The Week February 27 - March 5

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NATION

A New Whitewater Torrent

The Whitewater affair took its first high-profile Administration victim on Saturday when White House counsel Bernard Nussbaum tendered his resignation to Bill Clinton. Nussbaum was one of nine Clinton aides and Treasury Department officials upon whom the FBI served subpoenas at the behest of Whitewater special counsel Robert Fiske. Others included Harold Ickes, deputy chief of staff, and Margaret Williams, chief of staff for Hillary Rodham Clinton. The subpoenas followed damaging revelations of briefings between Treasury officials knowledgeable about a federal investigation of the Clintons' role in the Whitewater scandal and White House aides. The departure of Nussbaum, previously criticized for his involvement in the White House travel-office fiasco and the investigation into the death of deputy counsel Vincent Foster, is unlikely to appease Republicans, who have been pressing yet harder for congressional Whitewater hearings.

And a Rose Law Firm Thorn

The Rose Law Firm in Little Rock, Arkansas -- where Mrs. Clinton used to ply her trade -- generated more potentially embarrassing news for the President. Associate Attorney General Webster Hubbell acknowledged that the firm had questioned him about his billing practices while he was a lawyer there, but he denied any improprieties. There were also reports that documents had been taken and shredded from the files of Vincent Foster, the former Rose and White House lawyer whose suicide is under investigation. The firm denied that any Foster files were destroyed.

A Trade Center Guilty Verdict

After five months of trial, hundreds of witnesses and less than a week of deliberations, a jury convicted all four defendants on all counts in the World Trade Center bombing case. "Injustice!" shouted the lead defendant, Mohammed Salameh, who like the others could be sentenced to life in prison.

Terror on the Brooklyn Bridge

Raising fears of more Middle East-related violence in the U.S., a gunman in a trailing car opened fire on a van carrying young Hasidic Jews across New York City's Brooklyn Bridge, wounding four of the riders, two critically (one was left brain-dead). An intensive manhunt yielded a Lebanese suspect, two alleged accomplices and a cache of weapons.

The Evidence Against Ames

Federal prosecutors unveiled some of the evidence collected against accused CIA mole Aldrich Ames and his wife. Among the items: nine pages of instructions from the Soviets, including an entry indicating that Ames unmasked an East European security officer; and an accounting statement from Moscow noting that by 1989 some $2.7 million -- more than previously thought -- had already been appropriated to Ames for his work.

A Balanced-Budget No

Failing to muster the required two-thirds majority by a mere four votes, the Senate rejected the latest incarnation of a balanced-budget constitutional amendment, effectively killing the proposal for yet another year.

Mitchell Retires