A SENATE committee report due out tomorrow will implicate Mrs Hillary Rodham Clinton in what is alleged was a cover up operation concerning the Whitewater affair. But the White House has described the leaks from the report drafted by the Republican majority on the committee as "rank innuendo". The Democratic members of the committee will produce a minority "dissenting" report.
The report and 11,000 pages of testimony will go to the full Senate tomorrow after 13 months of hearings into events surrounding the suicide of a senior White House legal aide, Mr Vincent Foster, in a Washington park in July 1993.
He was a former partner of Mrs Clinton in a Little Rock law firm. He was dealing with sensitive documents concerning her alleged involvement in Whitewater and, the firing of the White House travel office staff when he shot himself. Large excerpts from the report have been leaked to the New York Times which describes it as the "toughest assessment presented by the committee's Republicans of the First Lady and her aides".
White House officials said they had not seen the report, but described it as a "purely political instrument" designed by the chairman, Senator Alfonse D'Amato, to help the Republicans in this presidential election year.
This promises to be a difficult week for President Clinton and the First Lady as his 22 point lead over Mr Bob Dole in the presidential campaign has already been cut to six points, according to a CNN/Time opinion poll.
The trial opens today of two Arkansas bankers accused of illegally channelling funds to Mr Clinton's 1990 campaign for governor of Arkansas. Mr Clinton will have to give video testimony. This week the Senate delves deeper into the White House's use of hundreds of FBI confidential files on people employed there, including prominent Republicans under the Reagan and Bush administrations.
According to the leaked excerpts from the Senate committee report, it concludes that "the evidence strongly suggests that Mrs Clinton, upon learning of Mr Foster's death, at least realised its connection to the Travelgate scandal, and perhaps to the Whitewater matter, and despatched her trusted lieutenants to contain any potential embarrassment or political damage".
The testimony of four senior advisers to the Clintons is described as "not candid" in order to protect the First Lady. Republicans are now likely to have this evidence referred to the Whitewater Special Prosecutor, Mr Kenneth Starr, with a view to prosecution for perjury.
The conviction last month of two former business partners of the Clintons for fraud in the tangled Whitewater investment has, as the White House feared, given a political boost to Mr Dole and the Republicans and whetted their appetites for further incriminating the President and his wife.
The President has tried to dampen down the FBI files affair with an apology and a promise to change the system of security checks. But it is now threatening to spiral out of his control, while Mr Dote makes increasing political capital of the affair.