First Lady Suggests Reason for Firings

First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton said Monday that the ill-advised firing of White House travel office employees in 1993 might have occurred because presidential aides misinterpreted her concerns about how the office was operating.

In a radio interview, Mrs. Clinton said her “mere expression of concern” could have been “taken to mean something more than it was meant.” The remarks expanded her earlier claims that she never ordered the firings of the seven employees, but only expressed concerns about “financial mismanagement” in their office.

The first lady was responding to a White House memo, discovered earlier this month, that suggested she instigated the firings. The author of the document, former White House aide David Watkins, wrote that “there would be hell to pay” unless the White House took “swift and decisive action in conformity with the first lady’s wishes.”

Watkins has been called to testify this week before the House Government Reform and Oversight Committee, which has been investigating the May 1993 travel office shake-up that President Clinton later conceded was a serious mistake.

Mrs. Clinton, interviewed on National Public Radio’s “Diane Rehm Show,” also left open the possibility that she might testify voluntarily before the Senate Whitewater Committee, whose chairman has said there are inconsistencies between other newly discovered documents and Mrs. Clinton’s previous statements that she did only minimal legal work in the 1980s for a failed Arkansas savings and loan.

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In an interview with The Times last week, the first lady suggested that Whitewater was “an investigation in search of a scandal.” She said the Republican-controlled committee, headed by Sen. Alfonse M. D’Amato (R-N.Y.), is not a fair forum because many members “don’t want to know the facts.”

Asked Monday if she would testify voluntarily, she replied: “It may come to that.

“If that is the kind of cooperation that is needed to end this matter, I am more than willing to do whatever it takes,” Mrs. Clinton said.

“I’m considering everything, including going to the South Pole.”

D’Amato and other Republicans on the panel have suggested that Mrs. Clinton’s credibility is at stake, but they have declined to call her untruthful.

D’Amato has said he will not compel her to testify by issuing a subpoena.

Despite the first lady’s insistence that she performed scant work for Madison Guaranty Savings & Loan, the newly found Rose Law Firm records show that she had numerous conversations with a Madison official involved in a controversial real estate project, and worked on a range of issues related to the thrift in the mid-1980s.

In addition, testimony before the committee last week by a Rose associate, now a partner, who did legal work for Madison disputed the first lady’s recollections of how she came to represent Madison.

The attorney, Richard Massey, said he did not bring the account to the law firm as Mrs. Clinton suggested during a nationally televised news conference in 1994.

Massey said he was uncertain why Madison came to the law firm when Bill Clinton was Arkansas governor.

D’Amato said Monday that he has asked the inspector general of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. to review the Rose billing records and the firm’s work for Madison Guaranty.