MARGARET WARNER: The surrendering of the notes today defused a possible constitutional confrontation between Congress and the White House, the stand-off that was headed for the courts. For more on what's in the documents, we're joined now by Terry Lemons. He covers Congress for the "Little Rock, Arkansas Democrat Gazette." Welcome, Terry.

TERRY LEMONS: Thank you.

MARGARET WARNER: Let's start by setting the scene. Tell us what this meeting was about according to the White House and what the Republicans suspect or charge might have been going on.

MR. LEMONS: Well, you have two different views here. The White House contends that this meeting was really kind of a transition point. The White House lawyers and aides who'd been watching the Whitewater case handed off the case to Clinton's personal attorneys. The White House says nothing improper happened with this. The Republicans say confidential legal information may have been handed over from the White House to Clinton's attorneys.

MARGARET WARNER: You mean, confidential information from the government investigation?

MR. LEMONS: That's right.

MARGARET WARNER: All right. Now, a spokesman for the White House said today that these note, this 13-page document, proves that they're right, that no confidential information was improperly conveyed. Do you think so?

MR. LEMONS: I think that's really a big issue that's going to be discussed before the Senate Whitewater Committee in coming weeks. The White House points to like an inch thick stack of documents that they say shows that the information discussed at this meeting was publicly available through news reports and other sources. The Republicans aren't so sure.

MARGARET WARNER: Let's go to a couple of the items that the Republicans are already pointing out too, and maybe you could just explain the significance for us. Right at the top of the first page it seems to list four tasks or objectives, it's not clear, and one line says, try to find out what's going on in investigation. What's that about?

MR. LEMONS: That's really the crux of what this whole meeting is about and what the Republicans are interested in. The Republicans really think that some of this confidential material that the White House gathered from federal investigators was handed off at this meeting, and they think this was a damage control meeting where White House and Clinton attorneys tried to figure out what they could do to control this case.

MARGARET WARNER: And just explain, would it have been illegal for the White House to have been collecting this information internally about the investigation, or was it handing off the information that would have been illegal if they had?

MR. LEMONS: Well, Republicans contend that the White House was in a position to get information that general members of the public couldn't get, and that's really what their questions center on.

MARGARET WARNER: All right. Let's look at a second one, and it's at the bottom of the first page, and it basically just points out that on July 20th of '93 two things occurred the same day. The first is that the FBI issued a subpoena and took the records of a municipal judge in Arkansas named David Hale. Secondly, that is the day that Deputy White House Counsel Vince Foster killed himself. How do you think that is going to be read, and what do you think is the significance of that, or the link?

MR. LEMONS: That's really one of the most interesting items that have emerged out of these notes today. These two events have been examined closely by Whitewater officials, Whitewater investigators for quite some time. Basically, David Hale is the man who has accused President Clinton, as well as Arkansas Jim Guy Tucker of pressuring them to make bad loans. This is all tied--

MARGARET WARNER: To the McDougals?

MR. LEMONS: To the McDougals, right.

MARGARET WARNER: Clinton's partners in Whitewater. The President's partners in Whitewater.

MR. LEMONS: Hale is really the key person who's making accusations against President Clinton. On July 20, 1993, is a crucial date. Subpoenas were issued to search Hale's office. That same day, Foster's body was found in a Virginia park. Now, the significance of the notes today is that these two events have been linked up in a White House-related documented, and that's really going to feel a lot of talk about whether Whitewater was on Vince Foster's mind.

MARGARET WARNER: The final one that looked intriguing, and Sen. D'Amato, himself, the Republican Senator who's heading this investigation, pointed this out. It says, "Vacuum Rose law files."

MR. LEMONS: That is something the Committee is going to spend a lot of time looking at. In recent weeks, the Whitewater Committee has spent a lot of time looking at what the White House did in terms of Hillary Clinton's work with Madison Guarantee, that's the S&L that Jim McDougal, the Whitewater partner, was involved with. The Republicans think this vacuuming reference is a signal that White House folks were in there cleaning up records so that it could control the bad news that was in there.

MARGARET WARNER: Because the accusation is that while Bill Clinton was governor and she was a lawyer in this private firm that she represented Madison, is that right, which had some problems with state regulators.

MR. LEMONS: Right.

MARGARET WARNER: That's sort of a conflict of interest issue?

MR. LEMONS: Right. That's the crux of it.

MARGARET WARNER: Well, where do you think the congressional probe goes from here?

MR. LEMONS: Well, I think the notes that came out today really could breathe some new life into the Senate Committee's investigation. Frankly, a couple of weeks ago, they were really getting kind of bogged down in details. They were really not having much media coverage. The number of reporters covering it had dropped off. Since the Kennedy notes have surfaced, there's been a real rejuvenation of interest, and this is really kind of a treasure trove for the Republicans to go and look for new Whitewater leads.

MARGARET WARNER: And do you think they'll have Kennedy, the lawyer who originally took these notes, bring him back to testify now?

MR. LEMONS: Yeah. I think they'll bring him back, if not next week, just after the first of the year.

MARGARET WARNER: And will he now have to testify? He, of course, refused earlier to go into these notes, but now that they've been released, is it just a given that he will have to explain them if asked?

MR. LEMONS: It's the assumption that he will be willing to talk about them at least on a limited degree, but I'm sure that Sen. D'Amato and the Republicans are going to do everything they can to get Bill Kennedy to talk about what he meant about these notes. And, frankly, it may be in his interest because some of these notes are a little vague and open to interpretation.

MARGARET WARNER: Well, thanks, Terry, very much. Very helpful.

MR. LEMONS: Thank you.

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