Over the rapids - congressional investigation into Bill Clinton's financial affairs and the Whitewater Development Corp. scandal - Editorial

KENNETH STARR, the new independent counsel charged with investigating the Whitewater affair, is known to covet an appointment to the Supreme Court. After this job, the Supreme Court would seem like a vacation. Mr. Starr, a man who has both a reputation for fairness and a record of service in Republican Administrations--he was Solicitor General under George Bush--takes on a tough assignment.

The first round of congressional hearings confirmed what was already obvious: that the coverup of the Clintons' activities in Arkansas has come to pervade many branches and levels of government. One egregious band of coverers is the Democratic majority in the House. This crew--the same people who gave us Jim Wright--have not modified their tyrannical instincts. The House Banking Committee under Henry Gonzalez looked like the parliament of Fredonia under Rufus T. Firefly. It is hard to say which was worse: Maxine Waters's mad scene, the chorus of White House aides, or Lloyd Can't-nail-him-to-the-wall-because-he'd-just-slide-off Cutler.

The Senate behaved more rigorously, in part because senators don't like being deceived, and that, it turned out, is what Deputy Treasury Secretary Roger Altman had done to them. At the request of Robert Fiske, the departed independent counsel, Congress restricted its hearings to matters he considered settled. The flashiest of these was the array of contacts between the Resolution Trust Corporation, the Treasury Department, and the White House, on the subject of Madison Guaranty. Mr. Altman, in addition to his Treasury post, was acting head of the RTC, and a Friend of Bill. Late this February, he lost his footing under the weight of those three hats as he told the Senate Banking Committee that he had had only one "substantive" discussion with the White House; over the next few days, his memory managed to retrieve other discussions. The hearings last month revealed that Mr. Altman, Treasury Secretary Lloyd Bentsen, and the White House were tipped off about RTC requests for prosecution, or criminal referrals, as early as last fall. "No American, including the President of the United States, is entitled to inside information about a criminal referral," said Representative Jim Leach. Though Robert Fiske found no grounds for an indictment, Mr. Altman has withheld from Congress more than Elliott Abrams ever did, and for no reason of public policy or confidential diplomacy.

Of course, he had personal reasons for what he did. According to a diary kept by a Treasury Department munchkin, Mr. Altman came under "intense pressure" from the White House in February to stay at the RTC. When he finally decided to recuse himself, the diarist recorded, Bill Clinton was "furious." Like other courtiers, Roger Altman had come between "the fell and incensed points of mighty opposites." During the congressional hearings, we also learned that the Clintons' interest in the progress of the Whitewater affair was not limited to Mr. Altman's role in covering it up. At the last Renaissance Weekend, Bill Clinton asked a fellow weekender, who happens to be comptroller of the currency, for advice on how he might handle the matter. (How come Sidney Blumenthal never overhead any good stuff at those insider gabfests?)

The dearth of relevant information, if not an actual cover-up, extends to another matter Mr. Fiske had declared settled: the death of Vincent Foster. An FBI agent told the Senate Banking Committee that Mr. Foster had committed suicide in Fort Marcy Park. So he very likely did. That begs the question of how and by whom his body was examined. The confidential witness (named "CW" by Mr. Fiske) who first found the body insists that its palms were both face up when he saw it, not face down, as in the only picture of the corpse leaked to the public. Christopher Ruddy, a journalist who interviewed George Gonzalez, the paramedic who examined the body, claims that Mr. Gonzalez's first account placed the body in a different part of the park from the location described in the Fiske report. (Mr. Gonzalez's story in the Fiske report differs from what he told Mr. Ruddy, who complains about Mr. Fiske's failure to question Mr. Gonzalez under oath on this apparent discrepancy.) At the minimum, it is certainly possible to wonder whether the people who spirited files from Vincent Foster's office may not also have searched his body. Mr. Fiske's examination of these matters has left open some questions which Kenneth Starr should consider settling once and for all.

But in line with this pattern of concealment and evasion, Mr. Starr has been attacked as a partisan hitman. The party registration of the panel of three judges who picked him has been sifted. Robert Bennett, Bill Clinton's lawyer, has attacked him for arguing on a TV show that the President could be sued by Paula Jones--at the very least an open question, in which the legalities seem to be mainly on Mr. Starr's side.

If Kenneth Starr has ever done anything unseemly, he should get ready to read about it in the papers. The people he will be examining play hardball.