ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Monday, June 10, 1996 TAG: 9606100016
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-6 EDITION: METRO
WOW! ANALYSIS by the FBI, according to the Senate Whitewater Committee last week, shows that the late Vince Foster's fingerprints are on subpoenaed Rose Law Firm billing records that mysteriously went missing for two years.
Double wow! Among the other fingerprints identified by the FBI are a couple belonging to Hillary Rodham Clinton, whose work at the Little Rock firm where Foster also was a partner and close friend was the reason the records had been sought.
Well, not so wow. Foster's and Hillary Clinton's fingerprints are ones you'd expect to find.
So, given what is known about the history of the records, are the other four identified prints: Hillary Clinton's former secretary at Rose, a file clerk at the law firm, the Clinton aide who found the records, and a paralegal in the office of David Kendall, the Clintons' personal lawyer.
The billings are for the mid-1980s, when the future first lady was among Rose lawyers who did legal work for James B. McDougal and his Madison Guaranty Savings and Loan. But the paper documents in question go back only to February 1992, during the early stages of Bill Clinton's presidential campaign. The billing records were printed out at the law firm after press inquiries to the campaign about the extent of Hillary Clinton's work for the by-then failed Madison and the by-then discredited McDougal. Unsurprisingly, the FBI found fingerprints of Hillary Clinton's former secretary at Rose and a Rose file clerk.
Foster took on the task of reviewing the printouts; Hillary Clinton looked at them. The records, however, were not made public. In early 1994, they were subpoenaed by the Whitewater special counsel - but now allegedly could not be located, either by the law firm or by the White House.
Not until January of this year did the records reach the special counsel. Last summer, the Clinton aide had found legal documents sitting on a table in the reading room in the White House residential area, she says, and she stored them in her office. She came across them again in January, this time realized what they were, and reported her find to Kendall. He announced the discovery of the billing records and turned them over to the special counsel.
If justice was obstructed by the deliberate withholding of subpoenaed documents, it is serious misconduct. There is cause here for both suspicion and investigation.
But, on the basis of what is now known - despite its ballyhooing in the press last week - the evidence of the fingerprints does little to answer the question of who might be guilty, or even whether misconduct occurred.
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