Hillary Rodham Clinton dismissed Whitewater Thursday as a “never-ending fictional conspiracy that honest-to-goodness reminds me of some people’s obsession with UFOs and the Hale-Bopp comet some days.”
She denied that White House aides had solicited jobs for her old friend and law partner Webster Hubbell, a central figure in the Whitewater investigation, to keep him quiet.
“There isn’t anything to be hushed up about that,” Mrs. Clinton said in the first of two broadcast interviews in which she sounded tired but philosophical–even resigned–whenever the conversation turned to charges that have piled up against her and President Clinton.
The president said Thursday he accepted the apology Hubbell made Sunday on the CBS-TV’s “60 Minutes” program for having deceived him and his wife about overbilling his old law firm in Little Rock, Ark.
Speaking to reporters at the start of the first Cabinet meeting of his second term, Clinton said: “Let me remind you that everybody pays in life. Somehow we all wind up paying for whatever we do, and he paid a very high price. And he’s apologized, and I accept his apology.”
But Mrs. Clinton sounded less forgiving. She expressed astonishment that her friend of 20 years would mislead her, and pointed out that he had, in effect, stolen from her when he overbilled the firm where they were partners.
“The money he went to prison for having misused was partly my money,” she said in the first interview, Thursday morning on public radio station WAMU. “I feel particularly bad about this because I believed him absolutely. . . . I had a lot of confidence and trust in him. I felt he would not look me in the eye and mislead me.”
Mrs. Clinton said she did not have “any personal bad feelings about this.” She would like to meet with Hubbell, she said, but cannot do so now “because if I see him the conspiracy buffs would go wild.”
Hubbell, who resigned as associate attorney general in March 1994 to fight charges that he had overbilled his law firm, has said he deceived the Clintons about his legal troubles. He pleaded guilty to tax and fraud charges in December 1994.
In the radio interview, Mrs. Clinton repeatedly said White House aides had acted out of compassion for Hubbell and his family in helping him find work after he resigned.
When told later of his wife’s remark comparing the Whitewater case to a fascination with extraterrestrial objects, Clinton threw back his head and roared with laughter. “Did she say that?” he asked. “That’s pretty good.”
Asked whether he agreed with Mrs. Clinton, the president said, “Well, if I didn’t, I wouldn’t disagree with her in public.”
Thirty-nine members of the “Heaven’s Gate” cult killed themselves in California last month in hopes of hitching a ride on a spaceship they believed was trailing the Hale-Bopp comet.
On the radio program and in an afternoon interview on Cable News Network, Mrs. Clinton first addressed questions about her and daughter Chelsea’s recent trip to Africa.
Then she was asked whether she regretted creating an impression that the White House was for sale by inviting donors to spend the night there.
“Well, of course I regret that anyone would draw that conclusion or have that feeling,” she responded, “because it certainly was nothing that ever crossed our minds.”
In the morning radio interview, Mrs. Clinton tried to ease the concerns of a caller who said that although he admired much of Mrs. Clinton’s work, reports about the campaign finance troubles made it “hard to maintain a real faith in this administration.”
“Well,” Mrs. Clinton answered, “my response is a great deal of concern and regret that these matters are such that people like yourself have your confidence and faith in our government, and particularly in our president and vice president, shaken, and I do take it very seriously.”
