USA: WHITE HOUSE WAGES DAMAGE CONTROL ON BOOK CHARGES.

Date: Feb 3, 1995

By Laurence McQuillan

WASHINGTON, Feb 3 (Reuter) - The White House waged a damage control campaign Friday to play down an account of President Clinton's efforts to suppress information about his marital infidelities and efforts to avoid the Vietnam draft.

"I don't see a lot of news here that needs additional comment," White House Press Secretary Mike McCurry told reporters who tried to ask about issues raised in a new book.

"These issues were raised during the course of the president's 1992 campaign and were effectively dealt with," McCurry said.

Questions about Clinton's character and extramarital affairs hounded the president throughout the 1992 White House campaign and have continued to haunt him since taking office.

The White House Friday released the transcript of an interview Clinton had with religion reporters in which he said that questions about his character were "between me and God."

"There is an inordinate premium put on the use of words to destroy," he complained, saying "it takes away from my ability to be president, to do the job with a clear head and a clear heart."

Clinton pointed out "there is a difference between reputation and character, and I have increasingly less control over my reputation, but still full control over my character."

"That's between me and God, and I've just got to try to be purified by this," Clinton said.

The latest ordeal for the White House stems from the publication of the book "First in His Class" by Washington Post reporter David Maraniss.

The book quotes Betsey Wright, who was Clinton's chief of staff when he was governor of Arkansas, as saying she confronted her boss with a list of women with whom he allegedly had an affair.

After demanding he "face the issue squarely," Wright and Clinton went down the list and discussed whether or not he had an affair with each individual -- and the likelihood of whether she would discuss it in public, the book says.

As a result, it says, Clinton decided not to run for president in 1988 -- the year in which fellow Democrat Gary Hart was forced to drop out of the race for the party's nomination because of public uproar over his infidelity.

Wright is also said to have been convinced that Arkansas state troopers, who acted as the governor's protective force, "were soliciting women for (Clinton) and he for them."

Wright's lawyer, Alan Cohen, said the author misunderstood what the former Clinton aide said. He declined to discuss the book but released a statement from Wright saying: "What I believe is that some of them solicited women for themselves."

Clinton, who has admitted that there have been "problems" in his marriage in the past, has denied ever using state troopers to solicit women.

Paula Jones, a former Arkansas state employee, has sued Clinton and others alleging sexual harassment. Jones charges that she had been solicited by a state trooper who brought her to a hotel room where Clinton sexually propositioned her.

The book also goes into the other major issue that dogged Clinton throughout the 1992 campaign -- his actions to avoid military service during the Vietnam War.

The book traces efforts by Clinton to destroy a 1969 letter he wrote to the director of the University of Arkansas ROTC programme, thanking him for "saving" him from the draft.

Clinton, then a student at Oxford University, had convinced the director, Col. Eugene Holmes, to grant him a draft deferment after saying he would attend the University of Arkansas Law School on his return from England.

Clinton, who eventually went to Yale Law School instead, later wrote a letter to Holmes thanking him for "being so kind and decent" and "for saving me from the draft."

According to the book, Clinton later thought he had succeeded, through intermediaries, in having his letter removed from ROTC files and destroyed -- fearing it would undercut his budding political career.

In 1991, as Clinton readied for his White House race, aides told him reporters were asking about the letter. "Don't worry about that," Clinton is quoted as saying, "I've put that one to bed." A copy of the letter later surfaced.

(c) Reuters Limited 1995. All rights reserved.