WHEN A PRESIDENT NEEDS A LEGAL DEFENSE

Former Arkansas state employee Paula Jones' civil lawsuit against President Bill Clinton raises important questions pertaining to the institution of the presidency. Legal minds are at work within the Clinton Justice Department preparing a brief on the question of possible presidential immunity during the term of his office. On these arcane legal issues we offer no opinion.

Of more interest today is the question of the huge costs of legal defense faced by those who, like President Clinton, find themselves caught in such sticky legal entanglements. The President's supporters have suggested the creation of a legal defense fund for the chief executive, and have indicated their willingness to undertake such private fundraising as this may require. Others have gone so far as to suggest the need for the government to set aside funds for the defense of certain elected and/or appointed officials, to permit them to carry on a legal defense when facing certain charges. We are attracted to the idea, and although all ramifications have not been fully explored, we believe the proposal to be worthy of further debate and active consideration.

It is said that one drawback to the idea of a private fundraising effort for a sitting president is the possible conflicts of interest posed by private givers with business before the executive branch of government. This may well be a valid concern. Which brings us to the notion of a government fund specifically set aside to provide for legal defense for elected and appointed officials.

Consider the situation of a person temporarily serving in public office, whether in an elective or appointed position. Many such capable individuals are people of relatively modest means, and as such they lack ready access to the six- or even seven-figure sums they'll find they will need to defend themselves.

In a memorable and characterisitically trenchant dissenting opinion in the special prosecutor case a few years back, Justice Antonin Scalia of the U.S. Supreme Court wrote some haunting words that should serve as caution to us all. "How terrifying it must be," Scalia wrote, "to watch as a new office of the government comes into being, with no purpose other than to bring the full investigative power of the federal government to bear investigating you, to spend years, if necessary, rummaging through the details of your life, until the investigators find some criminal charge they believe they can level against you."

Imagine what it feels like to be so targeted, by people with time on their hands and the full resources of the state and federal governments at their disposal. People like federal prosecutors, the FBI, the Internal Revenue Service and state investigators, including but not limited to the attorney general and his staff, and the highway patrol. A common result is that the investigators' quarry is faced with a Hobson's choice: plead guilty to lesser charges or face multiple felony counts and bankruptcy in attempting to defend yourself against charges that carry sentences stretching into decades.

The list of people who have faced such odds is long. Ask former Gov. Warren Hearnes, for years an investigators' target, his political career shredded -- but never indicted. Ask former Reagan Labor Secretary Ray Donovan, whose agony included a lengthy trial on corruption charges, only to have a jury acquit him. Donovan emerged from that trial, years and hundreds of thousands of dollars later, uttering one unforgettably anguished line: "Where do I go to get my reputation back?" Ask former Reagan administration official Elliott Abrams. And now, former Treasurer Wendell Bailey, the focus of what looks to us increasingly like a selective and political prosecution.

There are many, many more. Add to this list now President Clinton, who may yet be implicated in the Whitewater affair and who is the target of Paula Jones' suit. The power of prosecutors is indeed awesome -- their power to target citizens among the most fearsome our government confers on any fallible human being. We think targets of criminal investigations, and possibly some civil suits as well, must have the resources to fight back against the unlimited resources of government investigators.

If it takes a new government fund specifically designated for that purpose, then we would favor such a proposal.