Susan McDougal Reported Federal Tax Probe Target

Federal authorities in Los Angeles are trying to build a case of income-tax evasion against Susan McDougal, the imprisoned former business partner of Bill and Hillary Rodham Clinton, according to those familiar with the matter.

The filing of new charges could increase pressure on McDougal to end her nine-month refusal to answer questions about whether President Clinton testified truthfully in her Whitewater trial last year.

Federal authorities arranged Wednesday for McDougal’s former husband, James B. McDougal, who prepared Susan’s tax returns for the years in question, to fly to Los Angeles. On Thursday, James McDougal was questioned about the tax returns before a federal grand jury, The Times has learned.

The potential for new federal charges to be filed against Susan McDougal is the latest of her extensive legal troubles.

A federal judge in Little Rock, Ark., last fall ordered her incarcerated for as long as 18 months unless she agreed to answer questions before the Whitewater grand jury. And she has yet to begin serving a two-year sentence imposed last year for her conviction on a separate matter: fraudulently obtaining a $300,000 loan from an Arkansas concern that was in a program operated by the federal Small Business Administration.

Part of the loan, $50,000, was diverted to the Whitewater Development Co., owned until December 1992 by the Clintons and the McDougals.

Both James McDougal and David Hale, the man who had operated the SBA-sanctioned loan program in Arkansas, have testified that Clinton, while governor of Arkansas, discussed the $300,000 loan with them. Clinton adamantly denied doing so in sworn testimony that was videotaped and presented last year at the trial of the McDougals.

After Susan McDougal’s sentencing last year in Little Rock, Whitewater independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr offered her immunity from further Whitewater prosecution but she has repeatedly vowed that she will not cooperate with Starr, a position her lawyer reiterated Friday.

Over the last several months, Susan McDougal’s refusal to testify before the Whitewater grand jury has escalated into a high-stakes war of wills that has affected the course of Starr’s investigation of the Clintons.

According to those familiar with the matter, the new investigation of Susan McDougal centers on whether she properly paid federal income tax from 1990-1992 on money related to her work as a bookkeeper and assistant to the family of Zubin Mehta, former conductor of the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra.

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The Los Angeles County district attorney has charged Susan McDougal with 10 felony counts--including grand theft, forgery and evasion of state income taxes--related to her work for the Mehtas. Prosecutors allege that she embezzled about $150,000 from the family.

Susan McDougal, who has been detained since December at the Sybil Brand Institute for Women in Los Angeles has denied wrongdoing.

Sandi Gibbons, a spokeswoman for the district attorney, said Friday the office is preparing for trial.

Mark J. Geragos, Susan McDougal’s lawyer in Los Angeles, said that he viewed the tax-evasion investigation as a sign that county prosecutors are beginning to doubt they can prove his client embezzled from the Mehtas.

Times staff writer Henry Weinstein in Los Angeles contributed to this story.