Starr Disputes Comment by First Lady

Independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr on Tuesday took issue with a remark made by First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton, who has become a central figure recently in Starr’s investigation of Whitewater.

In a statement issued by Starr’s office, the independent counsel disputed an observation Mrs. Clinton made Monday night on CNN’s “Larry King Live.” It is unusual for an independent counsel to comment on the public remarks of people under investigation by his office.

In discussing the current Whitewater trial in Little Rock, the first lady told King: “One thing that both the prosecution and defense agreed on [is] that my husband had nothing to do with these allegations and that for four years now the only allegation made against the president was made by David Hale, which the prosecution called in his statement a notorious liar.”

Starr did not dispute Mrs. Clinton’s statement that President Clinton “had nothing to do with these allegations.” But he denied that the prosecution had called the president’s chief accuser “a notorious liar.”

He said that both Mrs. Clinton and the Washington Post had misquoted the prosecutor’s statement about Hale, who was the prosecution’s chief witness in the trial.

Starr said that, when the prosecutor in the case, W. Ray Jahn, characterized Hale as a liar, he was quoting defense attorneys. Starr quoted Jahn’s statement from the trial transcript: “David Hale--by their own words from the defendants, a notorious thief, a notorious crook, a notorious liar.”

At the White House, spokesman Mark D. Fabiani said that Mrs. Clinton was simply relying upon the Washington Post account of the prosecutor’s statement on May 16.

“We find it odd that the independent counsel would use the occasion of the first lady’s appearance on ‘Larry King Live’ to attack the Washington Post for a story the Post published five days earlier,” Fabiani said.

Meanwhile, the jurors in the Whitewater trial wound up a fourth day of deliberations on the fraud and conspiracy charges against the Clintons’ former business partners, James B. and Susan McDougal, and current Arkansas Gov. Jim Guy Tucker.

At the request of U.S. District Court Judge George Howard Jr., defense and prosecution attorneys took steps to help the jury find its way through the mass of complicated evidence presented during the 10-week trial.

The attorneys drew up an index for about 700 exhibits entered as evidence and gave the nine women and three men on the panel each a copy of the original 21-count indictment.

Howard sent the jurors home after 7 1/2 hours of deliberations and told them to resume their work at 9:30 a.m. today.

On Monday, the jury sent the judge several notes saying they were having “difficulties” in finding the exhibits and working out which charges referred to which deals in a complex web of decade-old financial transactions at the heart of the case.