White House Officials Dispute 'Executive Privilege' Appeal
WASHINGTON (AllPolitics, May 8) -- For President Clinton and his aides, the comparison between Whitewater and Watergate is a sore subject.
"I think some of you sometimes forget that there has been no one accused of any crimes in most of the matters connected to any of the issues that we're talking about here," says White House Press Secretary Mike McCurry. "They don't include the attorney general, senior White House aides, and a whole litany of people who were accused of very serious high crimes and misdemeanors."
But the similarities between the two cases are on the minds of Clinton advisers in deciding whether to appeal a judge's decision forcing top White House aides to testify before Independent Counsel Ken Starr's grand jury.
In assessing the situation, Clinton has been relying on a small group of legal advisers, including his private attorneys, David Kendall and Mickey Kantor; White House counsel Charles Ruff; deputy counsel Bruce Lindsey; deputy chief of staff John Podesta; and according to sources, the first lady. Aides say the president is deliberately keeping his political advisers out of discussion, but several of them are concerned an appeal would reinforce the impression that the president is hiding something.
White House aides are also worried that a Supreme Court case named "United States versus William Jefferson Clinton" would be reminiscent of "United States versus Richard Milhous Nixon," the case that preceded Nixon's resignation.
Meanwhile, Republicans continue to attack the president on this issue.
House majority whip Tom DeLay (R-Texas) attacked Clinton's use of executive privilege and says he plans to introduce legislation next week that will put strong limits on presidential use of the privilege.
"Now my legislation is pretty simple," he said. "It has a reporting requirement. Any time the president decided to invoke executive privilege he must make a formal report to Congress. Now this would mean that Congress, the press and the general public would be aware of executive privilege claims, instead of wondering like they do now."
"My legislation also says that there's no Secret Service privilege for criminal proceedings involving the president's conduct," he said.
White House aides concede an appeal to the executive privilege decision is a long-shot and it would stretch out Starr's investigation which could be a legal plus but a political minus.
CNN's Wolf Blitzer and Ann Curley and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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