Panel Issues Divided Reports on Whitewater

Thirteen months after its investigation began, the Senate Whitewater Committee--bitterly divided between its Republican and Democratic members--issued final reports Tuesday that provided wholly opposite assessments of the controversy that has dogged President Clinton since he took office.

The panel’s 10 Republicans issued a document citing more than 50 findings they said showed the Clintons--particularly First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton--were at the center of a broad conspiracy involving abuses of authority, deception of Congress and manipulation of federal investigations to cover up misdeeds.

In contrast, the eight Democratic members portrayed a neophyte administration under fierce attack from the outset by its political enemies and exercising “questionable political judgment” at times. But there was “no credible evidence” that either of the Clintons had committed improper or illegal acts, the Democrats said.

The sharply contrasting views were typical of the intense partisan atmosphere that has surrounded Whitewater throughout the Clinton administration. Although congressional committees almost always achieve a measure of consensus from hearings, in this case, the two parties attempted nothing of the kind, choosing instead to simply present the competing interpretations that they want voters to take to the polls in November.

The two sides found virtually no common ground, even though their conclusions were based on the same evidence: more than 100,000 pages of documents and 51 days of public hearings comprising testimony from 159 witnesses.

The 769-page Republican report attacked Mrs. Clinton for allegedly instigating moves after the 1993 suicide of White House Deputy Counsel Vincent Foster to prevent incriminating documents from being found in his White House office. The report said the first lady is “likely” to have concealed billing records from her law firm for almost two years after they were sought by investigators.

It was “a disturbing pattern of abuse of power seen again and again” at the White House, said committee Chairman Alfonse M. D’Amato (R-N.Y.).

The GOP report said that beginning in early 1994, a “Whitewater response team” headed by Deputy White House Chief of Staff Harold M. Ickes improperly obtained confidential information from the Treasury Department about an investigation of Madison Guaranty Savings & Loan, the failed Little Rock, Ark., thrift at the heart of the Whitewater case.

The investigation was being carried out by the Resolution Trust Corp., an agency of the Treasury. Madison had been owned by James B. and Susan McDougal, the Clintons’ business partners in the failed Ozark land development known as Whitewater. Independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr is attempting to determine whether the Clintons illegally benefited from their investment.

The GOP members said that Clinton’s friendship and business dealings with McDougal while Clinton was Arkansas governor “raised an apparent, if not an actual, improper conflict of interest” because McDougal had dealings with state banking regulators.

The McDougals and Arkansas Gov. Jim Guy Tucker were recently convicted on fraud and conspiracy charges after a federal court trial in Little Rock.

The contacts between Treasury and the White House “were improper, wrong and never should have occurred,” the GOP report concluded.

Democrats said such conclusions were “superheated and untenable.” Their report, numbering more than 200 pages, charged that the committee’s investigation was “irresponsible” and brimming with “venom” for Mrs. Clinton.

Maryland Sen. Paul S. Sarbanes, the panel’s ranking Democrat, said Republicans failed to find damaging evidence against the president so they “shifted the attack over to the first lady.”

Evidence from the hearings “established that the White House obtained no sensitive RTC information” and that certain investigative materials the White House did receive “had no effect whatsoever on any of the investigations conducted by the Office of Government Ethics, the Congress or the independent counsel,” the Democratic report said.

D’Amato said findings that several White House aides had given inaccurate or misleading testimony would be forwarded to Starr. Aides identified for these alleged infractions included Ickes; Margaret Williams, Mrs. Clinton’s chief of staff; Bruce Lindsey, a White House lawyer and presidential confidant; former White House aides Bernard Nussbaum, Mark Gearan and David Watkins; and former Justice Department official Webster L. Hubbell, now serving a prison term for cheating his former partners at the Rose Law Firm where he, Foster and Mrs. Clinton had worked in Little Rock.

In addition, the GOP report claimed that New York lawyer Susan Thomases, a longtime friend of the first lady, had joined Williams in misleading the committee and falsely claiming a bad memory about 17 phone calls between themselves and Mrs. Clinton in the hours after Foster’s suicide in July 1993.

In a statement, Thomases said: “I categorically reject the claims that the Republican members have made about my conduct and my sworn testimony,” noting that “there is no witness who contradicts my testimony.”

D’Amato told reporters that the panel had not decided whether to ask Starr to investigate any witnesses for possible perjury. He said his report and the transcripts of all testimony, however, would be forwarded to the independent counsel.

White House officials had little reaction, allowing committee Democrats to provide a detailed rebuttal.

“There’s nothing new about what they [the Republicans] said, since in one form or another they’ve aired these matters during the long course of spending $1.8 million of the taxpayers’ money to look into these matters,” White House Press Secretary Mike McCurry said.

As to long-missing billing records that showed the amount and nature of the first lady’s work for Madison, the GOP majority said their “mysterious reappearance . . . was part of a larger pattern of removal, concealment and at times destruction of records concerning Mrs. Clinton’s representation of Madison.” The records appeared on a table last August in the book room of the residential quarters of the White House.

The GOP report concluded that “Mrs. Clinton is more likely than any other known individual to have placed the billing records in the book room,” especially since “only a limited number of people” ever had reason to handle the records.

Democrats countered that although Foster may have brought the records from Little Rock in early 1993--before they were subpoenaed--”It is not possible on the existing record to ascertain when and by what means the billing records were brought into the White House or in whose custody they remained once they were there.”

The Democratic statement added that the records may have been “moved into or within the book room inadvertently.”

Noting that there was construction work on the heating and air-conditioning system in the summer of 1995, the Democrats speculated:

“Although the construction workers were instructed not to move anything without permission, items were moved in order to expedite construction.”

Times staff writer John M. Broder contributed to this story.