Prospects Dim for Clinton Accuser to Testify to Panel

Prospects that President Clinton’s chief accuser will testify during the Senate Whitewater Committee’s final week appeared muddy Friday, though the panel’s chairman said David Hale still was scheduled to appear.

Late Thursday, the committee canceled plans to question Hale, a former Arkansas banker, behind closed doors on Friday. Hale, who is serving a 28-month sentence for defrauding the government through his lending company, is refusing to speak unless ordered by a court or given immunity by the committee.

A court ruling would take several weeks--time the Whitewater committee doesn’t have as its 14-month investigation nears its close next Friday.

The committee had subpoenaed Hale for Friday’s closed interview and a public hearing next Wednesday. He has said that if called before the panel, he would assert his 5th Amendment right against self-incrimination. A grant of limited immunity would mean his Senate testimony could not be used against him in other cases.

Committee Democrats, who say they also want to hear Hale’s testimony, continue to balk at giving him immunity on grounds he would use it to manipulate the panel and escape further prosecutions.

“The committee is continuing to explore options to obtain Mr. Hale’s very important testimony,” its chairman, Sen. Alfonse M. D’Amato (R-N.Y.), said in a statement.

D’Amato said he decided to cancel Hale’s private appearance Friday because the Democrats had rejected his proposal to get a legal expert’s opinion on Hale’s 5th Amendment claim, as a way to get him to testify before the committee goes out of business on June 14.

Nonetheless, D’Amato said, Hale still was scheduled to testify at the hearing Wednesday.

D’Amato noted that Hale reaffirmed Thursday, in a letter from his attorney, that he would not testify without a grant of immunity. He said he would ask the panel to vote on Tuesday to grant Hale immunity so he could testify publicly the next day.

D’Amato has wanted Hale to testify about a $300,000 loan made by his federally backed lending company to Susan McDougal in 1986. Hale testified last month in a federal trial of McDougal, her former husband, James B. McDougal, and Arkansas Gov. Jim Guy Tucker that Clinton, Arkansas’ then-governor, had pressured him to make the loan.