EACH WHITE HOUSE FUND-RAISING SCANDAL TOPS THE LAST ONE

Rarely, it seems, can we go longer than 48 hours without new and alarming revelations about the burgeoning fund-raising scandals engulfing the White House, the Democratic National Committee and the 1996 Clinton-Gore re-election campaign. Last weekend, Vice President Al Gore was drawn directly into the maelstrom with news that he made $40 million worth of fund-raising telephone calls from within White House walls in apparent clear violation of federal laws against conducting fund raising on federal property.

This news came in the same week that brought us the revelations that Hillary Rodham Clinton's chief of staff had, while in the conduct of her official, tax-paid job on the government payroll, accepted a $50,000 check for the DNC. And those revelations followed news of President Bill Clinton's personal involvement in coordinating the $50,000 and $100,000 sleepovers in the Lincoln bedroom. The evidence came in the form of personal notations on memoranda in the president's own handwriting.

As the cascade of disturbing revelations continues, however, even these instances are far from the most disturbing. Honors in this category would have to include still two more items of interest. First, there's the news that an aggressive campaign of economic espionage was likely conducted by Clinton's counterparts in the not-very-friendly Chinese Communist regime in Beijing. Couple this with the astounding revelations about erstwhile Clinton Commerce Department official John Huang, and the possibility that he may have been a spy for Asian interests inside the American government, and you understand why the word "treason" is being spoken out loud these days. John Huang had access to classified secrets, satellite data and the like, even after he left Commerce to go raise illegal money from foreigners at the DNC.

But even this isn't all that we know. It is now known that the White House spent $1.7 million of taxpayers' money compiling a highly sophisticated, detailed computerized database for use both by official government personnel and by campaigners over at the DNC. Mrs. Clinton, again in her own handwriting, is directly implicated. Never in American history has the line between campaigning and governing been so utterly blurred. But with such vast resources devoted to such a data base, vital privacy issues are raised. Beyond that, ominously, looms the issue of using tax-paid resources and the time of government personnel to compile and use data for political use.

If memory serves, didn't a former Missouri attorney general named Bill Webster land in a federal penitentiary for two years for appropriating public resources for campaign use? What, exactly, is the difference between the guilty plea Bill Webster was forced into, after three years of intensive federal investigation exhausted his ability to fight on, and what we now know about what has been going on at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.? And still the revelations continue.

It must be a terrifying time to be in the White House, not knowing when the next shoe will drop, or what the next memo will reveal. The American people need full investigations, both by Congress and by the independent counsel whose appointment seems inevitable, sooner or later. These investigators must follow the facts wherever they lead.