Whitewater Report Stands to Cast a Campaign Shadow

With the release of its voluminous report the Senate Whitewater Committee’s wide-ranging investigation has passed from a legislative inquiry heavily shaded with partisan politics to an overt political battle touched by the possibility of felony indictments. Whether this shift to a different arena will produce any greater public interest than did 14 months of congressional hearings remains to be seen. Certainly Republicans intend to do all they can to encourage that attention.

The committee hearings, into Bill and Hillary Clinton’s pre-presidential financial affairs in Arkansas and subsequent events involving possible misconduct in the White House after the suicide of presidential aide Vince Foster, have led the Republican majority to accuse Mrs. Clinton of sanctioning a cover-up by aides and advisors.

The Republicans stop short of accusing the Clintons of committing crimes, though they conclude that crimes did occur. As for the mysterious appearance in the White House living quarters last January of records subpoenaed but never obtained by the committee two years earlier, the Republicans charge that “Mrs. Clinton is more likely than any other known individual” to have left the papers where they could be discovered.

This last point deserves underscoring not because the Republicans may be right but because it indicates how Mrs. Clinton’s own behavior has helped to fuel the suspicions on which the Republican accusation is based.

When Mrs. Clinton was asked by the committee about any knowledge she has “relating to the disappearance or discovery of these records,” she replied in an affidavit that she knew nothing of how the records--billings from her time working at the Rose law firm in Little Rock--”came to be identified” by the aide who found them. Now clearly that is not a substantive response. It is lawyer talk that evades a direct answer to a direct question. By being unresponsive, Hillary Clinton seems to be trying to steer clear of potential self-incrimination or perjury. That may not be her intent. But if nothing else, it shows how Mrs. Clinton helps make the job of her political enemies a lot easier.

The Republicans have asked independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr to pursue the question of whether certain of Mrs. Clinton’s associates lied under oath or obstructed justice. That all but assures that the Whitewater matter, whether the public is inclined to focus on it or not, will remain very much a part of the presidential campaign.