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President Clinton's Attorneys Try to Get Donor Information

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.