Clinton Aide OKd U.S. Job for Hubbell’s Son

In addition to the employment deals in the private sector that were steered to Webster L. Hubbell, a top Clinton administration official approved giving a federal job to Hubbell’s son soon after the senior Hubbell’s resignation from the Justice Department.

Mickey Kantor, the top Clinton political advisor who served four years in the president’s Cabinet, signed off on a staff position for W. Walter Hubbell in the U.S. Trade Representative’s office.

The hiring came in May 1994--just as Webster Hubbell had resigned as associate attorney general and was facing criminal investigation over fraudulent billings at his former Little Rock, Ark., law firm.

The hiring is the first known use by Clinton aides of the federal payroll to help the Hubbell family after his resignation. It will compound the questions now being asked by federal and congressional investigators about the administration’s effort to help the departing official--particularly whether it was intended to discourage Hubbell from cooperating with the Whitewater investigation of the Clintons.

Putting people on the federal payroll for personal reasons is a delicate issue for government officials, who can make some political appointments. But jobs covered by the Civil Service code are supposed to be filled on merit only.

Walter Hubbell declined to discuss how he got the trade office job. Kantor said in an interview that he did not remember exactly how the hiring--at the “GS-4” grade, paying $17,000 to $22,000 a year--came about. But he said he saw nothing wrong with giving young Hubbell a job.

“How did I view it at the time? Helping Walter,” Kantor said. “There was nothing untoward with it. He did a terrific job.”

Although Webster Hubbell is a primary focus in the federal and congressional investigations, the younger Hubbell’s name has come up in connection with one curious matter.

The White House confirmed that Walter Hubbell is among those who visited the White House about the time that First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton’s long-lost legal billing records were discovered in the residential quarters in August, 1995. The billing records had been under subpoena by Whitewater prosecutors since early 1994.

White House officials confirmed that Walter Hubbell was among those who visited the White House on Aug. 2, 1995. “We think it was a social call,” said the spokesman. The Whitewater independent counsel’s inquiry is reviewing White House access during this period for clues to the documents’ return.

Hubbell’s son worked in the Trade Representative’s office from May to mid-July 1994, after graduating from college. His duties included filing documents and shuttling materials to Capitol Hill, Kantor said. As previously reported by The Times, Kantor then helped get him a job at the private Federal National Mortgage Assn.

This help was part of an extensive, and at times coordinated, effort by administration officials and friends to provide for the Hubbells financially--an effort that landed Hubbell at least a dozen employment deals that paid in excess of $500,000 in the year after his resignation in March 1994. Kantor also solicited donations for trust funds to defray family education and other expenses. A separate trust fund was established for Hubbell’s legal bills.

After Hubbell pleaded guilty on Dec. 6, 1994, to having bilked $482,410 from his former clients and partners, he pledged to cooperate with independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr’s Whitewater investigation of the Clintons. But Hubbell’s failure to recall the role played in certain transactions by Mrs. Clinton, with whom he had been a partner at the Rose Law Firm in Little Rock, has frustrated Starr.

The efforts to assist the Hubbell family also are under investigation by the House Government Reform and Oversight Committee, which has subpoenaed records from those who employed Webster Hubbell. The committee also is seeking to determine the nature of Walter Hubbell’s visits to the White House in August 1995 and whether he played any role in handling controversial billing records from the Rose Law Firm. During Clinton’s 1992 presidential campaign, Webster Hubbell father had put Mrs. Clinton’s billing records in his basement for safekeeping. While the billing records have reappeared, others have disappeared.

Telephone message slips that would otherwise indicate who Kantor was in contact with in the spring of 1994 during the campaign to help Hubbell no longer exist, according to officials at the U.S. Trade Representative’s office. The records had been sought in a Freedom of Information Act request filed by The Times earlier this year.

“Apparently, they’ve thrown them away,” said Sybia Harrison, the Freedom of Information Act officer for the agency.

Kantor has said that any of what he did on behalf of the Hubbells was done strictly out of friendship and concern for the family’s welfare.

Of the intern-like job for Walter Hubbell, he said: “We all help each other’s kids. . . . In fact, I think it’s something to be proud of, that you care about your friends and their family and you try to help their kid. The family was in a particular situation at that point, which was very difficult.”

Starr is also examining the reinstatement, to a position at the Interior Department, of Webster Hubbell’s wife, Suzanna, who now receives $66,639 a year. Mrs. Hubbell had taken an unpaid leave of absence upon her husband’s resignation. She was initially rebuffed when she tried to return to work in February 1995. At that point, Bruce R. Lindsey, a White House lawyer and longtime aide to the president, contacted the Interior Department and cleared the way for Mrs. Hubbell’s return.

Walter Hubbell has not been accused of wrongdoing, but the comings and goings at the White House in August 1995 are of particular interest to Whitewater investigators. White House aide Carolyn Huber has testified that she first noticed Mrs. Clinton’s lost legal billing records on a table that month in the family quarters. Huber has testified that, when she saw the records again in January 1996 she notified her lawyer.

According to “Blood Sport,” a 1996 book that explored Whitewater, Walter Hubbell helped his father move the billing records from the Rose firm’s offices in Little Rock during the 1992 presidential campaign. The records documented legal work Mrs. Clinton did on transactions related to a failed Arkansas savings and loan, which is at the center of the Whitewater investigation.

After rediscovery of the billing records, Mrs. Clinton was questioned last year before a Whitewater grand jury, the first time a president’s wife has made such an appearance. Mrs. Clinton has said publicly that she has no idea how the billing records wound up in the White House.

The White House released documents last fall that showed that Webster Hubbell entered the White House on Aug. 2, 1995--five days before he was to enter federal prison. But officials now say that the visitor actually was his son. A spokesman for the White House said Monday that Walter Hubbell arrived about 6 p.m. on Aug. 2, 1995, to visit a friend.