Clinton Defends Help for Hubbell

As the disparate deals that were steered to Webster L. Hubbell come under increasing scrutiny, President Clinton said Thursday that he saw nothing wrong with the help provided by top administration aides to the former Justice Department official, who has been convicted of fraud.

Hubbell, meanwhile, said in an interview that he lied to Clinton when they met in July 1994 at the president’s Camp David retreat and Hubbell assured Clinton that he had done nothing wrong. Hubbell had resigned as associate attorney general three months earlier amid allegations of impropriety.

The comments Thursday of Hubbell and the president came as a House committee announced that it would issue at least 17 new subpoenas as part of a redoubled effort to examine the nature of the deals that Hubbell obtained after his resignation from the Justice Department in April 1994. Hubbell at the time was facing a criminal investigation of his conduct at the Rose Law Firm in Little Rock, Ark., where he and First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton had been partners.

Congressional investigators and the independent counsel investigating the Whitewater controversy are seeking to determine whether any of Hubbell’s deals were arranged with the intent of discouraging him from cooperating with that investigation.

The White House acknowledged this week that Clinton’s then-chief of staff, Thomas “Mack” McLarty and Erskine Bowles, the current staff chief, made calls in an effort to line up paid engagements for Hubbell. Bowles has said that he placed the calls in the spring of 1994 after another senior administration official, then U.S. Trade Representative Mickey Kantor, apprised him of Hubbell’s predicament.

On Thursday night, an administration official confirmed that McLarty had received a subpoena from Whitewater independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr.

Clinton, appearing Thursday at a picture-taking session, defended the actions of both McLarty and Bowles, saying that they had acted solely out of “human compassion.”

“At the time that was done, no one had any idea about what the nature of the allegations were against Mr. Hubbell or whether they were true,” Clinton said. “Everybody thought there was some sort of billing dispute with his law firm and that’s all anybody knew about it. So, no, I do not think they did anything improper.”

Clinton’s remarks did not address the fact that news accounts in the spring of 1994 reported that Hubbell’s dispute with the Rose firm had come under investigation by Whitewater prosecutors. In December 1994, Hubbell pleaded guilty to fraud and tax-evasion charges stemming from the bilking of $482,410 from his former partners and clients.

Hubbell, speaking in an interview with Associated Press, said that he conferred with Clinton at Camp David about the circumstances that led, ultimately, to his guilty plea.

“The president asked me if I’d done something wrong,” Hubbell said. “And I didn’t tell him the truth. . . . The president and first lady did not know and I did not tell them I committed a crime until I pleaded guilty.”

The description offered by Hubbell comes as White House officials are preparing to respond to media inquiries for logs identifying who has used the presidential retreat at Camp David.

The new subpoenas being issued by the House Government Reform and Oversight Committee are being delivered to people who are thought to have helped arrange Hubbell’s paid engagements.

Moreover, the committee announced that it also is subpoenaing New York attorney Susan Thomases--who helped shape the Clintons’ response to Whitewater questions beginning in 1992. Thomases is being subpoenaed “for documents relating to Mr. Hubbell, the Lippo Group . . . and other subjects,” according to the committee.

Reached Thursday night, Thomases said that she has never represented Lippo. She declined to answer whether she helped arrange Hubbell’s hiring in mid-1994 by a Lippo affiliate.

In Little Rock, meanwhile, Bernard Rapoport of Waco, Texas, spent two hours testifying before the Whitewater grand jury. “I just told them the truth, and I don’t know anything. That’s what I told them,” he told reporters.

Rapoport paid Hubbell $18,000 in 1994 at the suggestion of Texarkana, Texas, oilman Truman Arnold, who hired Hubbell after getting a call from McLarty. After Hubbell went to prison in 1995 for tax evasion and mail fraud, Rapoport contributed $5,000 to an education fund for Hubbell’s children.