ROANOKE TIMES 
                      Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times

DATE: Tuesday, September 10, 1996            TAG: 9609100049
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL   PAGE: A-1  EDITION: METRO 
DATELINE: LITTLE ROCK, ARK.
SOURCE: Associated Press
NOTE: Below 

SILENCE ABOUT CLINTON EARNS JAIL TIME

Keeping her word not to cooperate with Whitewater prosecutors, Susan McDougal was led away to jail Monday for contempt of court, denying she was trying to protect President Clinton with her silence.

Clinton's former Whitewater business partner spent 71/2 hours in a federal court lockup before she was put in a van in shackles and handcuffs to be taken to the Faulkner County Jail, about 30 miles away.

A federal judge cited her for contempt last week for refusing to answer questions about Clinton before a federal grand jury, and gave her until Monday to change her mind. McDougal, 41, could be held for up to 11/2 years but may be released immediately if she relents and agrees to testify.

``I'm so angry that they hold themselves out to be so full of integrity, so above reproach,'' McDougal, speaking outside the federal courthouse, said of Whitewater prosecutors.

She said last week that she wouldn't testify because she didn't want to subject herself to perjury charges if her story conflicted with that of other prosecution witnesses. One of her attorneys, Jenniffer Horan, denied that McDougal's silence was intended to protect the president.

McDougal also insisted that her decision to go to jail was her own, with no prompting or assistance from the White House.

``If the Clintons have helped me or the White House has helped me, then God help us all because I'm about to go to jail,'' she said.

She repeated accusations that Whitewater independent counsel Kenneth Starr's office offered her a deal to incriminate the president and Hillary Rodham Clinton. Starr's office has denied the allegation. ``Tell them what they want to hear, and they give you a deal,'' a defiant McDougal said.

McDougal was convicted May 28 of obtaining in 1986 a fraudulent $300,000 loan, some of which went toward the purchase of land for the Whitewater venture. She was sentenced to two years in prison, beginning Sept.30.

On Wednesday, U.S. District Judge Susan Webber Wright found McDougal in contempt for refusing to answer questions from the Whitewater grand jury.

Among the questions she refused to answer, McDougal said, was whether Clinton told the truth when he testified at her trial via videotape that he knew nothing about the loan or the land deal.

LENGTH: Medium:   54 lines
ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO:  AP. The judge who cited Susan McDougal with contempt of 
          court can decide whether any of the time she serves for contempt 
          will count toward her two-year Whitewater sentence. McDougal said 
          Whitewater prosecutors ``will do anything. There's nothing they 
          won't do'' to get the Clintons. color.