Panel to Seek Testimony From Morris

Former presidential advisor Dick Morris will be asked to provide evidence on the procurement of hundreds of confidential FBI files on former Republican officeholders, the chairman of the congressional committee investigating the matter said Friday.

Rep. William F. Clinger Jr. (R-Pa.) said he would ask Morris to testify about a new tabloid report that Morris had claimed First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton ordered the files delivered to the White House early in the Clinton presidency.

The Star tabloid will publish Monday what it purports to be prostitute Sherry Rowlands’ diaries of her affair with Morris. According to the account, Morris tells Rowlands that Mrs. Clinton was behind the acquisition of hundreds of files on former Republican officials.

A spokesman for the first lady denied the account and denounced the tabloid for publishing it.

The Star broke the story of Morris’ alleged affair with Rowlands last week, leading to his forced resignation hours before Clinton was to deliver his speech accepting the Democratic presidential nomination.

Clinger said the Star’s account deserves serious scrutiny.

“I can’t dismiss this out of hand, coming as it does from someone who clearly was in a position to know and had access to the very highest levels of the White House in June 1996, when my committee first uncovered this massive invasion of privacy,” said the chairman of the House Committee on Government Reform and Oversight in a statement released Friday afternoon.

He invited Morris to provide sworn testimony about any information that he had about the FBI files. And Clinger threatened to subpoena Morris if he does not voluntarily comply.

“Should Mr. Morris opt not to confirm or deny” the tabloid account, “I will have to pursue other avenues available to me as chairman of the oversight committee to elicit a response.”

*

Rowlands writes that she asked Morris in June this year who was behind the FBI files scandal, in which as many as 900 background investigations of former GOP officials were found in a Clinton White House vault.

“It was Hillary, in 1993,” Rowlands says Morris answered. “She ordered them. She’s a paranoid lady--she did it.”

Neel Lattimore, Mrs. Clinton’s spokesman, ridiculed the magazine’s account. “Consider the source--it’s the Star,” Lattimore said. “Mrs. Clinton has been asked about this many times and has always said she knew nothing about that.”

Morris did not return calls to his West Redding, Conn., home.