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

DATE: THURSDAY, June 29, 1995                   TAG: 9506290088
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-7   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

CLINTON'S FRIEND GETS 21-MONTH PRISON TERM

Webster Hubbell, a close friend of President Clinton and a former top Justice Department official, was sentenced Wednesday to 21 months in prison for defrauding the Arkansas law firm where he and first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton once worked together as partners.

While Hubbell's crime did not involve the Clintons, he is the most prominent and nearest acquaintance of the first family to be swept up by the wide-ranging Whitewater investigation, which originally focused on the president and his wife.

Members of Hubbell's family wept as U.S. District Judge George Howard Jr. of Little Rock, Ark., imposed the longest jail term given to any defendant so far as a result of the 18-month inquiry now led by independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr.

At the White House, the Clintons issued a statement saying that Hubbell had ``given much to his family, state and country.'' They noted that he had ``assumed full responsibility for his mistakes and accepted the consequences of his actions.''

Eleven people, including Arkansas Gov. Jim Guy Tucker, have been charged or pleaded guilty to charges arising from the probe, but only three have been sentenced.

Hubbell has been cooperating with Starr since pleading guilty in December to charges of mail fraud and tax evasion. He admitted to falsely claiming $482,410 in expense reimbursements from the Rose Law Firm and his former clients and evading $143,747 in federal income taxes.

But his cooperation did not win him as significant a reduction in his sentence as he apparently had hoped. Although Hubbell could have drawn a sentence of as long as 27 months under federal sentencing guidelines, he had asked for a reduction of his term to 16 months.

According to courtroom observers in Little Rock, Hubbell seemed humbled by the events that have transported him back to Arkansas from the inner circles of power in Washington.

A onetime football star at the University of Arkansas and former chief justice of the Arkansas Supreme Court, he was the third-ranking official in Clinton's Justice Department before he was forced to resign to deal with the investigation of his finances. Before his resignation, he also was the president's favorite golfing companion.

by CNB