Portions of Hubbell Prison Tapes Released

He speaks in a drawl, drifting from the personal to the political, each conversation lasting no more than 15 minutes before the prison telephone clicks off and he must dial up--collect--again.

One minute, former Associate Atty. Gen. Webster L. Hubbell, is telling his wife, Suzy, of his new job as a prison cook. “It’s hard work,” he says. The next, he is discussing First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton and other top White House officials.

“We’re on a recorded phone, OK?” he tells his tearful wife at one point, reminding her that calls at the federal detention facility in Cumberland, Md., are commonly recorded by prison authorities. A sign over the pay phone reminds prisoners of the practice.

Rep. Dan Burton (R-Ind.), chairman of a House investigative committee, released audiotapes of 43 of Hubbell’s telephone conversations Monday, attempting to fend off charges leveled by White House officials and congressional Democrats that he had made public misleading excerpts of the remarks.

Public release of such conversations is rare outside of court proceedings--and was opposed by Hubbell attorney John W. Nields Jr.--but is within the purview of Congress, which is not subject to the federal Privacy Act.

“I believe this will once and for all put the lie to any accusations of ‘editing,’ ‘doctoring’ or ‘out of context’ quotation,” Burton said in a statement.

But the three hours of tapes, a small selection of the 150 hours of phone calls recorded by the Bureau of Prisons and subpoenaed by the House Government Reform and Oversight Committee, served only to escalate the furious political battle over who--the Clintons’ critics or their defenders--has sunk to new depths.

The tapes released Monday--or, more accurately, tossed through the air by a Burton aide to a horde of reporters in a House committee room--cover several months’ worth of conversations “Inmate Hubbell,” as prison officials called him, had with his wife, sister, attorneys and daughters in 1996.

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Some words are unintelligible. Some long stretches of conversation represent no more than a jailed husband and father reconnecting with his family. And when Hubbell--who was serving 18 months for defrauding the Rose Law Firm when he and Mrs. Clinton were partners there--mentions Whitewater, there is ample room for listeners of different political bents to hear what they want to hear.

At one point, for example, Hubbell appears to use the word “reality.” But GOP investigators wrote the word “Riady” on their transcript of the remarks, a reference to Indonesian billionaire James T. Riady. One of the companies controlled by Riady made a questionable $100,000 payment to Hubbell.

“Well, I guess I’ll have to roll over one more time,” Hubbell tells his wife at one point, responding to her fears of losing her presidential appointment in the Interior Department. The remark raised the eyebrows of GOP investigators, who suspect that Clinton allies paid “hush money” to Hubbell to keep him from revealing damaging information in the Whitewater investigation.

But Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Los Angeles) focused on another passage soon afterward, which Burton aides had left off their written transcript.

In that exchange, Hubbell says of Mrs. Clinton’s knowledge of billing irregularities at the law firm: “She just had no idea what was going on. She didn’t participate in any of this.”

Burton admitted that the remark should have been included in the transcript his investigators prepared, but he said that other remarks casting the first lady in a positive light were included.

“So the argument that all exculpatory material about the first lady was selectively edited out just doesn’t stand up to the light of day,” Burton said.

Burton began releasing the tapes last week after Hubbell was indicted on charges of evading taxes on hundreds of thousands of dollars in income, much of it arranged by presidential allies.

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“Because Mr. Hubbell has asserted his 5th Amendment rights not to cooperate with this committee, we have been compelled to turn to other avenues to find the truth and report it to the American people,” Burton said.

He said that he only released select portions of the tapes because he “wanted to bend over backwards to be fair to Mr. Hubbell.” But he held out the possibility of releasing more tapes if critics continue to portray him as being unfair.

Waxman did just that in a letter to Burton Monday in which he accused him of acting irresponsibly by repeatedly twisting Hubbell’s remarks in his transcripts and releasing tapes that touch on family medical ailments, problems affecting the Hubbell children and the attempted suicide of a family friend.

“These are private matters that have no conceivable relevance to any legitimate congressional investigation,” Waxman wrote.