Raft of Starr Subpoenas Expected

WASHINGTON — With a simple one-line order, the Supreme Court breathed new life Monday into independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr’s 3-year-old Whitewater investigation of President Clinton, Hillary Rodham Clinton and other White House officials.

Within hours of the ruling, the White House surrendered to Starr the notes that he had subpoenaed of two conversations between White House lawyers and the first lady. But attorneys familiar with the case said the decision’s real importance will be to permit investigators access to a broader range of documentary evidence.

“A much larger category of documents and oral testimony will now be available to the independent counsel through subpoena,” said Michael Chertoff, a New York attorney who served as the chief counsel to the Senate Whitewater committee.

Chertoff and other lawyers close to the case predicted that Starr would promptly issue new subpoenas for all materials related to discussions that White House lawyers have had with the Clintons and their close aides, including Bruce Lindsey and Thomas F. “Mack” McLarty.

In fact, some legal experts believe the ruling could be extremely far-reaching--perhaps even opening the way for Starr to compel testimony from White House lawyers.

As White House attorney Andrew Frey said during last February’s appeals court hearing on the issue: “The next step is to have government lawyers testifying before the grand jury, before congressional committees, and not just testifying about what statements were made. . . . Any aspect of their work is potentially open to exposure.”

Starr declined to comment Monday on the ruling or discuss how it might affect the future of his probe. “We are taking it a step at a time,” he told reporters outside his office in Little Rock, Ark.

The Supreme Court order, which lets stand an appeals court decision requiring the White House to turn over the notes, comes as Starr says he is in the final phase of his lengthy probe. In recent months, Starr has focused on determining whether the president, the first lady or others tried to interfere with his investigation.

Some lawyers predicted that the Supreme Court decision would prolong the investigation. But Chertoff disagreed, saying: “It will both accelerate the investigation and widen the sources of materials available to the independent counsel.”

Ironically, sources who have read the specific documents at issue in the Supreme Court case said these particular notes are unlikely to yield any information that would bolster Starr’s case that Mrs. Clinton obstructed his Whitewater investigation.

In fact, White House officials were said to be considering the possibility of making copies of these notes available to the news media after giving them to Starr.

The notes at issue were taken during conversations in 1995 and 1996 with Mrs. Clinton by Jane Sherburne, special counsel to the president, and Miriam Nemetz, associate counsel to the president.

Mrs. Clinton’s personal attorney, David Kendall, was also present during these conversations, and Starr has acknowledged that Kendall’s notes are protected by the doctrine of attorney-client privilege. But that doctrine, Starr argued, did not apply to the White House lawyers because they work for the public, not privately for Mrs. Clinton.

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In Starr’s view, these notes are important to his investigation because they will help him determine whether the first lady obstructed justice in connection with billing records from her former Little Rock law firm that turned up at the White House last year after being lost for several years.

Those billing records stemmed from an Arkansas real estate development called Castle Grande. Federal bank examiners have testified that transactions involving Castle Grande carried inflated prices designed to enhance the commissions of lawyers and savings and loan officials.

The notes also are believed to bear on questions that Starr has raised about the handling of White House files after the 1993 death of Mrs. Clinton’s former law partner, Deputy White House Counsel Vincent Foster. Sources say Starr suspects that White House officials, acting at Mrs. Clinton’s request, may have conspired to take documents related to Whitewater from Foster’s office.

Starr is known to believe that the notes in question will reflect statements by Mrs. Clinton that contradict testimony she supplied to a Whitewater grand jury. It was this same grand jury that last year issued the subpoena for these notes of the two White House attorneys.

When Starr’s deputy, John Bates, argued for access to these notes during a closed-door hearing before a U.S. appeals court in February, he said the notes were needed because Mrs. Clinton and others “could be indicted” for obstruction of justice. Although members of Starr’s staff cautioned that no such indictment was being prepared at that time, sources said that option has not yet been ruled out.

Attorneys for the White House and the independent counsel’s office declined to speculate on what other notes Starr might seek from the White House counsel as a result of the Supreme Court ruling. But it is no secret that he has on occasion considered bringing obstruction of justice charges against the president and other top White House officials, as well as against Mrs. Clinton.

Among other things, according to knowledgeable sources, Starr is investigating whether Clinton lied last year when he testified that he was not present at a meeting outside of Little Rock in the mid-1980s when his Whitewater investment partner, James B. McDougal, and another figure in the case arranged to make an illegal loan from a government-backed investment company.

Investigators also are known to have spent months looking into charges that Lindsey, McLarty and other White House aides from Arkansas tried to influence potential witnesses in the case.