Senate Reaches Agreement on Extending Whitewater Probe

The Senate broke a political stalemate over the Whitewater investigation Wednesday, voting to continue public hearings until June 14 on allegations of wrongdoing against President Clinton and his wife, Hillary Rodham Clinton.

The new hearing schedule, part of a compromise worked out in private by Republicans and Democrats before a voice vote on the Senate floor, will open the way for the Whitewater investigating panel to publicly question David Hale, Clinton’s chief accuser, among other witnesses.

Hale, who claims to have conspired with Clinton and others to defraud two federally backed financial institutions, had been prohibited from being questioned by the panel until he finished his testimony last week as a witness in a case being prosecuted by Whitewater independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr in Arkansas.

Although public hearings are slated to resume next Wednesday and Hale is certain to be called to testify at some point over the next two months, the witness list has not yet been drawn up, according to Lisette McSoud, spokeswoman for committee Chairman Alfonse M. D’Amato (R-N.Y.).

Since the Whitewater committee was created last May, its investigation has generally paralleled Starr’s inquiry into allegations that the Clintons may have benefited improperly from business relationships with prominent Arkansans during the mid-1980s, when the president was governor of that state.