Clinton Said to Have No Links to Plot

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. — A Whitewater prosecutor said Wednesday that President Clinton played no active role in a conspiracy case alleged against his former investment partners, James B. and Susan McDougal, and Arkansas Gov. Jim Guy Tucker.

The statement by W. Ray Jahn, an assistant to Whitewater independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr, is as close as the prosecution has come to clearing Clinton of any involvement in the alleged scheme. Jahn emphasized, however, that he was only referring to the alleged crimes at issue in the current trial.

Tucker and the McDougals are the first defendants to stand trial as a result of the independent counsel investigation of the president’s activities in the mid-1980s in Arkansas. After hearing 10 weeks of testimony, the jury is expected to begin deliberating today.

Although the president was not charged in the case, David Hale, the chief prosecution witness, testified during the trial that Clinton was a part of a conspiracy. He said that he was pressured by then-Gov. Clinton in the mid-1980s to make a loan to the McDougals that was part of the alleged fraud.

Jahn clearly was seeking to distance Clinton from the case in his closing arguments before the jury, apparently to minimize the impact of the president’s testimony, heard on tape in the courtroom last week. In his testimony, Clinton denied any recollection of the events alleged by Hale.

The prosecutor did not dispute Clinton’s testimony but instead noted instances in which the president disagreed with the defendants who sought his testimony.

“The president took no active role in regard to the activities involved here,” Jahn told reporters outside the courtroom when he was asked to elaborate on his closing argument.

He noted that testimony by Clinton and Hale conflicted particularly on the issue of whether they had met with James McDougal at a land sales office in late 1985. Hale said that Clinton asked him to make the loan to the McDougals at this meeting; the president said he has no recollection of any such meeting.

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Jahn told the jury that the disagreement between the two men is not important to the case since the president is not on trial for being a part of the conspiracy. The defense contends that the conflict undermines Hale’s credibility.

The president’s supporters applauded Jahn’s statement, arguing that it exonerates Clinton of any wrongdoing in the Whitewater case. “He [Jahn] cut distance between David Hale and the president,” observed Bobby McDaniel, attorney for Susan McDougal. “It’s time to put David Hale’s lies about Bill Clinton aside and get on with it.”

Yet Jahn emphasized that he was not talking about any evidence that might have been gathered by Starr against the president in other matters. He said that only Starr could speak for the independent counsel’s office on this question.

Starr has not participated in the trial.

* RELATED STORY: A17