Senate Panel Approves 49 Subpoenas on Whitewater

The Republican-controlled Senate Whitewater Committee, with the grudging approval of Democrats, voted Thursday to issue 49 subpoenas for documents belonging to the White House, federal regulatory agencies and potential witnesses.

Sen. Alfonse M. D’Amato (R-N.Y.), chairman of the special committee, said that the materials would be used in the next phase of the panel’s hearings, which begin early next month. The committee plans to recall First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton’s chief of staff, Margaret Williams, and the First Lady’s close friend, Susan Thomases, to testify next Thursday, D’Amato announced.

Democrats on the panel, led by Sen. Paul S. Sarbanes (D-Md.), who complained earlier that the subpoenas were too broad, went along with the move after D’Amato agreed to limit the document requests. But the Democrats said that the move was unnecessary and overly dramatic because most of the materials already had been furnished.

D’Amato said that the subpoenas would underscore the importance of turning over all relevant documents. White House aide Bruce Lindsay had submitted 1,000 pages of documents earlier this week, bringing to 8,500 pages the materials already provided by the White House.

Approved by a unanimous voice vote, the subpoenas cover financial records from President and Hillary Clinton’s former accountant, who handled their investment in an Arkansas real estate development named Whitewater, as well as documents held by Betsey Wright, a longtime aide while Clinton was governor.

In addition, the committee is seeking materials dealing with the Resolution Trust Corp.’s investigation into Madison Guaranty Savings & Loan of Little Rock, Ark., a thrift linked to Whitewater Development Co., and records of long-distance telephone calls from the White House to Arkansas in the Clinton Administration’s first year.

Next week’s witnesses--Williams and Thomases--are expected to be asked about conversations with the First Lady hours before then-White House Counsel Bernard Nussbaum refused to let law enforcement officials examine the files of his deputy, Vincent Foster, after Foster’s suicide in July, 1993. Foster’s files included the Clintons’ personal financial records.

D’Amato has said that he wants to determine if Hillary Clinton asked White House officials to keep police away from Foster’s records on July 22, 1993.

Whitewater was a failed Arkansas real estate project jointly owned by the Clintons and James B. McDougal, who also owned Madison Guaranty Savings & Loan, an Arkansas thrift that was seized by federal regulators in 1989. Investigators are looking into whether federally insured deposits from Madison Guaranty were siphoned off through Whitewater to benefit Clinton’s 1984 gubernatorial campaign.

They are also investigating the suicide of Foster. The Foster probe received renewed attention this week when Strategic Investor, a financial newsletter, called a press conference in Washington to report that three experts had concluded that Foster’s suicide note was a forgery.

The finding conflicts with two previous investigations concluding that Foster wrote the torn-up note, which was found at the bottom of his briefcase six days after his death.