About to be indicted, an Arkansas judge offered a story of alleged wrongdoing by President Clinton, but federal prosecutors seemed to want no part of it.
The former municipal judge's lawyer testifies to the Senate Whitewater Committee Friday about trying to cut a deal for David Hale with the U.S. attorney's office in Little Rock in 1993.Attorney Randy Coleman told prosecutors his client had information that Arkansas' top politicians, including Bill Clinton when he was governor, had benefited from improper federally backed loans by Hale's lending company.
"It was my impression, based on the climate that I encountered in the U.S. attorney's office, that everyone was just kind of walking on eggshells on the thing," Coleman told Senate investigators this month.
"I am trying to get a dialogue started with these people and I am not getting anywhere," he recalled.
Coleman passed along a sketchy outline of what Hale had to offer and said the reaction was "sort of a `we'll-look-into-it' type situation."
Also testifying was U.S. Attorney Paula Casey, a Clinton appointee who is expected to defend her actions in refusing to enter plea bargaining talks with Coleman, who wanted Hale at most to plead guilty to a misdemeanor.
Former Associate Attorney General Webster Hubbell also is scheduled to testify Friday about what he knows of the Hale case.
Around the time he was trying to get a deal for Hale, Coleman telephoned the White House, telling associate counsel William Kennedy that they had clients with mutual problems, meaning Clinton and Hale.
Coleman has said he called the White House to see what would happen to the information he provided. Kennedy says he passed it along to Hubbell about a week after hearing from Coleman. Hub-bell - at the time the No. 3 official at the Justice Department - maintains he did nothing with the information. A month later, Hale was indicted and he went public with his allegations.
When career Justice Department lawyers took over the Hale case two months later, public interest in Hale's accusations was intense.
Eventually Whitewater prosecutors struck a deal, getting Hale to plead guilty to two felonies in exchange for the information that Hale had offered Casey's office six months earlier.