House Aides

WASHINGTON -- President Clinton told the grand jury investigating his relationship with Monica Lewinsky that he was troubled by her transfer out of the White House and discussed bringing her back last summer, according to people familiar with his testimony.Clinton testified Aug. 17 that he spoke about his worries over Lewinsky's situation with Marsha Scott, a senior aide in the White House personnel office and a friend of his since high school, they said.That discussion, in July 1997, is the first indication that Clinton took an interest in returning Lewinsky, a former intern, to the White House from the public affairs job at the Pentagon, where she was transferred against her wishes in April 1996.

One housing expert compares the current boom in homeownership to the title of a movie nominated for an Oscar as best picture."This is as good as it gets," said Nicolas Restinas, director of the Joint Center for Housing Studies at Harvard University, which last week released its study: "The State of the Nation's Housing: '98."According to the study, the national homeownership rate has hit an all-time high of 65.7 percent with the number of homeowners skyrocketing in the past three years by more than 4 million households.

It's been a long, tough road back for Daisy Barney.Out of work and on welfare for six years after surgery and chemotherapy for breast cancer, the Baltimore County grandmother got training and a job through the county's welfare-to-work program.And on Thursday, the 57-year-old day care worker is to take another major step toward independence: the purchase of her own home, made possible through a federally sponsored program that is helping 2,200 people statewide gain self-sufficiency."I didn't expect I could ever get one," said Barney of the house, a modest, brick Middle River rowhouse she plans to live in with the two grandchildren she is raising.

Several weeks ago, I mentioned a new program to help Baltimore City employees purchase homes in three city neighborhoods. The city's "Tri-Neighborhood Program" provides financing benefits to full-time city employees to purchase homes in Ashburton, East Arlington and Calloway-Garrison.Here are the benefits:1. Up to a $5,000 grant to be applied toward closing costs, minor rehabilitation or to reduce the first-mortgage principal amount. The buyer signs a 10-year, no-interest note for the grant, which is reduced by 10 percent per year.

WASHINGTON -- In a potentially damaging loss for President Clinton's legal defense in the White House sex scandal, a federal judge has rejected the argument that two Clinton aides do not have to answer some questions put to them before a grand jury.U.S. District Judge Norma Holloway Johnson, in a ruling mostly shrouded in secrecy, decided yesterday that the doctrine of "executive privilege" does not shield two White House advisers' discussions about how to deal with the Monica Lewinsky investigation scandal, a legal source reported.

WASHINGTON -- Linda R. Tripp vowed to get even with "everybody in this place" after she was transferred out of the White House, according to former White House aide Kathleen Willey.In her CBS "60 Minutes" interview last night, in which she told of being groped by Clinton in November 1993, Willey also discussed Tripp, the woman who jump-started the current sex scandal by bringing tape-recorded conversations with Monica Lewinsky to independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr.The day that Willey emerged from her alleged encounter with Clinton, it was Tripp whom she ran into.

WASHINGTON - In July 1995, Linda R. Tripp was questioned by lawyers for the Senate Whitewater committee about her colleagues in the White House counsel's office. Asked if one of her fellow executive assistants was competent, Tripp responded sharply:"She was not."Transcripts from her sessions with Senate investigators and interviews with friends and colleagues suggest that Tripp was unhappy with the Clinton administration from the start, a factor that could have contributed to her decision to collect and turn over incriminating evidence about the president she served, and others, to independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr.

WASHINGTON -- One of the White House aides President Clinton most enjoys is Douglas Sosnik, who travels with Clinton on Air Force One, where they do everything from play cards to plot political strategy.It's a heady life for a 41-year-old Democratic operative, but the demands of Sosnik's job are relentless.So, just before Christmas, he told Clinton it was time for him to leave.That was last Christmas.Today Sosnik is still considering how to leave a job he figures is the best he'll ever have.

WASHINGTON -- President Clinton complained yesterday that the FBI had decided to keep him in the dark in June about its suspicions that China was trying to influence the 1996 U.S. elections -- an assertion challenged hours later in a statement by the FBI.The FBI version was, in turn, immediately challenged at the White House, where it was characterized as "in error."The extraordinary public spat between the White House and one of the administration's own agencies escalated the controversy over Democratic fund-raising activity in the 1996 campaign and China's possible role in funneling money to Clinton and his party.

WASHINGTON -- President Clinton defended yesterday the propriety of White House-based fund-raising methods as "entirely appropriate." But the controversy over invitations to the Lincoln Bedroom and White House fund-raising "coffees" continued to swirl.On Capitol Hill, six Republicans pushed a measure that would bar the use of the White House and other executive branch buildings to reward political donors."Our national monuments and public buildings belong to the taxpayers of the United States and not to any political party or individual," said Rep. Jon D. Fox, a Pennsylvania Republican.