The Case of the Reappearing Papers : Inquiry on Whitewater billing records can’t be kissed off as mere politics

Independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr has questioned President and Mrs. Clinton under oath a number of times at the White House as part of his inquiry into the Whitewater real estate deal in Arkansas. Now he has subpoenaed Mrs. Clinton to appear before a federal grand jury in Washington that is looking into possible obstruction of justice in the case. Never before has a president’s wife been summoned to testify in a criminal investigation.

The precipitating event for this unprecedented action was the revelation last week that missing documents that both Starr and con- gressional investigators have been trying to get hold of since January 1994 suddenly and mysteriously turned up in the White House living quarters, in a room adjacent to Mrs. Clinton’s private office.

The documents are billing records, related to the work Mrs. Clinton did as a lawyer in the 1980s for Madison Guaranty, the failed savings and loan owned by James McDougal, the Clintons’ partner in the Whitewater land deal. The documents were found last August, in plain sight, by Carolyn Huber, a personal aide to the first lady. But only in recent weeks, Huber has testified, did she recognize their significance and turn them over to investigators.

The billing records appear to show that Mrs. Clinton did more work for Madison than she had previously acknowledged. The larger issue, however, is where the documents have been since investigators first sought them and who left them where they were found last August. If the documents were deliberately withheld after a subpoena was issued for them two years ago, then a felony--obstruction of justice-- was committed.

Grand jury hearings are closed, so there’s no way to know what questions Mrs. Clinton and the aides and White House employees who have also been subpoenaed will be asked. Obviously, though, Starr wants to know who had access to the room in the closely guarded White House living quarters where the documents appeared. The list is probably short; Huber told investigators last week that few people except the Clintons and a number of servants are free to enter the room.

In a recent interview Mrs. Clinton dismissed the issue of the recovered documents as just another “dry hole.” But it’s a serious matter whenever evidence is held back in a criminal investigation, and the attempt to determine responsibility can’t be kissed off as just more politics. White House statements suggest bafflement over how the missing documents reappeared. But someone in the White House knows. The summoning of Mrs. Clinton and others who will appear before the grand jury is a necessary effort to find answers.