THERE’S A NIFTY DIVISION OF LABOR at the Clinton White House for handling the public relations side of the Whitewater scandal. “As a general proposition, I try to stay out of it,” says Mike McCurry, President Clinton’s press secretary. If he agreed to answer questions about Whitewater routinely, McCurry adds, “I’d very quickly do nothing else.” And Whitewater would be a bigger story. Besides, he’d lose his effectiveness as the administration’s spokesman on foreign affairs, domestic policy, and other matters. He’d become Clinton’s Whitewater shill. So the job of talking about Whitewater has fallen to Mark Fabiani, a genial lawyer in the White House counsel’s office. Oddly enough, he’s popular with reporters because, unlike some Clinton aides, he returns phone calls.
This arrangement has worked swimmingly for the White House, particularly if judged by the dwindling interest in Whitewater by the Washington press corps. One reason is McCurry and Fabiani have been careful in picking fights. They’ve gone after Republican senator Al D’Amato, chairman of the Senate Whitewater Committee, who is loathed by the media. Fabiani trashes D’Amato as a crassly partisan tool of Kenneth Starr Bob Dole’s presidential campaign and insists there’s no reason to continue public hearings. As for David Hale, the ex-judge in Little Rock who’s accused Clinton of pressuring him to make an illegal $ 300,000 loan, even McCurry pipes up (“false allegations”). Fabiani contends Hale concocted the story in hopes of getting a lighter sentence for his own wrongdoing.
