Sue Hartigan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A top aide to President Clinton got "a number of reports" that Monica Lewinsky was behaving improperly around Clinton when she was a junior White House aide, a former White House official said Friday. The former official, who asked not to be identified, said these reports, and deputy White House chief of staff Evelyn Lieberman's own observations, led Lieberman to arrange for Lewinsky's transfer to the Pentagon in the spring of 1996. "It was a number of reports and her own evidence and talking to people that led her to ask to have Lewinsky transferred," the source said. Lieberman, now director of the Voice of America, believed that Lewinsky was "hanging around and trying to get near the president," but had no knowledge of any sexual contact between Clinton and the former intern, the former official said. Independent counsel Kenneth Starr continues to investigate allegations that Clinton had sex with Lewinsky and conspired to cover it up, lying and obstructing justice in the now-dismissed Paula Jones sexual harassment lawsuit. Clinton and Lewinsky deny the allegations. The New York Times reported Friday that Gary Byrne, a uniformed member of the Secret Service assigned to the White House, told Lieberman that he had seen Lewinsky in the West Wing of the White House -- where the Oval Office is located -- when he did not believe the woman was authorized to be there. The officer also expressed concern about Lewinsky's after-hours access to the area, the newspaper said. "She (Lieberman) talked to Gary Byrne, but she doesn't have any recollection of him telling her about Monica Lewinsky. It's possible," a Lieberman aide told Reuters. In another development, the head of the conservative legal foundation financing Jones' effort to sue Clinton denied a Fox television news report that Jones and her husband were so angry with him they had tried to find alternate financing. The report quoted an unidentified source as saying Jones' husband had said Rutherford Institute president John Whitehead cared more about his own publicity than helping his client. "This is the most absolutely irresponsible journalism I've seen. To run with a story like this which is just fabrication is crazy," Whitehead told Reuters. Meantime, a former Miss America who said last month she had a consensual one-night fling with Clinton 15 years ago when he was Arkansas governor complained Friday that she has been hounded by investigators and the media. Elizabeth Ward Gracen, star of the syndicated television drama "Highlander," fled to Europe at one point to avoid being subpoenaed by Starr's office. "People were like a couple of steps behind me for quite awhile. My parents, their house is still staked out. My boyfriend's house, there are reporters and investigators staking that out," Ward said in a "Dateline NBC" interview. Gracen denied there was any connection between her 1992 denial of having had an affair with Clinton and acting jobs that came her way almost immediately afterward. -- Two rules in life: 1. Don't tell people everything you know. 2. Subscribe/Unsubscribe, email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] In the body of the message enter: subscribe/unsubscribe law-issues
