THE BOOK ON WHITEWATER

President Clintoh’s press secretary, Mike McCurry, concluded that Stewart ” found precious little news to impart to his readers.” Liberal ral columnists agreed. Richard Cohen of the Washington Post contended that “you will find very little to clarify what Whitewater is all about” and suggested that if Stewart “could not find a clearly defined scandal . . . it is not likely anyone else will.” Frank Rich of the New York Times trumpeted that Stewart “has not uncovered a smoking gun” and concluded: “After four years of this soap opera, aren’t we back where we came in?”

Even journalists less sensitive to the fate of the Clintons tend to agree. Maureen Dowd, who does not spare the president in her New York Times column, wrote about the “cheesiness” of the first family’s dealings but agreed with McCurry that “it’s the same old story.” Wall Street Journal editor Robert Bartley, who has managed his editorial page’s relentless pursuit of the Whitewater story, wrote that he “suspects” Clinton confidante Susan Thomases, who had originally sought out Stewart to do a whitewash, “is far from distraught” with the book that resulted.

I respectfully disagree. The Clinton team has reacted to Blood Sport with a shrug and the equivalent of “So what?” But that is how they have reacted to all Whitewater revelations. As for reviewers and analysts who agree, I cannot imagine what book they are reading (or perhaps not reading). Furthermore, I cannot imagine that anybody could read this book carefully without finally understanding, Richard Cohen to the contrary, what Whitewater “is all about.” It is about greed, deception, and cheap politics. Nor can I imagine that any American could read this without coming away with some sense of revulsion about the president and the first lady.

What’s more, this is not the final word on Whitewater. Stewart’s story ends two years ago, and a lot has happened since. Municipal judge Bill Watt, who last week gave important testimony for the prosecution in the current Whitewater trial in Little Rock, is not mentioned. Nor is Secret Service offcer Henry O’Neill, who testified last year about files” being removed from Vincent Foster’s office the night of his death.

Stewart does disappoint conspiracy theorists by concluding that Foster did commit suicide. He also asserts there was no massive plundering of the Madison Guaranty Savings and Loan to finance Whitewater. Nevertheless, the claim that Stewart’s findings rule out criminal prosecution is false. Rather, the lawyer-journalist writes that the Clintons’ Whitewater activities “are covered by a network of criminal and civil laws.” Have these laws been broken and has there been obstruction of justice? “Ultimately,” Stewart replies, “a grand jury and the independent counsel will make that decision, and decide whether in their discretion, any further charges should be filed, against either the President or the First Lady or others.”

Blood Sport may prove of help to the prosecutors. Senate investigators have already acknowledged that there is new information in the book, and they are calling new witnesses based on what they have learned from it. But the broader contribution of the book must be evaluated by considering the source.

While avowing nonpartisanship, Stewart is a registered New York City Democrat who voted for Clinton in 1992. More significantly, he became a hero of the Left for his Wall Street Journal coverage of the insider-trading scandals of the 1980s, which won him a Pulitzer Prize, and for his assault on financier Michael Milken in his bestselling Den of Thieves. So crude a politico as Susan Thomases might well have expected soft treatment from Stewart.

What she in fact got was a degree of objectivity (a despised word in journalistic circles today) that is rare in analyses of Whitewater. Never before in my 39 years as a Washington reporter have I seen a congressional investigation with no bipartisan overlap. The Republicans are out to get the Clintons, the Democrats are out to save them. In contrast to his brutal animus against Milken in Den of Thieves, Stewart in Blood Sport clearly has no ax to grind and derived his book’s title from Foster’s plea that, in Washington, “ruining people is considered sport.”

Stewart’s conclusions are significant. He argues that “the Clintons seized what seemed to be opportunities to make easy money, even when that meant accepting favors or special treatment from people in business regulated by the state. . . . Their handling of the Whitewater investment verges on reckless.” Making clear that Mrs. Clinton simply was not telling the truth when she denied close involvement in Whitewater, he asserts that the Clintons” professed “ignorance” of their responsibilities as investors “seems willful.”

“Perhaps the full story would have cost the Clintons the election,” he writes. “The fierce effort to contain the story suggests that the Clintons thought it would.” Are those the words of a Clinton apologist?

In addition to objectivity, Stewart provides readability. He is the rare investigator who can explain very complicated matters without dense rhetoric. Whitewater, ignored for a decade by the Arkansas journalists who now loudly contend that there is no story, was brought to light by the trail-blaizing work of Jeff Gerth in the New York Times. When Gerth’s first story on Whitewater was published in 1992, Stewart writes, “Thomases was thrilled. She thought it was incomprehensible.” It was, in truth, hard going.

That cannot be said of Stewart’s story, which is dramatic from its scene- setting opening chapter detailing the events following Foster’s death. The lack of cooperation and candor of Clinton administration officials began immediately at the Foster home. Stewart’s story-tellingskill has helped make Blood Sport a bestseller, but for Whitewater investigators and close followers of the scandal, there is lots of new information.

Of the 16 new witnesses announced for the next phase of the Senate Whitewater Committee hearings, eight are the result of Stewart’s work.

An example: William Henley, brother of Whitewater partner Susan McDougal. Investigators learned from the book that Henley and Mrs. McDougal were present when Gov. Clinton jogged by and asked his Whitewater partner James McDougal to send some business from the troubled Madison Guaranty to Hillary Clinton at the Rose Law Firm.

Nothing new in this book? Here are a few of the new tidbits that Stewart has served up for investigators — smoking guns, no, but fascinating details:

*In late 1981, James McDougal told his loan officer at Union Bank that Madison S&L was not so much a bank as a “candy store.”

*Rose Law partner David Knight was present at a spring 1985 luncheon meeting held by John Latham of Madison Guaranty and Richard Massey of Rose. Knight is one of the new witnesses called by the Senate.

*In 1985, when the McDougals talked about getting out of Whitewater, Mrs. Clinton refused. “Jim told me that this was going to pay for college for Chelsea,” she said. “I still expect it to do that!”

*The Twin City Bank in 1987 gave the Clintons an extension on their Whitewater loan, personally negotiating with Hillary and not requiring a financial disclosure. On the same day, Gov. Clinton signed a bill providing special treatment for the bank.

*Worthen Bank CEO Curt Bradbury received a telephone call from a “panicked” Gov. Clinton just before the 1990 elections saying, “I need $ 100,000” to pay off a personal loan.

*In 1992, Thomases received a telephone call from Mrs. Clinton, “who was beside herself,” saying that reporter Gerth had stumbled onto a “stupid” investment that she and the governor had made.

What is most fascinating is that Stewart was able to mine new information from a vein that the president’s defenders have claimed was depleted long ago. One of the interested readers of the book is a former independent counsel who told me that, after reading Blood Sport, he for the first time saw grounds for criminal indictments and the possibility that independent counsel Kenneth Starr would name Hillary Rodham Clinton as an unindicted co- conspirator. Thomases may long rue the day that she sought out Jim Stewart.

Robert D.