Hubbell had

Date: 05/03/97 Category:
NEW Page: 1A

KATHY KIELY, ARKANSAS DEMOCRAT-GAZETTE

WASHINGTON -- President Clinton and first lady Hillary Rodham
Clinton played host to Webb Hubbell at the White House until six
weeks before he pleaded guilty to defrauding clients and partners
at his former law firm, according to Secret Service records
released here Friday. The records show that Hubbell was
authorized to enter the White House at least 14 times during the
nine months between March 14, 1994, when he announced his
resignation from the No.  3 post at the Justice Department, and
Dec.  6, 1994, when he pleaded guilty to bilking clients and
partners at Little Rock's Rose Law Firm, where he had been a
partner with Hillary Clinton. At least four of those visits were
at the invitation of the Clintons themselves.  Hubbell's last
call on the first couple came on Oct.  21, 1994, when he was
among guests invited to a birthday party for the first lady.

News reports surfaced in November 1994 that Whitewater
independent counsel Kenneth Starr would seek indictments against
Hubbell. Since his resignation, White House and Clinton
administration officials had helped Hubbell get more than
$400,000 in payments from various businesses.

The list of Hubbell's White House visits are likely to fuel
suspicions of critics of the Clinton administration that its
officials were helping Hubbell to discourage him from cooperating
with Starr in his investigation of the Clintons' financial
dealings. Reporters have been clamoring for more information on
Hubbell's White House contacts for weeks, ever since high-level
Clinton aides Thomas F.  "Mack" McLarty and Erskine Bowles
acknowledged trying to line up work for Hubbell after his
departure from the Justice Department. Release of the information
they were seeking came late on an afternoon in which many members
of the White House press corps were otherwise occupied: At almost
the same moment that aides were slipping copies of the one-page
list of Hubbell's visits into bins in the White House press room,
the president was on Capitol Hill making a headline-grabbing
announcement of a budget agreement with congressional Republican
leaders. Lanny Davis, the White House lawyer who is serving as
the president's spokesman on Whitewater matters, downplayed the
significance of Hubbell's visits to the White House, noting that
most were for large group events, involving anywhere from 65 to
3,000 people. On March 18, 1994, just four days after he had
announced his resignation as associate attorney general, Hubbell
was among a group of people the president invited for dinner and
a movie at the White House.  In June, Clinton included his old
friend in the festivities when the NCAA champion University of
Arkansas Razorback basketball team visited the White House.
That same month, Hubbell also was invited to a state arrival
ceremony for Japanese, but the records are hazy about whether he
attended. Hubbell, 49, had only two more intimate encounters with
the Clintons at the White House, Davis said. One occurred on May
7, when Hubbell was asked to join a small group of Arkansas
friends at a White House party in honor of Lisa Foster, who was
making her first visit back to Washington after the death of her
husband, White House deputy counsel Vincent Foster.  Among others
invited to the gathering were former Arkansas Rep.  Beryl
Anthony, D-Ark.; his wife, Sheila, who is Foster's sister; and
White House aide Marsha Scott. Foster had been a law partner at
Rose with Hubbell and Hillary Clinton.  On July 20, on the first
anniversary of the day Foster was found dead in what law
enforcement officials ruled a suicide, Hubbell had a private
visit with the first lady. Besides his calls on the Clintons,
Hubbell also saw other former associates at the White House.
The Secret Service records indicate that Hubbell had at least
seven appointments with various White House aides though it is
not clear whether he kept them all. Three of those appointments
were with Scott, a fellow Arkansan who later would visit him
several times when he was serving an 18-month federal prison
sentence for mail fraud and tax evasion.  There has been
speculation that Scott served as an emissary between the Clintons
and their jailed friend, but the White House denies this,
characterizing her visits as "purely on a personal level."
Hubbell's last scheduled appointment at the White House was on
November 16, 1994, 20 days before he entered his guilty plea in
U.S.  District Court in Little Rock.  The Secret Service records
indicate his visit was authorized by another Rose Law Firm
colleague, then-White House associate counsel William Kennedy
III.  The records do not show whether Hubbell kept the
appointment. Though Hubbell was under a legal cloud at the time
he resigned from the Justice Department and during the months
that he continued to visit the White House, both Clintons have
said they believed their old friend's assurances that he had been
wrongly accused.  Davis said Friday that Hillary Clinton recalls
Hubbell telling her during their t te-^-t te on the anniversary
of Foster's death that he was innocent of the charges being
leveled against him by Rose partners. Hubbell, who has given
several interviews since being released from jail earlier this
year, has said he lied to the Clintons. During a Fourth of July
weekend visit to Camp David in 1994, he said, the president asked
him point-blank whether he had done anything wrong.  "I lied,"
Hubbell said. Meanwhile, Starr is investigating the possibility
that the White House was orchestrating an effort to win Hubbell's
silence.  Documents and public statements indicate Hubbell made
more than $400,000 in the nine months between leaving the Justice
Department and going to jail. After Starr obtained subpoenas, the
federal Whitewater grand jury in Little Rock heard testimony in
April from presidential counselor McLarty, Bowles, now White
House chief of staff, and several major Democratic contributors
who acknowledged hiring Hubbell after he left the Justice
Department.
###

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