
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: MONDAY, January 17, 1994                   TAG: 9401170008
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-3   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: WASHINGTON                                LENGTH: Medium

CONGRESSIONAL PROBE OF WHITEWATER DEBATED

A Republican congressman pressed again Sunday for congressional hearings into President Clinton's ties to a failed S&L, calling the Arkansas venture a small issue but one of public trust.

The administration, meanwhile, stressed that Clinton is cooperating fully with a probe, and a Senate Democrat accused the GOP of rehashing the issue for partisan gain even after Clinton agreed that a special counsel should investigate.

"All the information has been turned over, every scrap of it. A special counsel [is being] appointed. What do you want?" Vice President Al Gore asked Sunday on ABC's "This Week with David Brinkley."

Attorney General Janet Reno is expected soon to announce the name of a counsel to investigate the ties between Clinton, first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton and James McDougal, owner of the Madison Guaranty Savings and Loan that failed in 1989 at a cost to taxpayers of $47 million.

McDougal and the Clintons also co-owned the Whitewater Development Corp., an Arkansas real estate venture. Investigators are trying to determine whether Madison S&L funds were illegally diverted to Whitewater or to help Clinton repay a $50,000 loan for his 1984 gubernatorial campaign.

Clinton denies any wrongdoing, saying he lost $68,900 in the Whitewater venture.

McDougal's attorney, Sam Heuer, agreed Sunday. "I would suspect if there were some secrets, we would have known them long before now," he said. "Jim McDougal was a savings and loan executive, which is akin to being a communist in the McCarthy era."

But Rep. Jim Leach, R-Iowa, the ranking Republican on the House Banking Committee, repeated his call for bipartisan congressional hearings, saying the special counsel would look into illegal activities while Congress needed to air an issue of "public trust."

"This isn't the largest issue. It's somewhere between much ado about nothing and something might be a little rotten in part of the Ozarks," he told CBS' "Face the Nation.

Sen. Bob Dole, R-Kan., who also has pushed for hearings, on Sunday criticized the vice president for opposing them when, as a senator, Gore called on Congress to investigate controversies plaguing the Reagan and Bush administrations.

:wq!

by CNB