Nussbaum Ignored Note, Witnesses Say Republicans Try To Confirm Whitewater Tampering Suspicions

The second week of Whitewater proceedings concluded Thursday with Republicans no closer than ever to confirming their suspicions that President Clinton, his wife Hillary Rodham Clinton or their aides tampered with Whitewater-related documents on the night Vincent Foster died.

Nevertheless, committee Chairman Sen. Alfonse D’Amato, R-N.Y., asserted that a clearer picture of the confusing events surrounding the White House deputy counsel’s suicide July 20, 1993, is emerging and that the complete story will come out “in the fullness of time.”

Over the course of six days of hearings, the Republicans have painstakingly shown that after Foster died, administration officials, - especially White House Counsel Bernard Nussbaum - frantically tried to prevent politically damaging information from leaking and moved aggressively to thwart federal investigators from determining why Foster killed himself. Yet so far, there have been no blockbuster revelations.

Thursday, witnesses corroborated earlier reports, telling the Senate commitee that Nussbaum barred federal agents from reviewing documents in Foster’s office and ignored scraps of paper that later turned out to form an apparent suicide note.

Counsel to the Deputy Attorney General Roger Adams testified that on the day after Foster’s suicide, Nussbaum agreed to allow investigators to join him in reviewing documents in Foster’s office as part of their death probe. But Nussbaum prevented them from viewing the papers the next day.

Foster family lawyer Michael Spafford, who also attended the search, testified Thursday that White House lawyer Cliff Sloan pointed out “scraps of paper” Nussbaum left in the briefcase. Spafford recalled that Nussbaum then told Sloan in an “off-the-cuff manner” that he would examine them later.

White House officials say it took four days for them to find the scraps and assemble them into the note Foster wrote voicing his despair before he killed himself. Then it took the White House 30 hours to turn over the critical piece of evidence to the Justice Department.

Nussbaum’s lawyer, James Fitzpatrick, said Thursday that Nussbaum does not believe he agreed to a joint document search and does not recall Sloan pointing out the scraps of paper.

Fitzpatrick said Nussbaum reviewed all the files in front of the investigators.

He said this included piles of Whitewater-related documents Hillary Clinton’s assistant Margaret Williams later stowed in a locked closet. “There was a search of the entire office and all of the documents were described and looked at, Fitzpatrick said.