Clinton’s Secretary Testifies for 5th Time

Betty Currie, President Clinton’s longtime personal secretary, was brought back before a federal grand jury for the fifth and apparently last time Wednesday in a further sign that independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr is seeking to wrap up a crucial phase of his Monica S. Lewinsky investigation.

Currie, who first worked for Clinton in his 1992 presidential campaign, is a central figure in the probe not only because of her close working relationship with the president but also for her connection to the former White House intern.

Often referred to as “a mother hen” for her matronly manner with White House staffers, Currie retrieved a handful of gifts last December that the president had given Lewinsky during the two years she worked there and later as a public affairs aide at the Pentagon.

In addition, Currie, whose desk sits just outside the Oval Office, has knowledge of some of the roughly three dozen visits Lewinsky made to the White House after she was transferred to the Pentagon in April 1996. Lewinsky’s last known visit was an evening meeting in the president’s office Dec. 28, which Starr recently has been asking Secret Service witnesses about.

Meanwhile, U.N. Ambassador Bill Richardson told a Senate committee that there was nothing unusual about his interviewing Lewinsky for a low-level job last November after a senior White House official told him it would be considered “a favor” for Currie.

Testifying at a hearing on his nomination as Energy secretary, Richardson recounted under oath what he has previously said publicly. He said that White House Deputy Chief of Staff John Podesta asked him to look for a public relations job for a White House intern whose name Podesta could not recall but whom Podesta said Currie knew.

“This was a very normal procedure for me,” Richardson said, adding that Lewinsky “was impressive” but turned down the job offer after he had held it open for a time. He filled the job two months later, he said.

Currie’s repeat appearance before the grand jury, following that of the first Secret Service officers, signaled that Starr is trying to complete all of his investigative work short of deciding whether to subpoena Lewinsky herself or even to indict her. Starr has been unable to work out an agreement under which Lewinsky would testify before the grand jury in return for a grant of immunity from prosecution.

Starr is investigating the nature of Clinton’s relationship with Lewinsky and whether either of them lied about it under oath or encouraged others to do so.

As Currie left the federal courthouse late Wednesday, her attorney, Larry Wechsler, said, “We believe that Mrs. Currie has completed her grand jury testimony.” With the witness looking composed at his side, Wechsler added, “Mrs. Currie is happy to have this experience behind her, and she looks forward to returning to work.”

He declined to discuss the substance of her testimony.

Pentagon employee Linda Tripp, who secretly taped about 20 hours of her phone conversations with Lewinsky, waited in the courthouse but was not immediately called to testify for a seventh time. She is expected to testify today.

Prosecutors have sought to determine whether the president or one of his top advisors, Deputy Counsel Bruce R. Lindsey, suggested that Lewinsky return small gifts she had received from Clinton, other lawyers familiar with the matter said. At the time, Lewinsky had just been subpoenaed to testify in the sexual harassment lawsuit against Clinton filed by former Arkansas state employee Paula Corbin Jones.

Legal experts said the gifts might have been returned to allow Lewinsky to testify truthfully, if asked, that she possessed no mementos from the president. Attorneys for Jones had heard rumors about an alleged sexual relationship between Lewinsky and Clinton and were asking if the former intern had received any items from him.

If Currie’s account to grand jurors turns out to differ markedly from the testimony of others--including that of Lewinsky, assuming she ultimately appears before the grand jury--Starr might have the makings of a perjury or obstruction-of-justice indictment against Lewinsky or others, some said.

Currie’s friends describe her as a deeply religious, straight-arrow civil servant bent on telling the truth. Prosecutors believe she alone can say whether the president or anyone close to him tried to enlist her aid in retrieving Lewinsky’s gifts, including a brooch, a book and items of clothing.

“Starr would like to make some sort of obstruction case against the president if he can implicate him in this,” explained one veteran Washington defense attorney who is familiar with the evidence. Other legal experts said Starr was looking for any evidence of a White House-directed attempt to encourage false testimony.

Although the president has declined to discuss the matter, he reportedly has told associates it was Currie who asked him to pick up some mementos for Lewinsky and that the two women were close friends.

In addition, on the day last January that Clinton gave a sworn statement in the Jones lawsuit denying that he had a sexual relationship with Lewinsky, he called Currie and asked her to meet him the next morning, a Sunday, so he could check his recollections about whether he ever met alone with Lewinsky.

However, Wechsler has denied that the president was trying to shape Currie’s potential testimony.

“To the extent there is any implication or the slightest suggestion that Mrs. Currie believed that the president, or anyone else, tried to influence her recollection, that is absolutely false and a mischaracterization of the facts,” Wechsler said last February after initial press reports of that meeting.

Aside from Richardson’s efforts to find a job for Lewinsky, Vernon E. Jordan Jr., an attorney and close golfing friend of the president’s, has said Currie contacted him about a job for the young woman. Jordan, who has testified repeatedly before the grand jury, has said he personally accompanied Lewinsky to New York in January to line up a job offer for her from Revlon, on whose board Jordan sits.

Revlon withdrew the offer on Jan. 21, the day that Starr’s investigation of Lewinsky’s dealings with Clinton was disclosed.

Times staff writer Erin Trodden contributed to this story.