Committee Demands Whitewater Papers : Inquiry: Senate panel, rejecting White House compromise, orders attorney to turn over notes taken by president’s advisors at meeting.

The Senate Whitewater Committee, rejecting a last-minute White House compromise offer, on Thursday ordered a former White House attorney to turn over notes taken at a meeting on Whitewater by aides and advisors to President Clinton.

The action sets the stage for a court battle between Congress and the White House over the confidentiality of executive branch proceedings. Unless the White House turns over the notes, the committee is prepared to ask the full Senate for permission to challenge the administration in federal court.

On a 10-8 party-line vote, the panel said that it could not accept the conditions under which the White House said it was willing to surrender the documents. The Republican majority gave former presidential aide William H. Kennedy III until 9 a.m. today to produce his notes of the Nov. 5, 1993, meeting.

Sen. Alfonse M. D’Amato (R-N.Y.), chairman of the committee, rejected the White House conditions, calling them an effort to stall release of the notes and intrude on Congress’ investigative authority.

Frustrated Republican senators were quick to draw parallels to the Watergate scandal, in which Congress was forced to go to court to compel former President Richard Nixon to yield critical evidence, despite his claim that it was protected by executive privilege.

“We all know that claim was bogus and they were hiding something then, as perhaps they are now,” said Sen. Richard C. Shelby (R-Ala.).

A White House official responded angrily that Clinton had offered to provide the documents sought by the committee if it would agree to certain conditions that would preserve the principle of executive privilege and prevent Republicans from engaging in a “fishing expedition.”

Among the conditions demanded by the White House: that the Whitewater committee acknowledge the November 1993 meeting of Clinton lawyers could properly have been kept confidential; that the committee not use the release of the notes from that meeting as a precedent to demand other confidential documents; that the committee interview only the government lawyers who attended the meeting and not Clinton’s private attorneys who also were present, and that the panel secure agreement from independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr and other investigative bodies that they would abide by the terms of Thursday’s deal.

D’Amato rejected most of the conditions, saying that the committee had a right to the meeting notes “with no strings attached.”

White House special counsel Mark Fabiani said that D’Amato had revealed his partisan motives by rejecting the deal.

“Today the White House offered Sen. D’Amato the notes he says he wants to see,” Fabiani said. “We made the offer because we have nothing to hide. Sen. D’Amato rejected the notes because he is not searching for the truth. Instead, he is engaging in a politically inspired fishing expedition.”

Fabiani added that Republicans who draw parallels between the White House position on the Kennedy notes and Nixon’s refusal to turn over tape recordings of Watergate discussions have “a bizarre view of both history and the current situation. No president in American history has cooperated more with a congressional inquiry [than] Clinton has with this one.”