JIM LEHRER: And we get four perspectives now on the First Lady and her problems. Sen. Robert Bennett, Republican of Utah, is a member of the Senate Whitewater Committee, Ann Lewis is deputy manager of the Clinton-Gore Re-election Committee, Paul Gigot is a Wall Street Journal columnist and a regular analyst on this program. Elizabeth Drew is a Washington author and journalist. Senator Robert Bennett, do you believe Hillary Rodham Clinton is a liar?

SEN. ROBERT BENNETT, (R) Utah: I'm not ready to go that far at this point. I am troubled by the pattern that we've seen before the committee and the pattern that seems to be coming out now. I remember talking to Bernie Nussbaum.

JIM LEHRER: Who was then White House counsel.

SEN. ROBERT BENNETT: He was the White House counsel, and then he appeared before the committee, and he laid out very vigorously- Bernie is nothing if not vigorous- why he acted as he did following Vince Foster's tragic suicide. And I said to him, Mr. Nussbaum, you say you have done all the things you have done in order to protect executive prerogatives and privileges, but can't you see that if your motive was to cover up something that would be personally embarrassing to the Clintons, you would have acted in exactly the same way? And he responded to me by saying, yes, Senator, I guess that's true. If that had been my motive, I would have done exactly the same thing that I did, but Senator, nothing has come forward in the years of investigation that would be embarrassing to the White House, so that proves that's not my motive. What is happening now is we're seeing things come forward that are, indeed, embarrassing to the White House, embarrassing to the President, causing editorials of the kind you saw. "Detroit News" has one called the "Mean Spirited White House" and starts using words that we haven't heard for a long time. The real issue here, I'm quoting, the real issue here is that the White House seems to have misled congressional investigators about the First Lady's role. Worse, it was willing to use, quite willing to use the IRS, Justice Department, and FBI to get its way. Now, that's tough stuff. And that is coming out now, and when I put that against the pattern of my conversation with Mr. Nussbaum and the other witnesses before the committee, I find this very, very troubling, because they have always said there is nothing there- the President just said- that's come up dry. But clearly, we have evidence now that would indicate that at least somebody was wrong in the things they told the committee about the First Lady's role.

JIM LEHRER: Do you dispute that, Ann Lewis?

ANN LEWIS, Clinton-Gore Campaign: I not only dispute it, I wish the documents that came up last week had been available earlier, because, in fact, they, in one case confirm, in the other case are quite consistent with what the First Lady has said. Let us go directly to Travel- Travelgate, put the quotes on. Bill and Hillary Clinton come to Washington, come to the White House, and hear from other people, including members of the press, that there are questions about the financial management at the Travel Office. Hillary Clinton reacts as I would hope any First Lady would and expresses her concern. Things ought not go wrong at the White House. Now, in acting on that concern, she and others expressed that concern. Mack McLarty is then chief of staff. He hears this from the First Lady. He hears it from others, and a large accounting firm is brought in, they bring back and report and say there is financial mismanagement. Steps are taken. That is changed. The Travel Office now operates according to the highest standards and in some strange Washington reversal, the Clintons are now criticized for making the changes that should have been there.

JIM LEHRER: But the heart of the criticism, as you know, is that, that Mrs. Clinton's role was not properly disclosed at the Étime.

ANN LEWIS: And Mrs. Clinton has regularly said I've always said, I was concerned, I expressed that concern, as did others. Mack McLarty, who was chief of staff, had said, look, this was my decision, I was chief of staff, Mrs. Clinton did not direct that any personnel decisions be made. So what you have is Mrs. Clinton saying, Mack McLarty confirming that what she said is if there's a problem, the problem should be fixed. She did not say, and the memo that was found last week has no firsthand information that she ever said specifically how or what personnel steps should be taken.

JIM LEHRER: Well, so when the editorial writers that- who wrote the editorials that the Senator just quoted and the editorials that, that Charlayne quoted in our piece, say that Mrs. Clinton lied, then what are they basing that on?

ANN LEWIS: I've got to tell you, first, I find that language appalling. I think it goes beyond civil discourse. Those charges are reckless, and they are untrue. And as far as I can tell, they take Mrs. Clinton's statements, which have been consistent over a number of years, which are confirmed by Mack McLarty, who as chief of staff was responsible, contrast them with a draft memo that was never circulated and never sent, which lists third-hand impressions of what other people might have said, and, in fact, there might be misimpressions out there, we cannot correct for that, but contrast those two and it immediately jumps to the conclusion that Hillary Clinton must be wrong. I don't know how we got to the point at which the balance would shift that way.

JIM LEHRER: Yeah. Senator, is there a jump there that the assumption always is now that Hillary Clinton is the one who is wrong, rather than the memo writer, rather than the other person?

SEN. ROBERT BENNETT: Let me take you through the experience that I most directly connected with. On the committee, the issue of Mrs. Clinton's activities on behalf of Madison Guaranty came up and they came up in the form of a recap of billing hours and dollars on the part of the Rose Law Firm. And I questioned Web Hubble about that very directly, and-

JIM LEHRER: Now, Webster Hubble was-

SEN. ROBERT BENNETT: He was Hillary-

JIM LEHRER:-also a member of the Rose Law Firm.

SEN. ROBERT BENNETT: Right.

JIM LEHRER: Right.

SEN. ROBERT BENNETT: He was Hillary Clinton's law partner. He came to Washington with the Clintons, was associate attorney general, was forced to resign as associate attorney general, and unfortunately got himself in difficulty because of, of the way he handled his own billing practices and is currently in jail.

JIM LEHRER: Not related to his duties-

SEN. ROBERT BENNETT: Not relating- no-

JIM LEHRER: -in the Justice Department.

SEN. ROBERT BENNETT: His duties at the Rose Law Firm.

JIM LEHRER: This happened before he came here from Little Rock.

SEN. ROBERT BENNETT: That's right. Yes, sir.

JIM LEHRER: Okay.

SEN. ROBERT BENNETT: So I, I said to him, Mr. Hubble, it appears to me on the face of these billing recaps that Mrs. Clinton did, indeed, have far more to do with the Madison Guaranty legal representation than she has said. And, indeed, I quoted from her affidavit, a sworn affidavit in which she said-

JIM LEHRER: Sworn to whom, sworn to the committee?

SEN. ROBERT BENNETT: Sworn to- no, to the inspector general of the RTC- FDIC, I'm sorry.

JIM LEHRER: FDIC, right.

SEN. ROBERT BENNETT: Sworn to the inspector general of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, and also the press conference which we saw repeated on the-

JIM LEHRER: That excerpt from Charlayne's-

SEN. ROBERT BENNETT: Right.

JIM LEHRER: -piece, where she talked-

SEN. ROBERT BENNETT: I said, Mr. Hubble, I'm not a lawyer, I've never filled out a time sheet, but I've paid a lot of legal bills, and I think I can understand a legal bill, and I think I can read it. And as I read this recap, it's very clear to me that the billing to Madison says that Hillary Clinton is the No. 1 lawyer on this issue and spends more time on it than the young associate, Mr. Massey. Now, we come in the same week as this travel thing comes along, and, again, I'll quote, I'll quote from the editorial relating to this, saying that there is- there are new documents that have now come forward. I asked Mr. Hubble for the documents. He said they're not there. There are new documents that have come forward, and this comment I think is very, very interesting. The timing of the discovery is particularly suspect. On December 31st, the statute of limitations expired for civil suits that could have been brought under the Madison Guaranty case, also the Resolution Trust Corporation, which had-

JIM LEHRER: Let me-

SEN. ROBERT BENNETT: -supervised the thing, shut down.

JIM LEHRER: Sure. Let's get to Ann Lewis here on the-

SEN. ROBERT BENNETT: Give me, give me one more sentence.

JIM LEHRER: All right.

SEN. ROBERT BENNETT: It says, "For copies of the records to show up five days later is a strange coincidence, to put it mildly."

JIM LEHRER: To put it mildly?

ANN LEWIS: The good news is, I think, that the timing did not expire. The Rose Law Firm has entered into what lawyers call a tolling agreement, meaning they have agreed to keep open the time by which the Resolution Trust Corporation, if it chose to go back in on this issue, could do so, so that is simply specious. I know that there is a lot of misinformation out there. I'm glad, once again, for a chance to correct it. Second, on the issue of timing, the constan- the conspiracy theories in Washington would have us believe that Hillary Clinton having spent the last eight months writing a book on a subject that is closest to her heart, that of children, being about to go out on a book tour to talk about children, would simultaneously have orchestrated both the concealment and now the discovery of two documents that are guaranteed to divert attention from what she most wanted to talk about. I don't think anyone here thinks she's that erratic.

JIM LEHRER: What about the heart of the charge?

ANN LEWIS: All right. The heart of the charge on billing, good, is I believe those billing records, which I have now looked at, in fact, confirm what she said, the narrow, the limited nature of her work for Madison, 60 hours- a week- over 15 months, less than a hour a week, is not very much. Second, the limited nature of the work that the entire Rose Law Firm did, Rose was not the major law firm for Madison and at the end of the 15 months, they actually gave money back to Madison, which I happen to think is more newsworthy than some other issues, and third, on the issue of the comment that Éwe see on the press conference, this is very important. This is an example of an answer that was given to one very specific question about a securities matter in which she did supervise a young attorney is now being used as though she were talking about all her work for Madison. She never was. She was talking in that case about one very specific set of questions about did she supervise him, as she did on a securities case. She has never said she did not do other kinds of work but 60 hours, one hour a week for 15 months, that's a very limited scope of work.

JIM LEHRER: All right. Let's bring Paul and Elizabeth into this now. Paul, is the President- does the President have a serious problem as a result of this controversy?

PAUL GIGOT, Wall Street Journal: I think he does have a problem because I think you're seeing the evolution of the First Lady from a political asset, which she was in the '92 campaign, she's always been well liked by liberals in the party and women, she was somebody who helped energize them, and I think over the last three years you've seen that she has become something of a political liability. And the President, unlike a cabinet official, he can't fire the First Lady. They're joined at the hip politically. So anything that sticks to her is ultimately going to affect him, particularly given the fact that she has had a very prominent role in this administration, in this White House.

JIM LEHRER: And sticking to her is the issue, is it not, Elizabeth? We've just heard two views now of this, of these recent revelations, these recent- that's probably a strong word- that's a loaded word- these recent developments. Is, is- but she's been called a liar. We've heard the defense, et cetera. What's going to stick, or is it possible to know at this point?

ELIZABETH DREW, Author/Journalist: This is a story that never seems to end. And it will affect the President and it does affect the President, because character is his most vulnerable point. And they've worked very hard to get the focus off of that and onto the substantive achievements and the things that he cares about, but there seems to be a pattern in the Clinton presidency. He will be riding high and something comes along, whether it was the Arkansas troopers, and now these events. You cannot separate Mrs. Clinton from Mr. Clinton in these developments. I think even a lot of their friends are very sad at how these things were handled. In other words, I think that very questionable judgment was used on a number of cases, and oddly enough, people don't usually use this word, but naivety when they were rather new in Washington and whatever role she played in the Travel Office, and I thought David Watkins' memo was pretty explicit, we knew she'd played some role, but they said in the Travel Office report- now it's more explicit- that they didn't realize that to fire these people and then have the office taken over by Mr. Clinton's cousin, albeit a seventh cousin, and a Little ÉRock travel agency was not going to go down very well. I mean, Clinton, himself, realized this later. So the decision, whatever happened about removing the papers from Vince Foster's office, I've talked to criminal lawyers, apparently there's no obstruction of justice there. She was within her rights if she did it to have them removed.

SEN. ROBERT BENNETT: I agree with that, by the way, and that's one of the questions I have raised. Why are we going to such lengths to say she had nothing to do with the removal of those documents? I would expect that she would not only have them removed, she would clearly want to go through them. If, if my personal attorney had committed suicide and I had files in his office, I would want to know what those files were and what he was looking at. I, I compare it to the Sherlock Holmes' dog that didn't bark. Why didn't she look at the files? I've raised that question in the committee.

JIM LEHRER: And that has raised the question, though, of veracity, has it not, I mean-

ELIZABETH DREW: Well, again, also judgment in an emotional moment, having them removed, if she did, in that way, and then instead of saying, yes, they're my files, trying to-

JIM LEHRER: So what?

ELIZABETH DREW: If there is a cover-up, it is a cover-up of what they thought would be embarrassing, and in the course of that, they've gotten some other people, including her employee, in trouble.

JIM LEHRER: Well, that- I was going to ask both of you about this, because one of the things in Safire's column that has been- not the liar thing- is the thing that's been caugh- that's caught all the attention, but he said that she has also snared "her subordinates and friends in aweb of deceit."

PAUL GIGOT: Well, I think, in particular, he's talking about her friend, Susan Thomases, who was very clearly somebody who in the White House feared. I mean, she was thought to be, I think Elizabeth makes this clear in her book, she was somebody who had some clout in the White House through appointments and things like that, and, and also Mrs. Clinton's chief of staff, Margaret Williams, who had gone up to the Senate Whitewater Committee and have not recalled an awful lot to the point where their credibility is now being called into question, and even Sen. D'Amato is now talking about perhaps referring, looking into, having his counsel look into, or referring charges to the counsel of perjury.

ANN LEWIS: Jim, if I could-

JIM LEHRER: Sure.

ANN LEWIS: I hate to bring into these conversations about how, of course, she could have looked at the files, she might have looked at the files. Mrs. Clinton has said, I did not direct anyone to get those files. We were- we were grieving. We were mourning. We were stunned and saddened by the suicide of a friend. We were not thinking about documents at that moment. Again, I'm not sure why it is that a simple declaration of fact is resisted so hard and for so long, but she has been quite explicit on this on more than one occasion.

JIM LEHRER: Ann Lewis, what is your explanation of what's going on here? If this thing is so simple, there are simple explanations, nothing wrong has been done, why is this happening?

ANN LEWIS: Well, it's clear that nothing wrong has been done. I have rarely seen an investigation searching so hard for a problem, and it just goes on and on and on, and each month it seems that there is a new excuse for a new reason. I've said these charges have no verb because it is never clear to me exactly what it is Mrs. Clinton has said to have done.

JIM LEHRER: So if that's not- so what is going on?

ANN LEWIS: I think there are a number of elements at work here. And one of them, unfortunately, is that we are now entering into a political season and that a number of questions that have been raised and in many cases answered over the years are now being re-raised by a whole new cast of characters and by people who are eager to hold press conferences. I've watched this event over the last couple of months. I see Sen. D'Amato hold a press conference to demand that certain documents be introduced. Then he holds a press conference to complain when they are introduced, and I cannot help wondering if there isn't some partisan edge to this activity.

JIM LEHRER: SEN. ROBERT BENNETT, guilty as charged?

SEN. ROBERT BENNETT: You cannot divorce what's going on here from partisan politics. I, I wouldn't try to pretend otherwise. But the fact is that we haven't gotten to the bottom of this. We haven't come to a point where we say, oh, there's nothing else there. We get to the point where the witnesses tell us, that's it, there's nothing else, we issue a subpoena, and then lo andbehold, something else is, indeed, found, something else comes forward, and it always is something that we have asked for and been told either it's not there or you can't have it. And then when we get it, then we're told, oh, well, you didn't really want it anyway because there's nothing. I go back to the, the statement that I used at the very beginning of the hearings. The enduring mystery of this presidency is why President Clinton continues to take political damage, rather than simply tell us what's been going on.

JIM LEHRER: We have to leave it there. Thank you all four very much.

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