White House on its guard over Clinton's video testimony

President Bill Clinton will tomorrow give his long-awaited videotaped evidence in the Whitewater trial in progress in Little Rock - but the White House is less concerned about what he says than with keeping the videotape away from the television networks and out of Republican attack ads in the autumn election campaign.

In testimony which may last six hours or more, Mr Clinton will be appearing as a defence witness on behalf of James and Susan McDougal, his former partners in the ill-fated Whitewater real-estate venture.

The McDougals, along with Jim Guy Tucker, Mr Clinton's successor as Arkansas Governor, are facing fraud and embezzlement charges relating to the Madison Guaranty savings bank, set up and run by Mr McDougal until its collapse in 1989. But for all the assiduous preparation by Mr Clinton for this latest stage of a controversy which has dogged his presidency almost from the outset, the main efforts of the White House are being directed at preventing the video tape from falling into the wrong hands.

The session, to be attended by Mr McDougal, will take place at the White House but not in the Oval Office itself. Two cameras will record the President as he speaks, watched via satellite from Little Rock by Judge George Howard, who is presiding in the case.

The link will be scrambled to stop the networks or Republican operatives from intercepting and downloading images of the testimony.

Barring major surprises, Mr Clinton is unlikely to break new ground, denying once again that he pressured David Hale, owner of a government- backed investment company, to make an illegal $300,000 (pounds 200,000) loan in 1986 to Madison that would help shield the tottering bank from the attentions of federal supervisors.

Mr Hale, who has agreed to co-operate with the Whitewater special prosecutor, Kenneth Starr, is not only the government's star witness against the McDougals and Mr Tucker but also the prime accuser of Mr Clinton. He claims the then governor attended a meeting with himself and Mr McDougal January 1986 to arrange the loan of $150,000, later raised to $300,000. "My name can't show up on this," Mr Hale claims Mr Clinton said. "Don't worry," Mr McDougal is said to have replied, "I've already taken care of this."

Both the President and Mr McDougal deny any such meeting took place and already in the trial Mr Hale has been forced to admit he lied to investigators on several occasions.

But the White House nightmare is that selective portions of the tape will be used by the Republicans to resurrect the "character" issue against Mr Clinton. The White House maintains that since the trial was not televised, it is under no obligation to release the videotape but that it will make a transcript available "in due course".