Vincent Foster

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. -- An employee of the Rose Law Firm here has told a federal grand jury that in late January he was ordered to destroy a box of documents from the files of Vincent W. Foster Jr., the White House lawyer whose suicide is under investigation by an independent counsel.People familiar with the testimony of the employee, an in-house courier, said he had told the grand jury that he and a colleague had used a shredder in the firm's basement to destroy the papers. He testified that he had done so at the request of a clerk in the firm.

A shabby episode in the Clinton administration appears on its way to conclusion. Five employees summarily fired amid false accusations of mishandling travel office funds have now been cleared by the Justice Department. Two supervisors are still under investigation. However that probe turns out, the conclusion is inescapable that senior White House officials violated laws or long-standing and well-founded regulations and procedures.Thomas F. McLarty III, the White House chief of staff, has already said his mea culpas over the abrupt and groundless discharge of the travel office employees amid broad insinuations of corruption.

Give Philip Heymann and Janet Reno credit for one thing: By Washington standards they appear to have been amazingly forthright about the decision for him to leave the Justice Department as her highest-ranking assistant. It was clear in his official letter to President Clinton and in what Attorney General Reno and Deputy Attorney General Heymann said in a press conference yesterday that this was a resignation-before-dismissal.His answer to one reporter summed up what we assume to be the explanation for Ms. Reno's desire to dismiss Mr. Heymann:Q.

WHITE HOUSE Chief of Staff Bernard Nussbaum agreed on July 21, 1993, to allow law enforcement officials to search the office of his deputy, Vincent Foster Jr., who had committed suicide.On July 22, a series of telephone calls took place among Hillary Clinton, her chief of staff Margaret Williams, her friend Susan Thomases and Mr. Nussbaum. Mr. Nussbaum changed his mind and refused to allow the Justice Department to conduct the search.Last week, Ms. Williams and Ms. Thomases denied again under oath before the Senate Banking Committee that there was any connection.

PRESIDENT Clinton's abject retreat in releasing Whitewater documents makes one wonder why he tried to stonewall in the first place. All he achieved were invidious comparisons to Richard Nixon and Watergate.In at first refusing to turn over notes from a Whitewater legal defense conference involving both White House and Mr. Clinton's private lawyers, the president invoked "attorney-client privilege" -- apparently a 1995 version of Nixonian executive privilege. But when the predictable fallout occurred, the president folded.

ON ONE POINT, both sides in the case of Office of the President vs. Office of the Independent Counsel agree: The issue pitting President and Mrs. Clinton against counsel Kenneth Starr is unprecedented.It raises a major constitutional question -- whether, in the context of a grand jury probe, matters between the First Lady and government attorneys are confidential under client-lawyer privilege. The White House says yes. So did a federal district judge. Mr. Starr says no. So did a federal appeals court on a split 2-1 decision.

White House Chief of Staff Leon Panetta says the "message" of the firing of Surgeon General Joycelyn Elders for her remark that masturbation could be discussed in schools is, "Don't say things the president does not agree with." He also said Dr. Elders would have been fired for doing this "six months ago, eight months ago, nine months ago; I guarantee you."Maybe, but in the past nine months she has said, among other impolitic things, that she didn't think selling a small amount of cocaine was a crime, and for such she drew only private rebukes.

Hillary Rodham Clinton handled her first full-scale White House press conference with remarkable aplomb. When her husband spent nearly 40 minutes answering mostly Whitewater-related questions last month, we said he displayed "a master's touch." In her 66 minutes of a similar grilling and response last Friday, she was at least as good. She was responsive, showed little or no bitterness or resentfulness at the press' skepticism and answered most of the questions as fully as could be expected.

WASHINGTON -- The police chief who headed the investigation into the death of White House deputy counsel Vincent Foster has turned over his findings to the Whitewater special counsel, saying the documents should "put to rest" unfounded rumors that Mr. Foster was murdered, or his body tampered with after his death."

JUST WHEN Republicans thought they had the Clinton administration's neck neatly in place, waiting for the guillotine to fall in the FBI files case, along comes a tall-tales G-man named Gary Aldrich to scramble the plot. Mr. Aldrich's "expose" of alleged presidential trysts in a Washington hotel, as contained in a book issued by a right-wing publisher, was quickly repudiated by the conservative journalist he cited as a source.The Clinton entourage knows a distraction when it sees one, and it quickly sought to shift attention from its mass invasions of privacy to Mr. Aldrich's tabloid-style disclosures.