Hubbell Pleads Not Guilty to 15 New Federal Charges

Presidential confidant Webster L. Hubbell, a former top Justice Department official, pleaded not guilty Monday to 15 new federal charges stemming from the 1970s Arkansas land deal known as Whitewater.

“I’m not guilty,” Hubbell responded when U.S. District Judge James Robertson asked him to enter his plea to the charges handed up by independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr’s grand jury.

Hubbell, a golfing partner of President Clinton and a former law partner of Hillary Rodham Clinton, has already served 18 months in prison after pleading guilty in another Whitewater-related case.

In addition, Starr secured an indictment against Hubbell on tax-evasion charges earlier this year, but that was thrown out by Robertson on the ground that Starr went beyond his jurisdiction as independent counsel.

Hubbell’s attorney, John Nields, said he plans to try to have six of the charges dismissed, maintaining they were covered under a 1994 plea agreement.

Nields also said he and another lawyer on Hubbell’s team might testify as defense witnesses and suggested a third lawyer might be brought into the case.

Defense motions were to be filed with the court by Jan. 11, and prosecutors were given 20 days beyond that to file their motions. No trial date was set, but the judge said it is likely to begin in March.

The current indictment charges Hubbell with fraud, perjury and impeding a probe by two federal agencies in their investigation of the Clintons’ involvement in Castle Grande, a failed real estate development in Arkansas.

Starr, who is appealing dismissal of the tax-evasion case, has long been seen by some analysts as trying to squeeze Hubbell in an effort to get him to testify against the Clintons.

Starr’s accusation that Hubbell was paid large amounts of money for his silence indirectly led the independent counsel to look into the Monica S. Lewinsky affair.

Hubbell has known the Clintons since the president was governor of Arkansas and Mrs. Clinton worked at the Rose Law Firm in Little Rock. He came to Washington when Clinton was elected president and took the No. 3 job in the Justice Department.

If Starr’s intent is to get incriminating information about the Clintons, he will fail, Hubbell said.

“I don’t know of any wrongdoing by the first lady or the president,” he said. “Nothing the independent counsel can do to me is going to make me lie about them.”