CLINTON PAPERS LIFTED AFTER AIDE'S SUICIDE; FOSTER'S OFFICE WAS SECRETLY SEARCHED HOURS AFTER HIS BODY WAS FOUND.

Editor's note: the following news story orignally appeared in the Washington Times Monday, December 20.

White House officials removed records of business deals between President Clinton, his wife and an Arkansas partnership known as Whitewater Development Corp. from the office of Vincent W. Foster Jr. during two searches after the deputy presidential counsel's suicide, the Washington Times has learned.

The searches included a clandestine visit July 20 to Mr. Foster's office -- less than three hours after his body was found about 6 p.m. in a Virginia park -- by two Clinton political operatives, according to two U.S. Park Police investigators who asked not to be publicly identified.

The July 20 search, and another search two days later, were conducted by White House Counsel Bernard Nussbaum, to whom Mr. Foster reported.

During the initial search, however, Mr. Nussbaum was accompanied by the White House political aides who reported directly to the president or to first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton.

The political aides were Patsy L. Thomasson, a veteran of Arkansas Democratic Party politics who is now special assistant to the president, and Margaret A. "Maggie" Williams, who serves as Mrs. Clinton's chief of staff and who has been associated with the first lady since 1984, when both were with the Children's Defense Fund.

Miss Thomasson and Ms. Williams worked in Mr. Clinton's 1992 presidential campaign.

Miss Thomasson, who served as executive vice president of an Arkansas investment firm headed by a man convicted of distributing cocaine to his friends, including Mr. Clinton's brother, was described last week by several Arkansas politicians and law enforcement officers in Little Rock as a "longtime Clinton fixer."

Ms. Williams, who worked as communications director at the Children's Defense Fund and as press deputy for the Democratic National Committee, is a powerful figure at the White House, where she is the first lady's major media adviser, similar to a job she had during the 1992 presidential campaign.

After the election, Ms. Williams served as Mrs. Clinton's transition director.

The investigators say it is not clear who took the documents from Mr. Foster's office, including separate files he maintained on Whitewater and on James B. McDougal, a Whitewater partner and owner of a failed Arkansas savings and loan now under investigation by federal authorities. Nor has it been determined what information the files contained.

The Park Police investigators familiar with the Foster inquiry say the Whitewater documents were among those taken from the office by White House officials and later turned over to Mr. Foster's attorney, James Hamilton.

Mr. Foster, a longtime friend of the president's and a former law partner of Mrs. Clinton's at the well connected Rose Law Firm in Little Rock, was, in addition to his duties as White House deputy counsel, the Clintons' personal lawyer.

White House Communications Director Mark Gearan did not return telephone calls to his office for comment on these developments. Administration officials have said, however, that records taken by White House officials from Mr. Foster's office were made available to Park Police investigators for review.

Mr. Hamilton also did not return calls for comment. He has declined to turn over any documents from Mr. Foster's office, citing privacy concerns. Mr. Hamilton was retained by Mr. Foster in early July after disclosure of an investigation of the White House travel office.

White House officials have said no documents related to Whitewater or Mr. McDougal were contained in an inventory of items found in Mr. Foster's office prepared on July 22.

It is not clear why Mr. Nussbaum and the two political aides searched Mr. Foster's office on the night of his suicide, or what they expected to find. White House Chief of Staff Thomas "Mack" McLarty had ordered the office sealed after learning Mr. Foster shot himself.

Mr. McLarty told Park Police, according to a police investigative report, that he wanted to make sure no papers were removed. The office, however, remained unlocked overnight. It was sealed only at 11 the next morning, when a guard was posted at the door.

Citing executive privilege, Mr. Nussbaum prevented Park Police and agents of the FBI from searching the Foster office. Park Police had original jurisdiction over the case because Mr. Foster's body was discovered at the Fort Marcy Park off the George Washington Memorial Parkway in suburban Virginia.

Mr. Nussbaum also prevented Park Police and FBI investigators from looking through Mr. Foster's personal papers or belongings when they went to the White House on July 22.

The agents were ordered to sit on chairs in a hallway while staff officials went through the documents. The White House officials put several items in a box to be delivered to Mr. Hamilton's office, and an FBI agent was reprimanded when he stood up to peer into the room.

Investigators who went to Mr. Foster's home also were turned away.

The investigators said the existence of the Whitewater records came to light when Park Police visited Mr. Hamilton's office "about a week after the death" to review a personal diary that also was taken during one of the searches.

The existence of the diary, which the White House never publicly acknowledged, was reported last week by The Washington Post.

The diary is said to have contained information about Mr. Foster's participation in several White House discussions about matters including his concern about the investigation of the White House travel office. In that investigation, seven White House travel office employees were fired. Five were later rehired.

The Justice Department, which is investigating the travel office incident and the involvement of the FBI in it, has interviewed Park Police investigators who inspected the diary and the other documents but were not allowed to make copies or take notes.

Mr. Foster's concern about legal action was described in a memo he left in a briefcase. It was torn into 27 pieces. The descriptions are not specific and offer no evidence of why he killed himself. In the note, he wrote: "The public will never believe in the innocence of the Clintons and their loyal staff. I made mistakes from ignorance, inexperience and overwork. I did not knowingly violate any law or standard of conduct."

Mr. Foster's death has been ruled a suicide, and the case is officially closed. But several questions about Mr. Foster's role in the Whitewater scheme remain unanswered.

As the Clintons' personal lawyer, Mr. Foster handled the sale of their half-ownership of Whitewater and filed the necessary tax forms when it was discovered the partnership failed to file corporate tax returns for a three-year period when the Clintons were still half-owners.

Mr. Foster is said to have met with James McDougal, the partner with the Clintons, to discuss the tax problem and to complete the Whitewater sale.

Just before his death, Mr. Foster also spoke several times with the lawyer assigned by the Clinton campaign to investigate the Whitewater venture after it became an issue in the campaign. He concluded, he said in a written report, that the Clintons were "passive shareholders." The attorney, James M. Lyons, confirmed that the two men talked, but he would not say what they talked about because this is covered by the attorney-client privilege between himself and the Clintons.

Mr. McDougal, who served as a financial adviser to Gov. Clinton in 1979, is the focus of a federal investigation into allegations that he manipulated fraudulent loans through Madison Guaranty Savings and Loan Association and authorized payments in violation of the law to several powerful Arkansas politicians, including Mr. Clinton.

Mr. McDougal, who was indicted in 1989 on fraud charges in connection with Madison S&L and acquitted in 1990, has denied wrongdoing. Mr. Clinton has said that while he received campaign money from Mr. McDougal -- including lump sums that were used to clear up debts from his gubernatorial races -- he had no knowledge where his business partner and longtime friend obtained the cash.

Miss Thomasson, who participated in the first search of Mr. Foster's office, has been a longtime associate of the president's. While an executive at the Arkansas investment firm, known as Lasater & Co., she helped oversee more than $664 million in Arkansas bond-sale contracts, all of which were approved by Mr. Clinton. The contracts were awarded to Lasater & Co. while it president, Dan R. Lasater was under investigation by state authorities for cocaine distribution.

The firm received 1.6 million in brokerage fees from two dozen separate tax-exempt state bonds.

Mr. Lasater later was convicted in an Arkansas cocaine conspiracy involving Mr. Clinton's brother, Roger Clinton. Lasater, a millionaire thoroughbred racehorse owner who helped finance Mr. Clinton's first three gubernatorial campaigns, paid off Roger Clinton's cocaine debts.

Roger Clinton, who also worked for Lasater, pleaded guilty in January 1985 to separate federal cocaine-distribution charges. He served one year of a two-year sentence. He was an unindicted co-conspirator a year later when Lasater was tried and sentenced to 30 months in prison.

Two former Lasater & Co. partners, David Collins and George E. "Butch" Locke, a state senator, also pleaded guilty to charges of cocaine distribution and conspiracy.

Miss Thomasson, who was named chairman of the Arkansas Highway Commission by Clinton, was not implicated in the investigation of the cocaine sales.