First Lady’s Past Legal Work for McDougal Brings More Questions

First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton’s work for her former Whitewater partner’s savings and loan is prompting another wide-ranging list of questions from federal regulators.

The inquiries come as three current or former presidential aides face Senate Whitewater Committee subpoenas to testify next week on Capitol Hill.

The subpoenaed aides are Deputy White House Counsel Bruce Lindsey and former associate White House counsels William Kennedy and Neil Eggleston, said a White House official who spoke on condition of anonymity.

The three will undergo Senate questioning about a Nov. 5, 1993, Whitewater meeting with the Clintons’ personal attorneys. Kennedy surrendered his notes of the session to the Senate last week in the face of a court challenge to the Clintons invoking attorney-client privilege to keep the meeting secret.

While the Senate prepares for hearings, Hillary Clinton is preparing written responses to inquiries from the Resolution Trust Corp. The RTC action, disclosed in an agency report completed last week, followed the discovery that the first lady apparently prepared documents on a land transaction while she was a partner at the Rose Law Firm in Little Rock, Ark.

The deal involved James B. McDougal, the Clintons’ Whitewater partner, and Seth Ward, the father-in-law of Webster L. Hubbell, at the time a Rose partner with Hillary Clinton. Her Whitewater lawyer, David E. Kendall, said that she will answer the questions promptly in writing and that she does not recall preparing or ever seeing the documents.

Federal regulators are trying to determine whether civil action should be taken against Rose for its work on Castle Grande, a land deal financed by Madison Guaranty that eventually cost the S&L; $3.8 million.