WHITEWATER . . . GOP EYES THE FOSTER FILES

TIME's Suneel Ratan reports that Senate Republicans will begin a new round of Whitewater hearings Tuesday by hammering at apparent inconsistencies in accounts of the removal of files by White House personnel from the office of top Clinton aide Vincent Foster immediately after his death in 1993. That night, then-White House counsel Bernard Nussbaum, Hillary Rodham Clinton's chief of staff Margaret Williams and aide Patsy Thomasson were in Foster's office, reportedly searching for a suicide note. They say they removed nothing. But Secret Service guard Henry O'Neill has told Senate investigators that he saw Ms. Williams leaving Foster's suite carrying "files" or "folders on top of each other." ( Williams, who denies this, has passed two polygraph tests.) Says Ratan: "The Republicans' big objective this week is to show that the Clintons were involved in some way with getting the files out of the office. But it's two years later: memories will be hazy, and there may be no way to say concretely what really happened."