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Hubbell's Prison Calls To Clinton Aides On Tape

WASHINGTON (AllPolitics, May 23) -- Even from prison, Webster Hubbell kept in touch by telephone with his friends in the Clinton administration, and now Whitewater prosecutors have tapes of the conversations.

Then-administration official Mickey Kantor and current or former White House aides Marcia Scott, John Emerson and David Watkins are among the voices heard on Hubbell's tape-recorded phone calls from prison, said lawyers and others familiar with the tapes.

Congressional investigators also have subpoenaed the tape recordings from 1995 and 1996.

The federal prison system tape-records inmate phone calls. Copies of the recordings were obtained from the Bureau of Prisons in the past month by investigators for Whitewater prosecutor Kenneth Starr.

Participants in the conversations on one or two occasions denounced the Whitewater prosecutors who sent Hubbell, a former associate attorney general, to prison.

In some of the 1996 calls, there were references to what Hubbell might do once he got out of prison. He is working for a nonprofit group in Alexandria, Virginia, an arrangement worked out for him with help from his lawyer, John Nields.

The phone calls are of interest because prosecutors are focusing on a reported $400,000 to $500,000 paid to Hubbell by friends and supporters of President Bill Clinton and his wife, Hillary, before he went to prison. Prosecutors are trying to determine whether the financial assistance was designed to discourage Hubbell from cooperating with authorities investigating the Clintons.

Kantor, a former commerce secretary and U.S. trade representative, said Friday that "Webb called me a few times from prison, always at home" and "the calls are strictly of a personal nature."

The content of the phone calls is largely innocuous from a criminal investigative standpoint, said another person who was present during some of the calls.

Many of Hubbell's prison phone calls were on weekends to Washington-area homes of Clinton aides who had invited Hubbell's wife, Suzy, over for the afternoon, said the sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Scott, deputy assistant to the president and chief of staff of presidential personnel, is a longtime friend of Hubbell. At the time of Hubbell's prison phone calls, Watkins was out of the government and Emerson was deputy assistant to the president and deputy director of intergovernmental affairs.

A draft memo by Watkins that surfaced in 1996 said Mrs. Clinton was the prime mover in a 1993 purge of the White House travel office staff. She has denied she was behind the firings. The conflicting accounts are under investigation by the Whitewater prosecutor's office.

A lawyer for Watkins, John Dougherty, declined to comment.

Scott's lawyer, Stuart Pierson, said, "I am appalled that such grand jury information is not being protected by the independent counsel. The federal criminal rules enforce grand jury secrecy with the contempt power.

"It would not be a surprise that she (Scott) and Webb talked by telephone," Pierson added.