Independent Counsel

WASHINGTON -- White House aides refused to rule out yesterday that President Clinton will seek a taxpayer reimbursement of the $5 million he owes his attorneys for fees incurred during independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr's Whitewater investigation.Press accounts during the weekend quoted anonymous sources who maintained that the president and first lady were "seriously considering" filing for reimbursement, a statement that White House officials denied. They said the Clintons have not thought much about the issue, though they have not ruled it out.White House spokesman Joe Lockhart blamed "mischievous people" in the independent counsel's office for raising the issue long before the Clintons could apply for reimbursement.

Federal prosecutors testified yesterday that they warned Linda R. Tripp she might face wiretapping charges in Maryland, even as they sought to protect her with an immunity deal.As weeklong hearings in her criminal case opened in Howard County Circuit Court, Stephen Binhak, a former lawyer in Independent Counsel Kenneth W. Starr's office, said he and other federal prosecutors told Tripp "the state of Maryland may be able to indict her."But by pursuing charges in a case involving an immunity deal, Maryland authorities would have a "difficult" time supporting their case, he said.

State prosecutors have subpoenaed former members of the independent counsel's office to testify in hearings about their involvement in the immunity deal given to Linda R. Tripp of Columbia.Acting on a request from prosecutors, Howard County Circuit Judge Diane O. Leasure yesterday signed and certified the subpoenas asking four lawyers and one investigator from former independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr's office to appear. The next hearing date is scheduled Dec. 13.Those being called are Jackie M. Bennett Jr., Stephen Binhak, Bruce Udolf, Steve Irons and Stephen Bates.

WASHINGTON -- Former Sen. John C. Danforth pledged yesterday to ask "the dark questions" about the deadly standoff at Waco and to determine the truth about two broad, potentially explosive issues: Did federal officials kill people at the Branch Davidian compound, and was there a cover-up afterward?Danforth officially took the helm of an independent investigation of the Texas fiasco, assuming the mantle of "special counsel," the first such investigator since the Watergate-era law that created the independent counsel was allowed to lapse in June.

KENNETH Starr should personally write or supervise the final report that his Office of Independent Counsel is required to produce before it shuts down.For five years, one of its obvious targets has been Hillary Rodham Clinton, against whom it has brought no charges. Whatever it does or says about her -- or refrains from doing or saying -- will figure in the 2000 Senate race in New York. She is almost certain to be the Democratic nominee.Mr. Starr cannot honorably go this far and then hand it over to a caretaker or successor, whatever his personal or professional desires.

WASHINGTON -- The usually harmonious federal court that selects independent prosecutors got into a public spat yesterday over when to stop the investigation of President Clinton and Hillary Rodham Clinton.The dispute ended with a 2-1 vote allowing independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr's inquiry to continue.While the ruling left the investigation where it was -- with Starr having no pending cases but reportedly still not finished -- it produced a sharp exchange among the three judges on the panel of the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

WASHINGTON -- Kenneth W. Starr, the Whitewater independent counsel, said yesterday that he planned to conclude his long-running investigation of President Clinton and Hillary Rodham Clinton before the November 2000 elections by filing a final report.The timing of such a report could complicate Mrs. Clinton's likely campaign for a Senate seat from New York, but Starr said his office's report would be a dispassionate recitation of the facts and "would not engage in characterization.""We are trying to move forward very, very rapidly in that respect, and we are doing so," Starr told reporters after addressing a group of lawyers at the American Bar Association convention in Atlanta.

IT WAS always clear that independent counsel Kenneth Starr went after Webster Hubbell as a means to incriminate Hillary Rodham Clinton. When he was dissatisfied with Mr. Hubbell's memory after the plea bargain in 1994, Mr. Starr went after him again.The trial that was made unnecessary yesterday with Mr. Hub- bell's guilty plea to one felony and one misdemeanor was to have been about Mrs. Clinton. By description ("the billing partner") rather than name, she was mentioned in the indictment three dozen times.

WASHINGTON -- Webster L. Hubbell has reached a deal in which he will plead guilty to a felony charge of lying about the role he and Hillary Rodham Clinton played in a questionable land deal, political and legal sources said yesterday.In exchange for the plea, Whitewater independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr will recommend that Hubbell serve no time behind bars for the felony, the sources said.The plea agreement will likely avert a trial, scheduled for August, that was likely to explore Clinton's conduct as a lawyer in the land deal, which federal regulators characterized as a sham and which led to the collapse of a savings and loan institution.

A federal judge has directed independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr to give state prosecutors tape recordings Linda R. Tripp made of her conversations with Monica S. Lewinsky, removing a major obstacle to the prosecution of Tripp on wiretapping charges.The order came recently in response to a request for the tapes from State Prosecutor Stephen Montanarelli, sources familiar with the case said. His investigation of the longtime Columbia resident has been frustrated by his inability to obtain at least copies of the tapes, which Tripp provided to Starr after he granted her immunity in his investigation of President Clinton.