Starr Hires 2 Prosecutors to Aid Whitewater Probe

Late in his Whitewater criminal investigation, independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr on Friday hired two veteran federal prosecutors, one to work in the nation’s capital and the other in Little Rock, Ark.

Coming to Washington will be Assistant U.S. Atty. Solomon L. Wisenberg, a specialist in complex white-collar and financial institution fraud prosecutions.

Wisenberg has been a federal prosecutor for the past decade, most recently in the western district of Texas.

Working in Little Rock will be Thomas W. Dawson, a federal prosecutor for more than two decades who began his career in the securities fraud unit of the Justice Department in Washington.

He has been senior litigation counsel since 1989 in the northern district of Mississippi.

The Whitewater prosecutor’s office is in the process of evaluating the evidence it has gathered over the past three years involving President Clinton and First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton, said lawyers familiar with the investigation.

Whether or not there are more indictments, Starr’s office still has an extensive amount of work to complete.

The Little Rock office is looking into the hiring of former Associate Atty. Gen. Webster Hubbell by Los Angeles International Airport. Witnesses from Los Angeles who helped arrange Hubbell’s hiring have been subpoenaed to appear before the Whitewater grand jury in Little Rock.

Starr’s office also is investigating Hubbell’s hiring by an affiliate of the Lippo Group, an Indonesian conglomerate under the control of the Riady family, which is close politically and personally to the Clintons.

Hubbell’s hiring came after he left the Justice Department in 1994 and while he was under investigation by Starr’s office. Hubbell pleaded guilty to tax evasion and mail fraud in connection with cheating his clients at the Rose Law Firm, where he was a partner of Hillary Rodham Clinton.

John Bates, the Whitewater prosecutor in charge of the Washington office, is leaving March 1. He will be replaced by veteran Justice Department prosecutor Jackie Bennett. Bennett was a member of the trial team that won convictions last year against the Clintons’ business partners, Jim and Susan McDougal, and then-Arkansas Gov. Jim Guy Tucker.