GOP Whitewater Report Alleges Abuse of Data

Republicans on the Senate Whitewater Committee, in a chapter of their upcoming final report, charge that White House aides obtained closely held information about ongoing federal probes related to the land-deal controversy by falsely claiming they needed the data to respond to inquiries by the media.

The 700-page report, including a chapter known as “the Washington phase,” dealing with alleged reactions by officials in Washington to the controversy in Arkansas, is due to be made public Tuesday.

A draft copy of the chapter provided to The Times charges that “confidential law enforcement information” from such agencies as the Treasury Department and the Small Business Administration was shared with private attorneys for President Clinton and First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton to assist in their personal legal interests.

For example, the report says, White House lawyers obtained tightly held investigative data from the Treasury Department’s Resolution Trust Corp. about its probe of Madison Guaranty Savings & Loan Assn., a failed Little Rock, Ark., thrift for which the first lady had performed legal work in the 1980s. At the time, Deputy White House Chief of Staff Harold M. Ickes was looking into any legal liability Hillary Clinton may have incurred from representing Madison Guaranty, the committee said.

“This improper transmittal of confidential RTC information [to the White House] was a violation of clearly established RTC procedures,” the report says, adding it may also have been in violation of the Right to Financial Privacy Act.

The draft report by the committee’s Republican majority also says RTC information obtained by the White House dealt with “possible improper campaign contributions from Madison to one of Mr. Clinton’s gubernatorial campaigns.”

Another federal inquiry on which the White House sought and received confidential data was an SBA investigation of Capital Management Services Inc. of Little Rock, owned by David Hale, according to the report.

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Hale’s allegation that Clinton, while governor of Arkansas, pressured him to make improper loans to his Whitewater business partners figured in the recent fraud trial in which the president’s former partners--James B. and Susan McDougal--and Arkansas Gov. Jim Guy Tucker were convicted of various charges. Clinton gave videotaped testimony at the trial, denying Hale’s allegation.

Noting that testimony from several witnesses indicated that White House officials requested the information in order to answer questions from the media, the report says: “Senior administration officials took steps that went far beyond what was necessary to respond to press inquiries. Indeed, when the full picture is examined, the claim that administration officials were innocently gathering information so that they could respond to press inquiries collapses entirely.”

The “Washington phase” chapter tracks events, allegations and congressional testimony that were aired publicly during the recently completed hearings in the 13-month committee probe. The document assembles the material into a narrative, overlaying the GOP majority’s critical judgments.

Democratic sources on the committee pointed out that all these “unfounded conclusions” have been adopted only by the panel’s 10 Republican members, led by Sen. Alfonse M. D’Amato of New York. A separate report will be filed by the committee’s eight Democrats.

Attacking the Republican report, White House special counsel Mark D. Fabiani said Sunday: “This is not an investigation, it’s a political inquisition.”

Appearing on the “Fox News Sunday” television program, Fabiani declared: “Most people, after looking at Whitewater for four years, are willing to sit back and say, ‘If there’s something wrong with this, someone will show it to me.’ That hasn’t happened.”

The main conclusion of the Whitewater committee’s GOP majority is that the White House committed “abuses of power” in trying to mislead congressional investigators and limit political and legal damage to the president. The report specifically attacks Hillary Clinton, alleging she secretly directed then-White House Counsel Bernard Nussbaum and others to prevent Justice Department officials from searching the office of the late Vincent Foster, a White House lawyer whose July 1993 death was ruled a suicide.

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Senate Republicans have pointed out that Foster worked on issues relating to Whitewater and the 1993 White House travel office firings, and they suggested his office may have contained incriminating documents on these cases.

Rep. William F. Clinger Jr. (R-Pa.) said Sunday on the Fox program that he suspects the first lady may also have played a role in the White House obtaining more than 400 sensitive FBI background files on former Republican employees in 1993 and 1994.

But Clinger, whose House Government Reform and Oversight Committee will hold hearings on the matter this week, acknowledged only “our suspicions” about the first lady’s role, based on knowledge of her direct involvement in White House operations. “We do know she had a direct role” in the firing of seven White House travel office employees in 1993, two of whom were included in the request for FBI files, he said.

Sen. Trent Lott (R-Miss.), the new majority leader, defended the Senate Whitewater panel’s investigation, saying: “There just seems to have been a pattern here of concealment or obstruction” by the White House, and “and it seems to extend beyond that.”

Appearing on CBS-TV’s “Face the Nation,” Lott added that congressional hearings on the FBI files case should be put on “a fast track right away.” He said he favors Senate hearings in addition to the investigation by Clinger’s House committee.

“I think we should have a hearing by the appropriate committee quickly and move on--if it can be cleared up quickly,” Lott said.