CLINTON AIDE PORTRAYED AS CORRUPT FIXER.

Byline: Stephen Labaton The New York Times

The prosecution's main witness in the second Whitewater trial testified Thursday that Bruce Lindsey, a top Clinton aide, had insisted that large cash withdrawals by the 1990 Clinton campaign for governor be illegally concealed.

The witness, Neal Ainley, the former president of a rural Arkansas bank that helped finance the campaign, said that Lindsey, the campaign's treasurer, directed him not to file a report on the withdrawals after he told Lindsey that one was required and Lindsey rejected his suggestions for other ways to handle the transaction.

Lindsey, who has long been one of Clinton's closest aides, is now deputy White House counsel, although his job title does not even begin to reflect his role in the Clinton administration. For years, he has handled many of the most politically sensitive issues for the Clintons, including questions about the Whitewater land venture and the accusations of marital infidelities by President Clinton.

On Thursday, Ainley described Lindsey as central to a scheme involving two owners of the Perry County Bank, Herby Branscum Jr. and Robert Hill, to hide large cash payments to Clinton's 1990 campaign on the Fridays before the primary and general elections. Branscum and Hill have been charged in an 11-count indictment with concealing large campaign contributions, using their relatives to launder contributions to Clinton campaigns, and reimbursing themselves for those contributions by illegally taking money from the bank.

Ainley on Thursday described a sequence of transactions between the small bank 50 miles west of Little Rock and the campaign. Shortly before the primary election in May 1990, the campaign deposited $160,000 into the account that was provided by the bank from two loans it had issued to the Clintons personally. Soon after that, Ainley said, Lindsey told him not to file a disclosure statement with the Internal Revenue Service when the campaign withdrew $30,000 in large and small bills from its account at the bank.

``He told me he needed $30,000, preferably in $100 bills and asked whether we needed to file'' a currency transaction report, Ainley said, referring to the form that the Internal Revenue Service requires for all transactions exceeding $10,000. The requirement of making such filings is intended to detect and discourage money laundering and tax evasion.

In response, Ainley said that he suggested to Lindsey that he try going to four banks in Little Rock and cashing different campaign checks to avoid having to report the transaction, but he said that Lindsey vetoed that idea. Ainley said he then suggested that Lindsey either withdraw the money over several days or write three checks for $9,000 and one for $3,000, but he said Lindsey disagreed and decided to write four checks for $7,500 each. Three of the four checks were written out to different payees.

Ainley said that Lindsey was also aware in November of that year that a filing would not be made when the campaign withdrew $22,500 in cash shortly before the election. Ainley said that after another bank officer had filled out an IRS form, he went to the mail room and got it out, giving it a week later to Hill, who he said, ``put it in his jacket pocket and smiled.''

Lindsey and Ainley both have been listed as unindicted co-conspirators in the trial on accusations brought by prosecutors from the Whitewater independent counsel's office.

Lindsey has repeatedly denied making any request concerning the currency transaction reports to Ainley or anyone else.