Sue Hartigan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Despite a five-hour White House interview with special prosecutor Kenneth Starr, first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton is unlikely to be indicted in the long-running Whitewater probe, a legal expert says. "Indicting a sitting first lady would be a step that no prosecutor would take casually," said John Barrett, who worked on the independent counsel team that probed the Reagan-era Iran-Contra affair. "You're obviously causing tremendous public turmoil ...," Barrett said Monday. "You certainly don't bring a criminal case in this setting unless you have really powerful evidence." Grand jury proceedings are secret, so there is no way of knowing whether Starr's investigators have a "smoking gun" in their probe of the Whitewater land deal in Arkansas, Barrett said. But he said that what has surfaced in public -- billing records that may link Mrs. Clinton's legal work to the deal -- would provide only a circumstantial case against her. "I would be surprised if it was the kind of thing that Starr would pull the trigger on," said Barrett, now a law professor at St. John's University in New York City. The nature of the marathon interview with Mrs. Clinton Saturday at the White House suggests she is not a target of the Whitewater investigation, Barrett said. It was the sixth time Mrs. Clinton has been questioned by Starr's team. That White House session was probably a negotiated alternative to a grand jury appearance. Targets of such an investigation -- those with a good chance of being indicted -- rarely testify under these circumstances, Barrett said. This means Mrs. Clinton is more likely a subject of the probe, someone who falls within the scope of the investigation but who is not now a target of it, he said. Former White House counsel C. Boyden Gray said the mere fact of Starr's interview with Mrs. Clinton, 10 days before a Whitewater grand jury based in Little Rock, Ark., goes out of business, did not indicate an indictment was imminent. Speaking on CNN's "Burden of Proof" program Monday, Gray did not rule an indictment out, if not of Mrs. Clinton, then of some unnamed actor in the case. The videotape of Mrs. Clinton's sworn statement is expected to be played for the Little Rock grand jury as early as Tuesday. But even after that grand jury's mandate ends May 7, that inquiry may go on, according to one White House source, who said many there expect Starr to impanel a new grand jury in the Whitewater probe. In any event, two grand juries sitting in Washington are investigating Whitewater and allegations of White House sex and perjury. Part of the Washington-based inquiry is focusing on accusations that President Clinton had a sexual affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky and then tried to cover it up. Clinton has denied it. The lawyers' weekly Legal Times reported Monday that Starr's team had obtained the credit records for Lewinsky, her mother Marcia Lewis, Democratic Party fund-raiser Nathan Landow, Clinton accuser Kathleen Willey, and Willey's friend Julie Hiatt Steele. Trans Union Corp., a Chicago-based credit-reporting agency, confirmed to Reuters that Starr's grand jury had subpoenaed the information about those five individuals and that the data had been provided. In another development in the convoluted Whitewater saga, the Supreme Court Monday refused to block the trial of David Hale, a key witness against President Clinton in Starr's Whitewater investigation who is facing trial on insurance fraud in Arkansas. Hale, who was to stand trial starting Thursday but who was admitted to a hospital on April 23, had sought to block his fraud trial on grounds that this prosecution was retribution for his cooperation with Starr's investigation. -- Two rules in life: 1. Don't tell people everything you know. 2. Subscribe/Unsubscribe, email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] In the body of the message enter: subscribe/unsubscribe law-issues
