NEWS ANALYSIS : Whitewater Panel Focuses Microscope on First Lady : Inquiry: Reluctance of Mrs. Clinton and aides to answer questions has placed her under GOP suspicions.

Americans are growing remarkably accustomed to watching their presidents fend off accusations of obstruction of justice. But in the case of the Whitewater affair, the public is seeing something genuinely new: allegations of a cover-up orchestrated by the first lady.

Indeed, it is First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton--not the president--who has become the focus of the hearings now being held by a special investigating committee headed by Sen. Alfonse M. D’Amato (R-N.Y.).

Hillary Clinton has been placed under suspicion by Senate Republicans in part because she was an investor in the controversial Whitewater resort development while she worked as a lawyer for the financially troubled savings and loan that improperly diverted funds into the Whitewater project.

But the element of the case that seems to disturb Republicans even more than her direct link to Whitewater is the reluctance of the first lady, her friends and her advisors to answer their questions.

In fact, D’Amato has accused Hillary Clinton of deliberately trying to mislead the committee in her responses to written questions, and he threatens to call her to testify in person if it continues. “Mrs. Clinton has not been as forthcoming as she should have been,” he said.

To be sure, D’Amato’s committee has not cleared the president of improper involvement in the Whitewater affair or the alleged cover-up. But after months of investigations, the panel has come up with precious little evidence of his personal participation in the events now under scrutiny.

“These hearings haven’t gotten within a million miles of the president,” said White House spokesman Mark D. Fabiani, who added that he also believes the committee’s interest in Hillary Clinton is “based on innuendo and rumor.”

Unlike the president, the first lady has proved to be a central player in virtually every pivotal event in the saga of a failed land venture that turned into a major national political scandal. And that is why Sen. Lauch Faircloth (R-N.C.) and other GOP committee members are pressing for her to be called to testify.

As Faircloth says at least once during every public session held by the committee: “We need Mrs. Clinton here to answer our questions. . . .. Why not bring Mrs. Clinton to testify?”

Because the first lady had regular contact with her partner in the Whitewater land deal, James B. McDougal, Republicans suspect that she had more than an inkling that McDougal was improperly diverting money from his financially troubled thrift into the Whitewater project.

In addition, Hillary Clinton, as partner in a prominent Little Rock, Ark., law firm, received a $2,000-a-month retainer to represent McDougal’s savings and loan in dealings with state officials appointed by her husband, who was then Arkansas’ governor. D’Amato and GOP investigators have frequently questioned the ethics of Hillary Clinton and her law firm in representing McDougal.

As Republicans see it, the first lady also appeared to be pulling the strings in the aftermath of the July 1993 suicide of Deputy White House Counsel Vincent Foster, her close friend and former law partner in Arkansas.

The GOP members of the panel suspect that she ordered White House employees to prohibit authorities investigating the Foster suicide to examine files and papers in his office. The files contained documents pertaining to Clinton family matters, including Whitewater.

Republicans are showing an unflagging interest in telephone calls made by the first lady on the night of July 20, 1993, after she learned that Foster had shot himself in the head.

The Republicans have inquired into every telephone conversation she had that night, including one grisly chat with White House staffer Bill Burton, who described for her precisely how Foster had fired a gun into his mouth.

The committee is so interested in these calls that two of the people Hillary Clinton reached that night--her friend, Susan Thomases, a New York lawyer, and her top aide, Margaret Williams--have been called to testify before the committee three times each.

Republicans are particularly intrigued that the participants tell conflicting stories about what happened that night.

In addition, both the first lady and Burton initially told the committee they had no recollection of their graphic, 10-minute discussion of the details of the suicide. Not until weeks after D’Amato made an issue of a so-called “mystery” telephone call to an unlisted White House number did Burton come forward with his recollections of his conversation with Hillary Clinton.

The panel has also developed conclusive evidence that 24 files containing personal materials pertaining to the Clinton family--including its investment in Whitewater--were removed from Foster’s office without being scrutinized by law enforcement authorities. All participants deny they were acting under orders from the first lady, as Republicans suspect.

Some Republicans have even accused Hillary Clinton of playing a role in arranging the Nov. 5, 1993, meeting of seven White House and personal Clinton lawyers. D’Amato sees that meeting as the centerpiece of efforts to obstruct investigations of the Whitewater case.

The White House and D’Amato are currently battling over a committee subpoena seeking notes of the meeting.

Just recently, Michael Chertoff, counsel for the committee, questioned why Hillary Clinton had telephoned then-Associate Atty. Gen. Webster L. Hubbell at 7:55 a.m. on Nov. 5, 1993. Chertoff indicated that he thought the call had to do with three then-missing file folders detailing the legal work she had done for McDougal’s savings and loan.

In addition, the first lady has been accused of falsely minimizing the work she did in the mid-1980s for McDougal’s Arkansas thrift in seeking favors from state officials appointed by her husband. Sen. Robert F. Bennett (R-Utah) says legal bills obtained by the committee from that period belie her claim that she did not do much day-to-day work on the case.

Oddly, the one area of inquiry the committee has not yet pursued in earnest is Hillary Clinton’s direct links to Whitewater. Nobody has yet asked about the many letters she exchanged with McDougal on the subject or about the model home she built with a personal bank loan.

Although the committee’s interest in the first lady seems to be growing, White House and congressional sources involved in the Whitewater case doubt that D’Amato will ever yield to pressure from Faircloth and other Republicans to summon her as a witness.

Calling her to testify would involve substantial risk. Party strategists note that D’Amato would be at a severe disadvantage in questioning her directly, not only because she is a skilled lawyer but also because he would feel restrained from asking nasty, embarrassing questions of the first lady.