D'AMATO TELLS ATTORNEYS TO CHECK FOR SUBPOENA VIOLATIONS BY AIDES.

Byline: Marcy Gordon Associated Press 

Angered by the tardy release of Whitewater documents to Senate investigators, Sen. Alfonse D'Amato held out the threat Saturday of possible sanctions against the White House aides who belatedly provided the records.

D'Amato, a New York Republican who heads the now-suspended Senate Whitewater Committee, said the latest disclosure - by President Clinton's senior aide Bruce Lindsey - was part of a pattern "that suggests a calculated obstruction of our investigation."

That pattern began, D'Amato charged, with the mysterious appearance of Hillary Rodham Clinton's legal billing records in the White House family quarters two months ago.

Friday night, Lindsey gave the Senate Banking Committee two pages of sparse notes from a key 1993 Whitewater meeting at the White House.

Lindsey testified about the meeting Jan. 16 but told lawmakers he didn't "remember taking specific notes." His attorney, Allen Snyder, said Lindsey had forgotten until this week that he had made the notes.

The jottings turned up Wednesday, the lawyer said, after he conducted a fresh review of his Lindsey files. Snyder said he worked Wednesday to determine what the documents were, then went out of town on business Thursday and faxed the documents to the banking panel Friday night.

Lindsey's notes do not appear to break new ground. But the abrupt discovery of the documents several months after they had been subpoenaed fueled Republican accusations that the White House has dodged repeated requests for all Whitewater papers.

It also could bolster Republican arguments to extend the Senate's Whitewater investigation. The authority of the chamber's special Whitewater committee expired Thursday after Democrats blocked GOP efforts to renew it.

"This is just another late Friday evening disclosure of pertinent documents that heretofore were withheld or denied to the Whitewater committee," D'Amato said in a statement. "It is clear that the Clinton administration is withholding information from this committee and has been since its inception."

D'Amato said he had instructed committee attorneys to determine whether Lindsey, deputy presidential chief of staff Harold Ickes and other unnamed White House aides violated subpoenas or "engaged in contempt of Congress, and what remedies or sanctions are available."

White House officials say they suspect other Whitewater-related documents will turn up as they intensify and expand their searches.

"We're sort of damned if we do, damned if we don't," said Jane Sherburne, a White House attorney handling Whitewater matters. She said Republicans are suspicious if the White House doesn't produce new documents, "then if we turn up documents, as soon as we produce them we get killed on that."

Sherburne said Lindsey's notes were turned over directly to his attorney months ago - not the White House.

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Photo Sen. Alfonse D'Amato, R-N.Y., threatened sanctions against aides for withholding Whitewater documents. Associated Press