Notes Suggest Efforts to Sway Testimony

New White House documents furnished to the Senate Whitewater Committee suggest that presidential aides may have sought to influence the Whitewater testimony of a former top Arkansas official who once dealt with First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton on matters relating to a failed savings and loan, two Republican committee members charged Thursday.

Notes taken of a Jan. 7, 1994, meeting by then-White House aide Mark D. Gearan show that presidential assistants discussed contacting former Arkansas securities director Beverly Bassett Schaffer to “make sure her story is OK” and to “try to poke holes” in what opponents might say.

Sen. Robert F. Bennett (R-Utah) said that the notes show “a carefully constructed plan--a damage-control effort” to ensure that Schaffer, who headed the state’s securities department while Bill Clinton was governor, would not say anything harmful about contacts Mrs. Clinton made with her while representing Madison Guaranty Savings & Loan.

Sen. Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah) said that the notes seemed to reflect “an effort to influence Mrs. Schaffer’s story.”

But White House lawyer Jane Sherburne, who furnished the notes to the panel, said that they only suggest that “people were trying to understand what the facts were.”

Schaffer, whose department had jurisdiction over many of Madison Guaranty’s activities, gave testimony generally favorable to the first lady when she appeared before the panel last month.

Sherburne said that she did not know if there had been any White House-directed contact with Schaffer but she pointed out that Gearan’s expletive-laced notes quoted Harold M. Ickes, deputy chief of staff, as advising, “If we [screw] this up, we’re done” and that he later suggested no one could be sent to contact Schaffer because “it will come out.”

Schaffer’s name had figured in the Whitewater controversy since Clinton’s 1992 presidential campaign, when it was first disclosed that Mrs. Clinton, as a private lawyer, once had spoken with her about obtaining a state ruling to help Madison Guaranty, which ultimately failed.

Madison Guaranty was owned by James B. McDougal and his wife, Susan, who were the Clintons’ investment partners in an Ozark Mountains real estate development known as Whitewater. An independent counsel and Congress are investigating whether the Clintons benefited illegally from their dealings with the McDougals.

Sherburne said that she had located Gearan’s notes only on Wednesday because they inadvertently had been packed up with his belongings when he recently moved from the White House to his new post as Peace Corps director.

Sen. Alfonse M. D’Amato (R-N.Y.), the committee chairman, complained that the White House generally has been slow to turn over Whitewater-related documents. But Sherburne said that 14,000 pages have been furnished over the last four months and that she also is working to provide old e-mail messages that have been difficult to retrieve.

This retrieval, being carried out by an outside contractor, is costing up to $180,000, she said. D’Amato interjected that he was highly offended when White House lawyer and spokesman Mark Fabiani recently was quoted as saying, “Let some fat cat of the chairman’s pay for it.”

“This is the same White House that says ‘we’re going to cooperate,’ ” D’Amato said.