HUBBELL'S GROWING WEB

By MICHAEL DUFFY

Whenever the list of Bill Clinton's Best Friends is put together, Webb Hubbell's name is always near the top. Clinton installed his golfing buddy and confidant as Associate Attorney General in 1993; at the Justice Department he could serve as the First Family's eyes and ears. Hubbell resigned in March 1994 amid allegations that he had bilked his clients and partners out of thousands of dollars at the Rose Law Firm in Little Rock, Arkansas, where he once worked with Mrs. Clinton. By August 1995, Clinton's close friend was in jail, serving 21 months for fraud.

But between his tenure at the Justice Department and his time at the Cumberland Federal Correctional Institution in Maryland, Hubbell tried to open a little Washington law practice. Almost immediately, work began trickling in. First he was hired by Indonesia's Lippo Group, which reportedly offered him $250,000 a year for work that remains a mystery. Next, at the suggestion of a Democratic fund raiser, the Los Angeles Airport Commission paid him $8,250 a month to lobby the Transportation Department. These were lucky breaks for a lawyer facing possible criminal charges. Republicans have wondered aloud whether these jobs were part of a "hush-money" campaign directed by the White House to keep Hubbell happy and dissuade him from telling investigators what he knows about the Whitewater affair. Now it seems that independent counsel Kenneth Starr wonders the same thing.

The latest Hubbell client to surface is Time Warner (the parent company of TIME magazine). A company executive confirmed to TIME last week that the corporation employed Hubbell briefly as a consultant in the fall of 1994. Starr issued a subpoena last month to Time Warner, asking for the records of Hubbell's employment. The company hired Hubbell after one of its outside lobbyists, longtime Democratic consultant Michael Berman, approached Hubbell about doing some legal work in the antitrust area. According to Berman, Hubbell was game, and so Berman then mentioned the idea to Tim Boggs, Time Warner's Washington representative. Not long afterward, Hubbell himself called Boggs and offered his legal services directly. Peter Haje, Time Warner's executive vice president and general counsel, approved Hubbell's contract.

During the following month, Hubbell consulted with Time Warner's lawyers on a single antitrust issue involving the company's cable operations. He attended two meetings in New York but did not contact anyone in the government on the company's behalf, according to a Time Warner executive. Hubbell earned $5,000 for a month's work and ended the relationship when he learned in late November that he was the target of a criminal investigation. In early December 1994 he pleaded guilty to mail fraud and tax evasion.

That Berman helped broker the Time Warner arrangement shortens the link between the White House and Hubbell's campaign to find work. Berman is in the first circle of advisers to the First Lady and talks regularly with Clinton's close friend and aide Bruce Lindsey. In an interview last week, Berman said the idea for hooking Hubbell up with Boggs was his alone; no one at the White House, he said, suggested or even knew of the deal. "Webb was looking for work," he explained. "I was a friend of Webb's. So I asked Webb if he had experience with antitrust work. I talked to Tim. I went and told Webb. Webb called Tim." Berman said he arranged no other work for Hubbell and has not received a subpoena from Starr.

Boggs, who once worked for former Democratic Congressman Robert Kastenmeier, is the company's top staff lobbyist and its point man on all federal legislation, including the sweeping telecommunications bill signed by Clinton early in 1996. Time Warner employed Hubbell during a period when its political contributions favored the Democrats. During 1993 and 1994 its political-action committee gave Democratic candidates $141,000--nearly $50,000 more than it gave Republicans.

Attorneys close to the Little Rock investigation believe that Starr is trying to compel Hubbell, who will be released from a Washington halfway house this week, to cooperate further with Starr's investigation of the Clintons. Last week Theodore Stein, the Los Angeles official who hired Hubbell for the airport deal, told a Little Rock grand jury that he got Hubbell's name from Mary Leslie, who had served in 1992 as Clinton's chief California fund raiser.

There were other signs last week that Starr was entering a late phase of his probe. The Washington Post reported that he is close to completing a detailed memo outlining the pros and cons of bringing charges against senior Clinton officials, as well as the President and his wife. A Clinton adviser suggests that Starr is merely leaking word of such a memo to keep the Clinton camp off balance. But when it comes to Hubbell, Clinton has a way of sounding flummoxed. Asked recently if he knew anything about Hubbell's Lippo contract, the President denied knowing about it in advance eight times in nine sentences. "I can't imagine who could have ever arranged to do something improper like that," he said. That's what Starr is determined to figure out.

--With reporting by J.F.O. McAllister/Washington

With reporting by J.F.O. McAllister/Washington