Starr Looking At Payments To Hubbell - Mar. 5, 1997

White House Knew Clinton Supporters Were Hiring Hubbell

By Wolf Blitzer/CNN

WASHINGTON (AllPolitics, March 11) -- President Clinton was aware two political supporters had hired his close friend, former Associate Attorney General Webster Hubbell, after Hubbell was forced to resign from the Justice Department amid a criminal investigation, the White House said.

But White House special counsel Lanny Davis told CNN that the president "never asked or encouraged anyone to hire Hubbell."

The two Texas businessmen -- Truman Arnold, a former finance chairman of the Democratic National Committee, and Bernard Rapoport, a close political ally of the president's since the 1972 George McGovern presidential campaign -- separately retained Hubbell, according to Davis.

The president does not remember all the details, including whether he learned of the Hubbell hiring from "Arnold or Rapoport or both," Davis said.

But "the president never asked or suggested that anyone hire Webb Hubbell," White House spokesman Lanny Davis said in a statement.

A search of White House records shows Rapoport was an overnight White House guest in April 1994. This was around the time he paid $18,000 to Hubbell for a six-month association with Rapoport's Waco, Texas, insurance company, according to The Associated Press.

Davis insisted the president never knew that Hubbell also had been hired by the Riady family's Lippo Group in Indonesia until that was reported in the news media. That was after Hubbell was convicted of defrauding his Little Rock law firm.

Whitewater Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr has been attempting to win Hubbell's cooperation in his ongoing investigation.

Hubbell has denied allegations that he may have been hired by various groups aligned with the president or the Democratic party in order to keep him quiet.