Ex-White House Lawyer Admits Error in Whitewater Testimony

Confronted unexpectedly with a letter from the government’s chief ethics officer, former presidential lawyer Lloyd N. Cutler conceded Thursday that “I may have transgressed” when testifying that a Whitewater probe cleared the White House of improprieties.

Under questioning by Republicans on the Senate Whitewater Committee, Cutler said his 1994 testimony on Capitol Hill was imprecise, but not intentionally misleading.

A year ago, when he was White House counsel, Cutler declared that the government ethics office “has informally concurred” that presidential aides violated no standard in regard to Whitewater-related contacts with the Treasury Department.

But a letter Wednesday by ethics office director Stephen Potts to the Whitewater committee chaired by Sen. Alfonse M. D’Amato (R-N.Y.) said: “We . . . did not ‘informally concur’ in Mr. Cutler’s conclusion that no violation of any ethical standard occurred by any White House official.” The ethics office never examined the White House.

Cutler said that in retrospect, he would rephrase what he said “to say what I mean.” The ethics office informally concurred with the White House on one point: that White House officials had acted ethically in one set of discussions with Treasury Department official Roger Altman about whether he should have nothing to do with Whitewater-related matters.

One of Washington’s most prominent attorneys, Cutler admitted that the ethics office never concurred that White House officials had never used Whitewater information to further the personal interests of President Clinton and First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton.