White House Clarifies First Lady’s Stand on Senate Panel

First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton did not dismiss the idea of holding a press conference or appearing before a Senate committee to answer questions about the Whitewater real estate deal, contrary to a report in The Times, a White House spokesman said Saturday.

“The Times drew an inaccurate conclusion from the first lady’s actual words when The Times wrote that the first lady had ‘dismissed the idea of holding a news conference to answer Whitewater questions or to appear before the Senate committee investigating Whitewater,’ ” White House associate counsel Mark Fabiani said in a written statement.

“Second, The Times erroneously reported that the first lady said the committee ‘would not be a fair forum,’ ” he said.

An article based on the interview was published in Saturday’s Times.

In the interview, Hillary Clinton repeatedly questioned the fairness of those who are investigating the Whitewater affair and other issues.

“This is an investigation in search of a scandal,” she said. “. . . This is not about finding out the truth. And I regret it very much.”

Asked whether she would voluntarily appear before the Senate panel or call a news conference to clear the air, the first lady did not say yes or no, but repeated her promise to “do whatever it takes to cooperate” with the Senate probe and other investigations. She added, however, that “the people asking [the questions] don’t want to know the facts. . . . No matter what we answer and no matter how it’s validated, it’s never enough.”

In a telephone interview Saturday evening, Fabiani said Hillary Clinton did not mean to question the Senate committee’s fairness with those comments.

“We don’t think it’s our business to characterize those hearings,” he said. “No matter what we think deep down inside about these hearings . . . the important thing is that we are cooperating.”

He said Hillary Clinton has not decided whether to appear before the Senate panel.

“Our decision will be based on whether or not such a forum will be a useful way to answer people’s questions,” he said.

As for a news conference, he noted that the first lady is doing a series of interviews to talk about her recently published book. “She’s answering everybody’s questions already,” he argued.

Here are excerpts from the interview:

Question: I know you had a big press conference in June of 1994. But is there any value, again, in sitting down with the Senate . . . committee--I know they haven’t called you yet, but offer yourself up--or having a Geraldine Ferraro-type press conference where you say: “OK, ask me every last word, but take the heat off of my friends.” . . . Are you thinking about this?

Answer: We have always said we will do whatever it takes to cooperate, and we will, and I personally will. But think about the history of this matter. The questions keep changing. The ground keeps shifting. The people asking them don’t want to know the facts, especially if they don’t support their accusations. It’s taken months to get the [Resolution Trust Corp.] report publicly released, and it still is not. I think that speaks volumes about what is really going on here. Since the RTC report verifies we lost money in Whitewater, we were passive investors, we did not get any financial advantage out of Madison [Guaranty Savings & Loan]--if this were a search for the truth, wouldn’t that report have been held up at a press conference and laid on the table for everyone to read? I haven’t even seen it.

Q: So what you’re saying is, in your own mind, there’s really no value or point in holding a big press conference or going to the committee because the ground will just shift again.

A: I will do whatever it takes to end it and cooperate. But I think the American public ought to just review in their own minds this sort of piecemeal investigation that has gone on over these four years and think about how, no matter what we answer and no matter how it’s validated, it’s never enough. So if we ever do get to a stopping point where we think finally we can understand what the ground rules are, I will be the happiest person in Washington.