White House Says ‘Enough Is Enough,’ Rejects Subpoena

WASHINGTON —  Invoking a claim of executive privilege for the first time in the Whitewater controversy, the White House tartly refused Tuesday to comply with a subpoena from a Senate investigative committee and accused Chairman Alfonse M. D’Amato (R-N.Y.) of provoking a constitutional confrontation for political gain.

In a press statement and legal papers issued late Tuesday by the White House, officials said that the Senate Whitewater Committee has no right to notes kept by former White House associate counsel William H. Kennedy III of a Nov. 5, 1993, meeting of President Clinton’s private and government lawyers at which Whitewater was discussed.

Clinton has agreed to cooperate within reason with the committee, White House special counsel Mark D. Fabiani said in a sharply worded statement, but “enough is enough.”

The White House has argued that notes of the discussion among the seven attorneys can properly be kept confidential under attorney-client privilege, which protects communication between individuals and their lawyers.

But for the first time Tuesday, the White House also said that the meeting is protected under executive privilege, the broad claim that presidential discussions with advisors are not subject to congressional or public scrutiny.

“The Constitution gives the president the right to protect the confidentiality of material the disclosure of which would significantly impair the performance of the president’s lawful duties, particularly against incursions by the legislative branch,” the White House said.

The White House argued that attorney-client privilege applies to matters handled by the Clintons’ private attorneys and that executive privilege covers lawyers who are government employees.

Perhaps the most noteworthy claim of executive privilege came more than two decades ago when then-President Richard Nixon used it to justify his refusal to turn over White House tape recordings and documents to congressional committees investigating the Watergate scandal. The courts have ruled that many executive branch communications are privileged, but in Nixon’s case the Supreme Court said that the claim did not extend to discussions of illegal matters and ordered him to comply.

The Clinton White House’s legal analysis cited the pivotal 1974 case, United States vs. Nixon.

D’Amato said in a statement Tuesday night that he finds the White House argument “extraordinary and troublesome, and I think it will ultimately be damaging to the president and the first lady. This is an attempt to stonewall our committee, and the public will be outraged.”

The confrontation was touched off Friday when D’Amato’s committee voted, 10 to 8, to subpoena Kennedy’s notes of the November 1993 meeting, hours after the White House had refused to provide them voluntarily on grounds that they were protected by attorney-client privilege.

Senate Republicans dispute the privilege claim, saying that most of the lawyers at the meeting were public employees and not Clinton’s private counsel.

Republicans have said that they suspect the meeting was a critical planning session in which the president’s lawyers sought ways to impede investigations of President and Mrs. Clinton’s investments in an Arkansas land development known as Whitewater and the failure of Madison Guaranty Savings & Loan, which was owned by a business partner of the Clintons’, James B. McDougal.

Fabiani said in his statement that administration officials have offered to provide the committee with the information it needs to assess the nature and effects of the 1993 meeting “without invading the attorney-client relationship.”

D’Amato’s purpose “is not about seeking the truth; it is about inflicting political damage on the president,” Fabiani said. “We now have no choice but to say: Enough is enough.”

Times staff writer Sara Fritz contributed to this story.