With the Senate about to debate taking President Clinton to court, the White House on Wednesday dropped another of its conditions for turning over disputed Whitewater notes, leaving a single roadblock to the release of the documents.
The White House asked Sen. Alfonse D'Amato, chairman of the Senate Whitewater Committee, to help it secure an agreement with House Republicans to ensure they would recognize Clinton was not waiving his attorney-client privilege if he turned over the notes.Whitewater prosecutors and the Senate panel, which both have subpoenaed the notes, have accepted those terms. But key House Republicans rejected the offer Tuesday.
"We need to work together to achieve that result," White House lawyer Jane Sherburne wrote D'Amato in a last-minute letter as the Senate prepared to start debate on a request by the Whitewater Committee to authorize a court challenge to Clinton's refusal to turn over the notes unconditionally.
In return, the White House agreed to drop a second condition blocking release of the notes, saying it would no longer insist that senators would have to acknowledge Clinton has asserted a "reasonable claim of privilege" before getting the notes.
On Tuesday the White House reached an important agreement with Whitewater independent counsel Kenneth Starr, but it was not enough to break the impasse over the notes taken by a former presidential aide during a November 1993 meeting.
Presidential aides said they secured a "no-waiver" agreement with Starr under which the prosecutor acknowledges that if Clinton releases the notes, he would not be giving up his legal right to claim that other Whitewater communications with his lawyers are confidential.