimately ‘spend so much less on the project than did the McDougals,’ ” Mrs. Clinton replied. “I do not know how much the McDougals spent on the project but I believe that we spent over $46,600: the $37,849.93 which we had expended through calendar year 1986, $2,561.33 in interest payments on the Security Bank of Paragould loan in 1987, $1,473.60 in interest payments on that loan in 1988, $1,275.15 in real estate taxes in 1988, $291.35 in real estate taxes in 1989, $345.15 in franchise taxes in 1990 and $2,839.24 in 1991 for accounting work.”

The President, asked those same questions, replied: “Please see my wife’s response.”

Nevertheless, the President said that McDougal ran the company to suit himself, even though the couples had agreed to share equally in expenses and profits, if any had been earned.

“The McDougals exercised control over the management and operation of WDC for the period of its active existence,” Clinton said. “My wife and I signed extensions or renewals of various WDC-related bank loans but we did not receive annual reports or regular financial summaries and were not informed of all the actions taken in the name of WDC.”

Some critics have maintained that Mrs. Clinton personally received a $2,000 monthly retainer from McDougal’s collapsing S&L.; In the deposition, Mrs. Clinton explained that the $2,000-a-month payment to the Rose Law Firm was a deposit required by the firm because McDougal had defaulted on earlier bills for legal work.

She said that the firm deducted its fee for representation of the S&L; from the monthly payment. The payments, however, more than covered the law firm’s bill and the excess was refunded, she said.

Mrs. Clinton also revealed that in 1986, McDougal tried to get the Clintons’ share of the company. “Jim asked us to surrender our equity in the company to him or to him and Susan, because he believed they could use the company’s losses for tax purposes,” she said.

“My husband and I were not averse to doing this, since WDC by this time was a venture in which we had spent a great deal of money and received no return but we did not want to be in a position of losing whatever equity we had in the company while still being personally obligated on the mortgage loan. . . . It proved impossible to get my husband and me released from these loans, so we ultimately declined to surrender our equity in WDC to the McDougals.”