In another instance of aides aggressively gathering sensitive information on Whitewater, a White House lawyer early in the affair obtained confidential documents about a Little Rock judge who had accused President Clinton of wrongdoing.
The White House hastily returned the documents when the Justice Department vigorously objected and opened a criminal investigation into what White House advisers did with the information, according to FBI and Justice Department documents reviewed by The Associated Press.For five or six days in mid-November 1993, then-Associate White House Counsel Neil Eggleston had a report that outlined a series of defaulted federally backed loans made by indicted ex-judge David Hale, who was emerging as a central figure in Whitewater.
At the time, Hale was charging publicly that he had been pressured in 1986 by Clinton, then the Arkansas governor, to make an improper $300,000 loan to the Clintons' Whitewater partners. The loan, guaranteed by the Small Business Administration, is one of the focal points of Whitewater prosecutor Kenneth Starr's investigation.
According to internal FBI and Justice Department documents, the SBA's top attorneys gave the confidential material to the White House on Nov. 16 or Nov. 17, 1993, without telling anyone at the law enforcement agencies.
When told of the transfer a day or two after it occurred, the Justice Department told Eggleston he must return the documents to the SBA. When he returned the material, Eggleston said he had copied the report detailing Hale's various loans but insisted he had "shredded" the copy when the Justice Department demanded the docu-ments be sent back.
Eggleston told an SBA attorney that "he did not want to do anything inappropriate," according to a memo written by John Arter-bury, deputy chief of the Justice Department's fraud section. "He had sought the documents because he wanted to track what was going on between the SBA and the Hill and did not want to be surprised by leaks from the Hill."
Three people familiar with the matter, including a White House source, said Sunday that Eggleston obtained the documents after being told by his boss, counsel Bernard Nussbaum, to look into the fact that the SBA was about to turn over material on Hale's company to Congress. All three sources spoke on condition of anonymity.
"This is a classic case of no harm, no foul play," White House spokesman Mark Fabiani said Sunday. "The Department of Justice investigation of the SBA matter was pursued vigorously and successfully and the documents, which had already been turned over to Congress, were returned as soon as the Justice Department objections were made known."
Eggleston's actions mark the third known time the White House has obtained confidential information from an ongoing investigation of Whitewater.