Two Top Clinton Aides Tried to Get Hubbell Jobs

President Clinton’s then-top aide and a second senior official, who is now the White House chief of staff, made telephone calls in an effort to arrange paid engagements for Webster L. Hubbell when he resigned from the Justice Department in 1994 amid allegations of impropriety, the White House acknowledged Tuesday.

According to administration officials, First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton and, perhaps, the president, were informed at the time by then-Chief of Staff Thomas “Mack” McLarty that he was concerned about Hubbell’s predicament and that “he wanted to be supportive.” McLarty later placed a phone call to a Clinton supporter who hired Hubbell.

McLarty spoke to Mrs. Clinton at the conclusion of a private meeting on March 13, 1994, in the Clintons’ residential quarters--a session intended to discuss developments in the Whitewater controversy, the officials said. Among other things, 10 officials at the White House and the Treasury Department days earlier had been ordered to appear before a Whitewater grand jury.

The disclosure of the phone calls and the private meeting is certain to heighten suspicion of the series of deals that came to Hubbell in the months before he pleaded guilty in December 1994 to fraud and tax-evasion charges.

Federal prosecutors examining Whitewater are trying to determine whether people supportive of the president helped arrange Hubbell’s employment deals to lessen the chance that he would provide testimony damaging to either the president or his former law partner, Mrs. Clinton.

Both Hubbell and Mrs. Clinton, while in private practice in Arkansas, had dealings with a failed savings and loan that has been at the center of Whitewater prosecutions and convictions.

In an interview, White House Special Counsel Lanny J. Davis said the that two officials who made the calls in the spring of 1994 were McLarty and Erskine Bowles, who then headed the Small Business Administration and is now White House staff chief.

McLarty called one influential backer of Clinton--Texas oil executive Truman Arnold--and is said to believe that he spoke to another, Vernon E. Jordan Jr., a Washington lawyer-lobbyist. Arnold hired Hubbell and encouraged another Texas supporter, Bernard Rapoport, who also put Hubbell on the payroll of one of his companies.

Bowles called three people, two lawyers who lobby in Washington and a financial executive whose firm at the time made loans that were backed by the SBA. Jordan could not be reached for comment Tuesday night.

Davis said McLarty and Bowles made the calls strictly out of compassion for Hubbell and his family and not as part of any orchestrated White House effort.

“What was motivating these two gentlemen was their friendship and concern for a friend who was experiencing difficulties that appeared to be a business dispute with his former law partners,” Davis said. “To suggest that anything else motivated them would be baseless and wrong. . . . These individuals acted independently at their own initiative.”

Davis also said, however, Bowles made his calls on the basis of a conversation with Mickey Kantor--then the U.S. trade representative and chairman in 1992 of Clinton’s presidential campaign.

“Kantor mentioned the plight of Hubbell” to Bowles, Davis said. “Bowles offered to make a couple of calls to friends in the business and professional community . . . to see if there were any opportunities to be helpful.”

The Times disclosed on March 14 that Kantor made arrangements to assist Hubbell in 1994--including soliciting contributions for trust funds established for Hubbell’s children and recommending Hubbell’s son for a job at the Federal National Mortgage Assn.

Kantor has insisted, however. that he did not seek to line up employment deals for Hubbell. “I was a part of the administration and it would have been inappropriate for me to be involved in, you know, doing anything in that regard, regarding Webb,” Kantor said in a Jan. 21 interview. He was traveling in Europe and could not be reached Tuesday night, according to an aide.

Officials said McLarty conferred with Mrs. Clinton at a March 13, 1994, meeting to discuss the then-expanding Whitewater investigation and the recent resignation of White House Counsel Bernard Nussbaum. Others on hand for the session included the president, Harold M. Ickes, the deputy White House chief of staff, and Margaret Williams, Mrs. Clinton’s staff chief.

Mrs. Clinton “nodded her head or acknowledged the comment in some fashion,” Davis said, relaying McLarty’s account. Further, “Mack believes that he might have said something to the president to that effect on that occasion or some other occasion.”

Hubbell, who had been a friend of the Clintons since the 1970s, announced the next day that he would resign as associate attorney general, the No. 3 position at the Justice Department.

On March 15, lawyers at the Rose firm announced their tentative decision to file an ethics complaint with the Arkansas Supreme Court’s Committee on Professional Conduct against Hubbell.

White House officials have said the efforts to aid Hubbell had nothing to do with Whitewater and that at the time Hubbell’s problems were viewed as a private billing dispute with the Rose Law Firm.

At least one person who considered hiring Hubbell said, however, he had viewed the matter more gravely.

Samuel H. Poole, a lawyer-lobbyist who works in Washington and North Carolina, said he told Hubbell he could not hire him until the ethics issue was resolved. Poole was one of the three men Bowles called seeking opportunities for Hubbell.

“Erskine called me and said [Hubbell] was going to be looking for a position--and would I talk to him,” Poole said, adding that he subsequently spoke to Hubbell over the phone and met with him in Washington.

“I told him [that], once he had his matters resolved with the ethics committee of the Arkansas bar, we might be able to work something out,” Poole said.

Bowles also placed calls to another lawyer, Reef Ivy, then with the Washington lobbying firm of Patton-Boggs, and to Will Dunbar, then with Allied Capital, a financial services firm based in Washington that makes loans, some of which are guaranteed by the SBA. None of the three Bowles called hired Hubbell.

Arnold, the Texas oil executive, arranged for Hubbell’s hiring after he was contacted by McLarty, with whom he had long been friends.

McLarty believes he also asked his chief aide, Bill Burton, to inquire about arranging work for Hubbell, Davis said.

Until Tuesday, the White House has not disclosed any role by high-level officials in lining up paying engagements for Hubbell. The disclosure came with officials facing questions from congressional investigators about the circumstances of the aid effort for Hubbell.

John W. Nields Jr., Hubbell’s attorney, could not be reached for comment.

On Dec. 6, 1994, Hubbell pleaded guilty to tax and fraud charges that stemmed from the bilking of $482,410 from his former clients and partners at the Rose firm. At that time, Hubbell announced that he would cooperate with the investigation of Whitewater independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr.

Starr, by urging a maximum prison sentence for Hubbell, has made clear his displeasure with the extent of that cooperation. In his testimony to congressional committees, Hubbell has shown little recollection of transactions related to Whitewater.

Moreover, last summer Hubbell refused under oath to tell a Senate committee what, if any, work he performed in 1994 for an affiliate of the Lippo Group--one of whose owners, James Riady--figures prominently in the controversy over Democratic fund-raising.

The Lippo affiliate is one of more than 10 entities that hired Hubbell between the time he left the administration and began serving a 16-month federal prison sentence in August 1995. Among his other clients were the Los Angeles Airport Commission, Pacific Telesis Group., long-distance phone carrier Sprint and Mid-America Dairymen.