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

DATE: MONDAY, April 11, 1994                   TAG: 9404110040
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-4   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: The New York Times
DATELINE: WASHINGTON                                LENGTH: Medium

DETAILS OF CLINTON TRADING DISCLOSED

The White House said on Sunday that most of the commodity orders by which Hillary Rodham Clinton turned $1,000 into nearly $100,000 in the 1970s were placed by James Blair, a friend and lawyer for Tyson Foods Co., whose role administration officials had previously described as only an adviser to Clinton, a novice trader.

The White House, while continuing to maintain that Clinton made her own trading decisions after consultations with Blair, acknowledged that Blair then relayed these decisions to Robert Bone, chief broker at the Springdale, Ark., office of Refco Inc.

This was a violation of commodity trading regulations, according to a former chairman of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, Leo Melamed, who was engaged by the Clintons to review the trading records, according to an article in The Washington Post.

Clinton's account was one of the office's few nondiscretionary accounts, which meant that Bone was to take orders only from her or from someone to whom she had granted power of attorney.

"She did her own trading, and if there was any technical violation it was the broker's," a White House official said on Sunday afternoon.

This official said she did not know how many orders were transmitted through Blair or whether he had any role in trading that did not involve cattle futures, the main source of Clinton's profits. She also said she did not know when Clinton became aware that Blair's placement of orders was improper but that "during that period, she didn't."

Blair insisted on Sunday that there was nothing wrong in his placing orders for Clinton.

"I can find no regulations of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange covering 1978 and '79 that make it improper for one private citizen to call in an order for another private citizen," Blair said.

"This was based on close personal friendship," Blair added.

Clinton opened her Refco account in October 1978 when her husband was attorney general of Arkansas and the front-runner in the campaign for governor. Blair was then outside counsel for Tyson, the state's biggest employer.

by CNB