MARGARET WARNER: Bruce Lindsey is the deputy White House counsel and a longtime friend and adviser to President Clinton. He was the treasurer for then Governor Clinton’s 1990 reelection campaign. It is that association which interests prosecutors in the current Whitewater-related trial in Little Rock. We get more on this now from NewsHour regular Stuart Taylor, legal reporter for the American Lawyer and Legal Times. Stuart, before we get into this case, explain: what is an unindicted co-conspirator? In other words, in what cases would a prosecutor choose to name some unindicted co-conspirator rather than indict them?

STUART TAYLOR, The American Lawyer: The prosecutor is saying in essence in court–and they haven’t said it yet by the way–but they apparently will–that we believe this man was part of the criminal conspiracy, along with the people who are on trial. We haven’t indicted him but the relevance of that for the purposes of the trial is that lets them get in more evidence about the unindicted co-conspirator’s or the alleged unindicted co-conspirator’s out-of-court statements than they otherwise could. It’s a way around the hearsay rule.

MS. WARNER: Explain that just a little more. What do you mean?

MR. TAYLOR: For example, if they want to–somebody, one of their witnesses, to talk about what Bruce Lindsey said to him, ordinarily that would be barred by the so-called hearsay rule. You can’t talk –you can’t testify in a trial about what somebody else said out of court. That rule has a lot of exceptions. One of the exceptions is if the person who you’re trying to quote, here Bruce Lindsey, is named by the prosecution as an unindicted co-conspirator, then you can talk about what he said out of court.

MS. WARNER: I see. Okay. Now explain this case. What’s this case about?