COVER STORY ON DAUGHTER LEAVES CLINTONS INCENSED.

Byline: Muriel Dobbin Scripps-McClatchy Western Service

The 6-year-old protective cocoon built around Chelsea Clinton collapsed Thursday in an explosion of White House anger over a magazine story about the Clintons' daughter.

A People magazine cover titled ``Hillary and Chelsea: Grace under Fire,'' published as President Clinton's impeachment trial winds to a torturous close, evoked an immediate rebuke from the Clintons and a rancorous exchange in the White House press room.

``We deeply regret and are profoundly saddened by the decision of People magazine to print a cover story featuring our daughter, Chelsea,'' read the statement by the president and first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton.

They added: ``Despite personal appeals with respect to her privacy and her security from her parents, People has chosen to run the story. We can only hope that the media will continue a policy of restraint with respect to our daughter.''

Carol Wallace, editor of People, which has a 2.3 million circulation, issued a response contending that Chelsea Clinton's position as ``an eyewitness to this family drama and historical events unfolding around her'' make the president's daughter ``a valid journalistic subject.''

It is not the first story that has been written about Chelsea Clinton, whose privacy usually has been honored and protected by the press since her father took office more than six years ago. But it is the first story probing her reaction to the Monica Lewinsky scandal that led to the president's impeachment and his current trial in the Senate.

It is also the first time a magazine breached the unique wall of privacy that has grown around Chelsea Clinton since her father appealed to the press to let his daughter, then 12, grow up in as much peace as possible in the White House.

Stories about the president's daughter were rare. Interviews were nonexistent. Even when she moved out to become a student at Stanford University, the press left her alone.

Ironically, what made her more vulnerable to public scrutiny was the year of scandalous allegations and political sensation after the admission by the president that he had lied to his family and everyone else about his involvement with the former White House intern.

And there is speculation that the Clintons are very worried that the story, published in People as opposed to one of the lurid supermarket tabloid newspapers, could trigger a wave of intrusion into their daughter's life.

The People story focused on how the young woman's close relationship with her mother was deepened by the wounds inflicted on the family by the Lewinsky scandal.

It was because of that, according to the article, that 18-year-old Chelsea and the first lady ``reached out to each other more than ever before.''

The article refers to tabloid reports that Chelsea collapsed after breaking up with a boyfriend, but it also quotes an anonymous male friend as saying such reports were blown out of proportion.

It asserts that the president's daughter has paid close attention to the daily outpouring of newspaper and television reports on the scandal, getting up before her seven Stanford roommates and reading alone. The article says Chelsea doesn't talk about the scandal ``even to her closest friends.''

There is no suggestion that Chelsea takes sides between her parents, but according to the article, ``She is very, very much an advocate of her mother'' whose advice, reportedly, is ``just keep on keeping on.''

White House press secretary Joe Lockhart found himself catapulted into the middle of the Chelsea controversy at his daily briefing. Reporters charged that a double standard was being applied to Clinton's daughter, compared with the children of other presidents who were targeted for far more publicity.

Lockhart refused to expand on the Clintons' response to the magazine article. He also declined to discuss previous White House willingness to let the president's daughter be photographed when she held the hands of both her father and her mother while they walked to a helicopter the day after Clinton made a public confession that he lied to everyone about his involvement with Lewinsky.

``Is she a public figure or not?'' asked a reporter.

``I don't get to decide that,'' said Lockhart.

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PHOTO (color) no caption (cover of People Weekly magazine with Chelsea and Hillary Clinton)