ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1995, Roanoke Times
DATE: Thursday, December 21, 1995 TAG: 9512210102
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: WASHINGTON
SOURCE: Associated Press
After an extraordinary debate over the integrity and honesty of the White House, a divided Senate on Wednesday voted to take President Clinton to court for refusing to turn over disputed Whitewater notes.
The 51-45 vote, along party lines, marks the first time since Watergate that Congress has approved a court challenge of a president in a dispute over documents.
Despite the politically charged vote, a court challenge still could be headed off as the White House moved closer to eliminating the final roadblock to releasing the notes on its own - reaching a separate agreement with House Republicans. Both sides sounded optimistic.
``I don't think the White House wants a legal determination of this issue,'' Republican Sen. Fred Thompson said. The White House predicted the Senate vote could soon be ``irrelevant.''
Clinton shrugged off the dispute, saying in an interview with the Los Angeles Times that ``a lot of this is politics'' and insisting he was ``dying to give these notes up'' as soon as agreements were secured to protect his attorney-client privilege. He also disputed the comparisons to Watergate.
``There has not been a single, solitary soul to accuse me or my wife of doing anything illegal not only in the White House, in the presidential campaign, or in the governor's office,'' Clinton said.
Republicans, lacing their arguments with allusions to the Watergate scandal two decades ago, said they could wait no longer to get the documents. Before the final vote, they turned away, on a 51-45 vote, a Democratic proposal to give the White House, which slowly dropped most of its original conditions for withholding the documents, more time.
``Bill Clinton has used every tool in his grasp to stonewall this investigation,'' declared Sen. Rod Grams, R-Minn.
But with the possibility of an agreement near, Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle complained that the Senate Republicans' vote for a court challenge was ``an unnecessary, headline-seeking ploy designed for one purpose and one purpose only: to damage the president.''
At issue are the handwritten notes taken by former presidential aide William Kennedy during a Whitewater legal defense meeting in 1993 between Clinton's private lawyers and White House aides.
LENGTH: Medium: 51 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: Daschle. color.by CNB