Ex-Banker Arrives At Starr Hearing
A former bank president appeared at the federal courthouse where Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr's grand jury is meeting, but wouldn't say if he would speak to the panel.
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Neal Ainley was the star witness in the only Whitewater case that Starr lost. Ainley was placed on probation after admitting he lied on a U.S. Treasury form while he was president of the Perry County Bank in Arkansas.
The Whitewater panel is due to expire May 7. Starr cannot ask for a longer term for the panel—he already has received two six-month extensions—and has not requested that a new grand jury be empaneled.
The previous Little Rock panel indicted Ainley's bosses and also then-Gov. Jim Guy Tucker, as well as President Clinton's former business partners, James and Susan McDougal.
In 1996, Ainley admitted not reporting large cash withdrawals from his bank by Bill Clinton's 1990 gubernatorial campaign. In a 1996 trial, he testified against bank owners Herby Branscum Jr. and Robert Hill, who were accused of plotting to conceal cash transactions and illegally using bank funds to contribute to Mr. Clinton's campaign.
While the Whitewater grand jury probes deeper into an alleged presidential affair and cover-up, news organizations are asking an appellate court for access to proceedings and records related to the Monica Lewinsky investigation.
An emergency appeal by a dozen media companies, set for argument Wednesday, seeks to open hearings on legal challenges to independent counsel Kenneth Starr's investigation. The news organizations said a lower court's denial of access makes "a mockery of the First Amendment."
While the issue is fought out in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, the grand jury is to meet in the same courthouse.
Chief U.S. District Judge Norma Holloway Johnson on March 18 denied the news media's request for access to proceedings and documents; notice of upcoming hearings, with an opportunity to argue against closing them; and transcripts of hearings that were conducted behind closed doors.
While the grand jury operates in secret, the media companies said hearings on related issues should be public. These issues have included Clinton's invocation of executive privilege; his contention that prosecutors leaked secret grand jury material to the media; and objections by Lewinsky's first lawyer to a subpoena for his records.
In a series of related orders, she concluded that "secrecy is essential to ensure the proper functioning of the grand jury," and refused to adopt "extraordinary procedures" that risked disclosing ongoing grand jury matters.
"The First Amendment does not guarantee the press a constitutional right of special access to information not available to the public generally," she said.
After testifying before the grand jury Tuesday, former White House volunteer Harolyn Cardozo said she was questioned about Kathleen Willey, a onetime colleague in the social office. Willey has publicly accused President Clinton of making an unwanted sexual advance toward her near the Oval Office in November 1993.
Willey described the incident in deposition testimony in the now-dismissed Paula Jones case, but Clinton gave his own deposition denying her accusations.
Janis Kearney, who keeps official White House records and writes a daily diary spiced with her observations, also testified but would not comment afterwards.
By Larry Margasak.
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