While the White House takes new steps to stave off a politically risky court battle over Whitewater, Senate investigators are questioning whether billing records detailing Hillary Rodham Clinton's Arkansas legal work may have disappeared.
Senate Whitewater Committee Republicans say the 1992 notes of one of Hillary Clinton's closest friends suggest that in the 1980s the first lady may have done more work than she has acknowledged as a private lawyer for the Madison Guaranty S&L in Arkansas that is at the center of the Whitewater controversy.And the notes by New York lawyer Susan Thomases raise the possibility that the billing records that could shed light on the matter existed three years ago at the Rose Law Firm in Little Rock, Ark. - but can't be found by Senate investigators now.
"We have looked high and low . . . and we don't have any time sheets for Mrs. Clinton, so they seem to have disappeared," Michael Chert-off, the committee's Republican counsel, disclosed Monday.
David Kendall, the Clintons' personal attorney, said he believed Thomases' notes were "perfectly consistent" with the first lady's account of her work, saying Hillary Clinton could have billed the hours as the senior partner responsible for the work without actually doing the work.
As for the possibility that records disappeared, Kendall added: "Any records detailing the work would have been kept by Rose or Madison and not Mrs. Clinton."
The revelation came as the White House began negotiating on another front with Whitewater prosecutors to see if it could find a way to turn over to the Senate committee disputed notes taken by a former presidential aide.
The last-ditch effort came as the Senate prepares Wednesday to vote on a request from the committee to authorize a federal court challenge to President Clinton's refusal to turn over the notes.
Clinton claims the notes taken by former White House aide William Kennedy during a Nov. 5, 1993, meeting on Whitewater between the president's private lawyers and White House aides are protected by attorney-client privilege.
The Senate panel believes it is entitled to the notes as part of its probe into whether presidential aides tried to derail two White-water-related criminal investigations in 1993.
On Monday, the White House backed away from several of its earlier conditions for turning over the notes and also opened negotiations designed to avoid a politically damaging court battle.
The White House said it no longer would insist that the Senate panel agree that the Nov. 5 meeting was privileged.