Hubbell Case: A Blow To Starr

By CBSNews.com staff CBSNews.com staff

July 2, 1998 / 11:19 AM EDT / CBS

Handed a major legal defeat with the dismissal of charges against Whitewater figure Webster Hubbell, special prosecutor Kenneth Starr has summoned key witness Linda Tripp back to the grand jury.

Tripp is giving testimony for a second day Thursday, just as new information is emerging about her efforts to cut off her friendship with Monica Lewinsky.

"She is doing extremely well; if anything, she is a bit more upbeat" than she was on her first day of testimony, said Philip Coughter, a Tripp spokesman. Coughter accompanied Tripp to the third floor of the courthouse as she was summoned to testify and spoke briefly with reporters late in the morning.

CBS News Correspondent Phil Jones reports Tripp's effort will be to convince members of the Whitewater grand jury that she did not try to entrap Lewinsky in the telephone conversations she recorded. In them, Lewinsky allegedly talked about a sexual affair with President Clinton.

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Jones reports that it is difficult to say when Tripp's testimony might end. Her lawyer indicated Wednesday it would probably go into next week.

On Wednesday, a source close to Tripp said she tried several times in 1997 to break off her friendship with Lewinsky after the former White House intern called and visited incessantly to discuss what Lewinsky described as a sexual affair with President Clinton.

"Please give me a break; I can't take this," Tripp wrote in an email to Lewinsky on Oct. 27, 1997, according to the source. On Nov. 24 that year, Tripp wrote in another email: "The information alone is a heavy burden, one I did not ask for." Both communications are in Starr's possession.

The disclosure comes as Tripp's strategists are trying to dispel perceptions that she manipulated Lewinsky and recorded some of their conversations either for financial gain or to cause political embarrassment to President Clinton.

Judy Smith, a spokeswoman for Lewinsky, had little to say about the information. "Monica continues to have no comment on these public allegations that have and are being made," she said. "This in no way implies a confirmation of these allegations."

In the same courthouse where Tripp was testifying, U.S. District Judge James Robertson dismissed the Hubbell indictment with harsh language Wednesday.

Webster Hubbell

He concluded that Starr's office ignored Hubbell's Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination. Th prosecutor went on "a quintessential fishing expedition" to build the indictment from business documents Hubbell provided prosecutors under a grant of limited immunity from prosecution, the judge found.

The tactic turned Hubbell "into the primary informant against himself," the judge declared in a ruling that also wiped out charges against Hubbell's wife, Suzy, accountant Charles Owen, and tax lawyer Mike Schaufele.

Robertson also faulted Starr for failing to get Attorney General Janet Reno's permission to expand his investigation against Hubbell, and producing an indictment that had "nothing in common" with his original mandate to look at the Whitewater land deals in Arkansas.

Starr said he would appeal, declaring that Robertson's conclusions disagreed with two other district court rulings in Washington on the jurisdiction matter and with the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on the immunity issue.

President Clinton, who is in China, said, "The judge made a decision on the law and it will speak for itself. I haven't seen it. I'm happy with it...I'm happy for Webb and Suzy and their family, Mike and his family, and Charlie and his family."

Both Hubbell and his wife were relieved. "We're just very, very grateful and hopeful that this is the beginning of a long process," Hubbell told reporters outside his Washington home. "The last five years have been very difficult."

Hubbell had been a major player in Starr's four-year Whitewater investigation. A law partner of Hillary Rodham Clinton and former No. 3 official at the Justice Department, he said he told everything he knew about the Arkansas business dealings when he agreed to cooperate with Whitewater prosecutors and pleaded guilty in December 1994 to bilking clients and his Rose Law Firm in Little Rock.

But when he repeatedly failed to recall key Whitewater facts, prosecutors claim he reneged on the deal and began an investigation into Hubbell's taxes.

Starr is investigating whether Mr. Clinton and Lewinsky lied under oath in the Paula Jones sexual harassment lawsuit when both denied an affair. Starr also wants to know whether President Clinton and others may have tried to obstruct the investigation.

Lewinsky, who met Tripp at the Pentagon where both had been transferred from the White House, began talking about the alleged affair around October 1996, according to the Tripp source.

The source also said Tripp unsuccessfully attempted several times in March 1997 to contact Mr. Clinton's top White House confidant, Bruce Lindsey, to warn that a reporter was asking her questions about Kathleen Willey, who has accused the president of making an unwanted sexual advance in the White House.

Phone messages, emails, and beeper messages went unanswered, the source said, adding that Tripp wanted Lindsey to get the mssages so the president could be warned about the inquiry. Lindsey, with Mr. Clinton in China, could not be reached for comment.

Tripp, 48, and Lewinsky, 24, worked a floor apart in the Pentagon public affairs office. On some occasions, Lewinsky expressed frustration that Tripp had not taken her telephone calls - sometimes dozens in a day - at home and at work, the source said.