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Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

First Lady Denies Hubbell Bought Off ‘There Is Nothing To Be Hushed Up…’ Hillary Clinton Says

Los Angeles Times

First lady Hillary Rodham Clinton ridiculed suggestions Thursday that anyone tried to buy the silence of former Justice Department official Webster L. Hubbell, saying the continuing attention to the Whitewater controversy is akin to “some people’s obsession with UFOs and the Hale-Bopp comet.”

Preventing Hubbell from cooperating with Whitewater prosecutors “was not the intention of anyone that I’m aware of,” she told a radio interviewer, referring to administration officials who lined up paying engagements for Hubbell after he was forced to resign his position.

“There isn’t anything to be hushed up about, so I attribute that to the ongoing saga of Whitewater,” Clinton said in an interview with National Public Radio’s Diane Rehm.

Referring to allegations being examined by a Whitewater grand jury that the actions of administration officials in helping Hubbell could amount to obstruction of justice, the first lady added: “There’s no evidence of that. There will be no evidence of that.”

Clinton denied there was any effort to keep Hubbell, her former law partner in Little Rock, Ark., from telling Whitewater prosecutors about possibly incriminating activities by herself or her husband.

The president, meanwhile, told reporters he is not angry about a Hubbell admission in a press interview last week that he had lied three years ago when he told the president that he had done nothing wrong.

“I’m not angry with him, because he paid a very high price for the mistake he made,” Clinton said of his close friend, who pleaded guilty to fraud and tax-evasion charges and served 16 months in prison for bilking his clients and law partners of $482,410.

“He’s apologized, and I accept his apology,” the president said.

The White House acknowledged last week that Clinton’s then-chief of staff, Thomas “Mack” McLarty, and Erskine Bowles, the current staff chief, made calls to line up work for Hubbell. Bowles has said he placed calls to Clinton financial backers in the spring of 1994 after another senior administration official, then-U.S. Trade Representative Mickey Kantor, apprised him of Hubbell’s predicament.

The president said last week that McLarty and Bowles had acted solely out of “human compassion.”

Prosecutors in Little Rock working under Independent Counsel Kenneth W. Starr, frustrated by Hubbell’s memory lapses in the probe of the Clintons’ finances, are investigating whether the financial aid given to Hubbell was aimed at insuring his silence.

The first lady said she and her husband had no reason to disbelieve Hubbell’s denials of wrongdoing before he was charged and pleaded guilty.

“He very clearly and unequivocally just looked us in the eye and said, ‘I didn’t do anything wrong. This will blow over, this is all going to be taken care of,”’ she recalled. “So I think that it’s unfortunate that he didn’t tell the truth to his friends and to his colleagues. He should not have put anyone in the position of trying to help him and his family without full disclosure,” she added.

Clinton, who testified last year before a Whitewater grand jury about the disappearance for several months of her former law firm billing records, was asked by Rehm if she had any concerns about being indicted.

“None whatsoever,” she replied. “This is the endless saga that someday, perhaps in my lifetime, will end. But at this point, I don’t pay much attention to it. I just try to cooperate and try to be as cheerful about this five years of inquiry … as I can be.”