WASHINGTON (AP) -- The former director of fund raising for Paula
Corbin Jones' legal fund is fighting a subpoena by President Clinton's
attorneys for donor records on grounds that the FBI is already
investigating bizarre incidents of harassment and contributors must be
protected.
While careful not to implicate Clinton's legal team with her allegations
of
wiretapping and theft, Washington public relations executive Cindy Hays
said Saturday that the subpoena is ``just another form of their
harassment.''
Robert Bennett, Clinton's lead attorney in Mrs. Jones' sexual harassment
lawsuit, ``is thinking `Let's bother them a little bit more ... let's
see how
miserable we can make everybody involved,'' Hays said in an interview.
Bennett had Hays served two weeks ago with a subpoena asking for ``all
documents in her possession or control concerning or relating to Paula
Jones.''
Bennett said Saturday he was looking for evidence of Mrs. Jones' motive
and bias. ``We say from Day One that Paula Jones is being controlled by
people who want to harm the president. Mrs. Hays is a player in this and
we're entitled to her records,'' Bennett contended.
Hays' attorney, Thomas S. Neuberger, called the request a ``fishing
expedition'' that posed a threat to the free-speech rights of
contributors.
``They used to do that kind of thing to the NAACP in Mississippi in the
'50s and '60s,'' he said.
Mrs. Jones alleges that Clinton solicited oral sex from her in 1991,
when
he was Arkansas governor and she was a state employee. Depositions in
the case begin in Little Rock, Ark., on Monday, with a trial scheduled
to
begin next May.
In papers to be filed on October 13, Hays asks the U.S. District Court in
Little Rock, Ark., for a protective order claiming, ``the release of
information regarding the confidential donors to the Paula Jones Legal
Fund can reasonably be expected to lead to reprisals against those
individuals.''
In a sworn affidavit, Hays, who severed ties to Mrs. Jones' defense over
the summer, alleges that since January, she has been ``terrorized'' by
unknown persons who broke into her office, tampered with the burglar
alarm, wiretapped telephone and computer lines, stole files and copied
documents.
The incidents began four days after the Supreme Court heard oral
arguments in the lawsuit against Clinton, Hays swears in the affidavit.
She
said the FBI computer crime squad was notified and subsequently
undertook surveillance at Hays' firm after a July 15 phone conversation
with an assistant U.S. attorney was tapped into and the intercepter
played
the French tune ``Frere Jacques'' on a telephone keypad.
An FBI spokesman refused to comment Saturday on any ongoing
investigation.
Hays said she does not accuse Bennett's team of the high-tech hijinks.
``He'd go to jail and never practice law again,'' she said. ``I think
Bob
Bennett is a ton smarter than that.''
But Neuberger, her attorney, said there is reason to fear harassment of
donors if some 100 pages of records are turned over.
``If Cindy Hays was terrorized for six months, the people whose names
and addresses are on those lists will be terrorized too. Whoever it is
obviously has the sophisticated technology to figure out how,'' he said.