Awash in Whitewater.

Interviewing Bob Hattoy and David Mixner as part of the ongoing probe raises questions about the special prosecutor's right-wing ties

It would have been a case of strange political bedfellows. Beginning in the spring, deputies to Kenneth Starr, special prosecutor in the Whitewater probe who maintains close ties to the right wing, interviewed openly gay White House advisers David Mixner and Bob Hattoy. Mixner and Hattoy, who have been critical administration's record on gay issues, were apparently questioned in an attempt to dig up dirt about the Clintons' involvement in Whitewater, the Arkansas real estate scandal that has been the subject of a three-year investigation.

Yet despite their differences with the Administration, neither was ready to help bring down the man they consider the most gay-friendly president the nation has ever seen. "In the six-hour interview, they kept trying to solicit an answer to the question, Did I dislike the president? Did I feel betrayed?" says Mixner. "I tried to explain to them that though I have had strong disagreements with the White House, I would have nothing to do with Clinton haters. I'm still a supporter of this administration. "

Hattoy, the White House liaison to the Department of the Interior, says he had an equally unexpected experience with Starr's gumshoes. "They called me in and said, `One of your jobs at the White House personnel office was to hire homosexuals to the highest level of government,'" he says. "I couldn't help answering sarcastically, `Yes, I was very successful. Gay people are everywhere.'

But I thought the tone of the question was scary and inappropriate."

Openly gay representative Barney Frank (D-Mass.) agrees. He fired off a letter to Starr on July 3 objecting to the questioning. "Starr and his agents apparently believe that documenting that President Clinton was willing to appoint openly gay and lesbian people to office would somehow be embarrassing," he says. "The implicit bigotry this displays is one more reason it is clear that the time has come for Mr. Starr to wrap up his investigation, which has clearly become purely a political witch-hunt.

James B. Stewart, author of Blood Sport: The President and Ms Adversaries, a best-selling book about the Whitewater affair, disagrees, saying questioning the gay advisers was not necessarily sinister: "The cases sound peculiar, but it is not necessarily unusual at this point in the investigation to be trying to find disgruntled sources who might reveal information crucial to the investigation."

Perhaps adding to Starr's interest is the fact that Hattoy acknowledges being friends with Webster Hubbell, the former Justice Department official and the focal point of the Whitewater inquiry. And although Mixner says he does not know Hubbell, he has close ties to several of Hubbell's friends.

Whatever Starr's motives, the interrogations of Mixner and Hattoy, who are not suspects in the case, raised new questions about Starr's political alliance--and his connection to prominent antigay activists. The probe appears to be an offshoot of what Starr's deputies have dubbed the "trooper project, which investigators have queried Arkansas state troopers about sexual trysts Clinton allegedly had while he was governor of that state. Pundits have speculated that Starr is hoping Clinton confessed to knowledge of illegal real estate deals during unguarded moments, but the prosecutor has denied asking about Clinton's sex life.

Officials in Starr's office declined to be interviewed for this article, but Starr told The Washington Post that Hattoy "volunteered that it was his job to locate homosexuals." Mixner, an early champion of Clinton's, says Starr learned he had crossed swords with the White House on gay rights by reading his book Stranger Among Friends, published last year.

"Starr was looking for vulnerabilities in Clinton's friends and supporters," says Mixner. "Obviously he believes homosexuality is something to be ashamed of. To me, that's a sign of desperation. To me, that's a sign that he doesn't know how much America has changed."

Joe Conason, executive editor of The New York Observer, says the modus operandi of the right wing these days is to mount personal attacks, with or without evidence. "So given Starr's connections to the Right, this line of questioning does not surprise me," Conason says. "They have succeeded in crippling the presidency, but now it's blowing up in their faces. "

Critics believe Starr himself has invited suspicion. In March he accepted (and later deferred) a job as dean of the law school at Pepperdine University in Malibu, Calif. The position was to be funded by a $1.1-million grant by Richard Mellon Scaife, a wealthy conservative antigay donor who maintains close ties to the far right and its ideological soldiers, including Joseph Farah, director of the Scaife-funded Western Journalism Center in Sacramento, Calif. Farah has long been associated with reconstructionism, a movement seeking to replace the American legal system with laws derived from the Old Testament. Under such laws practicing homosexuals would be subject to the death penalty. Moreover, Scaife at one point believed the White House was involved in a conspiracy to cover up the death of former White House counsel Vincent Foster, charging that Foster was murdered because he had damaging information about the Whitewater scandal. In early July, however, Starr announced his conclusion that Foster had indeed killed himself.

"Starr's announcement that Foster committed suicide really puts a gap between him and guys like Farah who are adamant that there was foul play involved in Foster's death," says Jerry Sloan, cofounder of Project Tocsin, a Sacramento group that monitors the right wing in California. "They are unhappy with him for knocking the props out of the conspiracy theory. Going after gays may be payback to Scaife for the decision on Foster."

Gay issues have long been the center of the Right's anti-Clinton campaigns. In his book Special Access, former FBI agent Gary Aldrich--who received a Scaife grant to write the book--charged that Clinton aides were having "homosexual trysts" in the White House. And in The Clinton Chronicles, a video produced by Hemet, Calif.-based Jeremiah Films (which also put out the antigay video Gay Rights/Special Rights), a retired Army colonel charges that by lifting the ban on gay and lesbian military personnel, Clinton was driven by a "sinister motivation (to) destroy the armed forces."

Mixner and Hattoy say they haven't witnessed any orgies in the Lincoln Bedroom and only wish they had the level of access Starr's agents perceive they possess. After becoming vocal critics of the president's perceived waffling on gay issues, they were relegated to the sidelines. In July 1993 Mixner was arrested outside the White House for alleged civil disobedience. Hattoy was quoted on the front page of The New York Times saying he "almost started crying" when he heard that the president was willing to compromise on the gays-in-the-military issue.

Starr is expected to decide whether to indict the Clintons by the end of summer. "In the end Starr's work will speak for itself," Stewart says. For Mixner and Hattoy, however, it already has.