Clinton’s Secretary May Revisit Grand Jury

WASHINGTON — President Clinton’s personal secretary, Betty Currie, was expected to be summoned before a grand jury investigating the White House sex scandal for a second time today, sources close to the probe said Monday.

Currie was the first witness called in January when the panel supervised by independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr began hearing evidence on whether Clinton had an affair with former White House intern Monica S. Lewinsky and illegally conspired to cover it up by inducing Lewinsky to lie under oath.

Clinton has denied wrongdoing, and implied in a sworn deposition that Lewinsky’s numerous visits to the White House after she was transferred to the Pentagon came about because Currie had befriended Lewinsky.

Meanwhile, Clinton’s attorney, David E. Kendall, sent Starr a five-page letter urging him to turn over to the Justice Department an investigation of charges that key Whitewater witness David Hale was paid off by conservative activists, the Washington Post reported in today’s editions.

In the letter, dated Friday, Kendall charged that Starr cannot “credibly or appropriately” investigate the charges himself, given his links to conservative philanthropist Richard Mellon Scaife, who funded an alleged effort by the American Spectator magazine to uncover negative information on Clinton.