Whitewater Giving Staunch Clinton Backers Pause

SHAKER HEIGHTS, Ohio —  There is simply no polite way to start a conversation here about Whitewater, Travelgate, Rose Law Firm billing records and Hillary Rodham Clinton.

In this determinedly integrated, well-off Cleveland suburb of 30,000 people, even the few Republicans tend to say they’re liberal. “I’m almost a Democrat,” bragged Stanley Slomovits, a deli manager who counts Rep. Louis Stokes (D-Ohio) as a longtime friend, voted for Bill Clinton in 1992 and “really kind of liked” the failed health care reform proposal.

By tacit agreement, Whitewater and its attendant controversies have gone mostly unmentioned. Only an irritatingly conservative in-law or a tactless out-of-town reporter would dare broach such a delicate subject.

“I’d rather not get into it,” said Kathy Wolfe, a teacher lunching with a crowd of colleagues--Democrats all--at Arabica Shaker Cafe, a coffee bar. They had never discussed Whitewater among themselves.

But for Wolfe, and for many others in Shaker Heights, Whitewater’s potential fallout is beginning to disturb the surface calm, the way the espresso grinder’s buzz intruded on the cafe’s background music. Mrs. Clinton’s scheduled appearance today before a Washington grand jury--even though she is apparently not a target of the probe--is making them take seriously investigations they had long shrugged off.

Even as the liberal faithful defend the first lady, doubts are quietly taking root about inconsistencies in testimony and unanswered questions that remain unanswered. That is unsettling, because they fiercely back both her politics and her active part in the administration.

They still see the actions of both the Senate Whitewater Committee and independent counsel as venal politics in an election year. But they are starting to worry that voters elsewhere may reserve their harsh judgments for Mrs. Clinton alone, tipping what could be a close election in the fall.

One black female Ivy League college and West Coast law school graduate, for example, believes Mrs. Clinton was the first presidential spouse to be subpoenaed because “this is the first first lady that’s had a life.” But she knows others see it differently: “I don’t consider myself to be an average American.”

Once asked directly, Wolfe allowed that she had been brooding silently about the headline in that morning’s Plain Dealer: “First lady goes before grand jury on Friday.”

Said Wolfe: “It set an alarm off.”

From here, today’s closed-door session is seen as a crucial turning point, more so than even her previous depositions, recent spate of print interviews and on-camera face time with Barbara Walters.

“I feel like I have to pay attention to what’s going on with the grand jury,” said Cindi Thiel, 46, who has backed both Clintons for years. And she had been trying so hard to ignore it all. “I’ve kind of been saying, ‘Oh, this is so political; I’m really tired of it.’ I tend to think, ‘Oh, here they go again.’ I know we’re in an election year.”

She paused. “But then where did those papers come from?” She was referring to billing records, subpoenaed two years ago, that were made public recently by the administration. A White House aide testified in the Senate that she found them in August on a table in the Clintons’ living quarters, in a room next to an office of Mrs. Clinton, and had filed them away. When she was reorganizing in January, the aide said, she came upon the documents again.

“This,” Thiel said, “is piquing my interest.”

Across a round wooden table, her friend, Helga Sigurdadottir, 32, agreed. “There must be something,” she said. “It must have some base. It’s not clean.”

These were words she did not enjoy saying. Like others sipping coffee under the whirring ceiling fans, she believes that any disgrace to the Clintons would put at risk both the image of assertive career women and an approach to government that she much prefers.

“How badly is this going to affect the presidential campaign?” wondered Peter Fernandez, 42, a goateed actor and Democrat. “We have no budget. I know people who’ve been out of work for a long time now. That’s the most important thing right now.”

Heaps of criticism were ladled onto Sen. Alfonse M. D’Amato (R-N.Y.), chairman of the Senate Whitewater panel; another helping was reserved for the media.

“As long as he keeps that committee going, it keeps him in the news,” said teacher Liela Brode, 55. “And it keeps on selling newspapers. It’s a wonderful smoke screen.”

“We don’t understand the other issues and so this country latches onto this,” added Marcia Jaffe, 61, Brode’s job-share partner. “It just comes down to gossip. I only wish that the electorate was a bit more sophisticated.”

No one seemed to think the Clintons were, in Fernandez’s word, “unculpable” in some way. But they also thought any misdeeds were understandable.

“They were successful political people who were trying to take advantage of a sweetheart deal,” said Tom O’Brien, 54, a child-care management consultant. He believes Mrs. Clinton is “being harassed.”

“She’s an attorney,” said Brett Johnson, a 23-year-old waiter at Sands’ Blue Line Cafe. “I think attorneys tend to bend the law.”

“We all lie,” said Dell Graham-Bigham, a 60-year-old family therapist.

But she hoped the American people would understand something else: Records do indeed get misplaced and then surface again.

“I’m doing my taxes now and I needed to give an important piece of paper to a woman who is doing some secretarial work for me,” Graham-Bigham said. “I could have sworn it was there.”

Days later, she found what she had been looking for--under a telephone.

“It’s embarrassing,” she said. “It’s almost better to look dishonest than ridiculous.”