Did Nothing Wrong, Clinton Says, but He Avoids Specifics : Presidency: Lawyer for trooper denies explicit offer of jobs for silence. Trooper later talks of job discussion.

WASHINGTON —  President Clinton, responding for the first time to new allegations of misconduct leveled by Arkansas state troopers, insisted Wednesday that “we did not do anything wrong,” but he declined to respond to specific questions about sexual misdeeds.

The President was pressed repeatedly in a 45-minute interview with news service reporters to answer the troopers’ statements that they arranged extramarital liaisons for the former Arkansas governor and then helped him conceal them from his wife, Hillary Rodham Clinton, and from the public. He was also questioned about alleged attempts to dissuade troopers from telling their stories.

“I just have nothing else to say about this,” Clinton said. “We’ve put out a very strong statement about it and I don’t really have anything to add to what’s been said in our written statement (Sunday), or what Hillary said yesterday.”

In Little Rock, according to an affidavit issued by his attorney, state trooper Danny Ferguson denied Wednesday that Clinton had explicitly offered federal jobs to discourage troopers from speaking out about their experiences. Ferguson was the trooper who had told The Times that the President had indicated such offers to Ferguson and trooper Roger Perry, another member of the security detail while Clinton was governor of Arkansas.

In the affidavit, Ferguson was quoted by his attorney, Robert Batton, as saying: “President Clinton never offered or indicated a willingness to give any trooper a job in exchange for silence or help in shaping their stories.”

In a subsequent interview Wednesday night, however, Ferguson confirmed his earlier statement to The Times that Clinton had discussed a possible federal job for trooper Perry during a conversation with Ferguson in which, Ferguson said, the President was trying to find out what public disclosures Perry planned to make. (Perry and trooper Larry Patterson were the principal named sources for the allegations against Clinton in The Times story published in Tuesday editions. Ferguson also was a source in respect to the alleged job offers, but his identity was withheld, at his request, until he decided to release the affidavit Wednesday.)

Asked if Clinton expressly said that jobs would be offered if the troopers remained silent, Ferguson said: “He didn’t say those words.”

Perry had told The Times that he considered the timing of Clinton’s interest a clear signal that he could be considered for a federal job “if I kept quiet.”

Ferguson, in a taped interview last week, said that Clinton also had asked him if he was interested in one of two federal jobs--either as a regional head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency or as a U.S. marshal. Clinton did not connect the jobs to a specific request for silence, Ferguson said.

After his attorney issued the affidavit, Ferguson agreed to talk to The Times in an attempt to clear up apparent contradictions between the affidavit and what Ferguson previously had told the newspaper in interviews. He confirmed that Clinton had discussed jobs during the calls and that the jobs had come up after Ferguson had told Clinton that the troopers were unhappy with the President.

In the affidavit, Ferguson was quoted as saying that he told Clinton about Perry’s interest in an appointment to the President’s council on drugs. The President told Ferguson to get more information from Perry and to “get back in touch with the President,” according to the affidavit.

Perry previously had told The Times that Ferguson relayed Clinton’s inquiry to him while the troopers were playing golf. Perry said that he thought it was an inducement for silence.

In a previous interview, Ferguson had confirmed Perry’s interpretation. He said: “I have no problem with what Roger said.”

In the Washington interview Wednesday, Clinton firmly denied the allegation by some of the troopers that he had offered a job or jobs in return for their silence about sexual misconduct.

“The allegations on abuse of the state or the federal positions I have--it’s not true,” Clinton said. “That absolutely did not happen.”

When asked to deny the sexual misconduct charges in simple, straightforward language, Clinton responded:

“Well, I think we have cleared it up. I’ve told you that, you know, I just think the statement speaks for itself and I think what I have said today on the points that you’ve raised perhaps reinforces it and that’s fine with me.

“I just think it is not appropriate in a situation like this for me to do much more than I am doing. What I need to do is just keep working at my job and keep going on. Apparently, in the world we live in, things like this happen.”

Asked why questions about womanizing keep coming up, Clinton chuckled and said, “I just, I have nothing else to say about it.”

The reporters also asked the President to respond to the charge that he had abused his authority as governor by asking troopers assigned to him to drive him in his state-owned automobile to alleged assignations with women and by using the cellular telephone provided by the state to call one of the women with whom he allegedly was involved.

“We did not do anything wrong. I can say that. We did not on that score,” the President said.

Clinton’s statements were made in a year-end interview with reporters from the Associated Press, Reuters, United Press International and Agence France-Presse and in a second interview with radio reporters.

The interviews had been arranged before the allegations of infidelity were made public by The Times, the conservative American Spectator magazine and Cable News Network, but the sessions marked the second day in a row that the White House had used such a forum to respond to the allegations.

Mrs. Clinton, in her year-end interview with the wire services on Tuesday, called the charges “outrageous” and said that they were motivated by the police officers’ greed and the political enmity of Little Rock lawyer Cliff Jackson, who has publicized other stories about Clinton’s sexual activities and his efforts to avoid the military draft and who put the troopers into contact with The Times and other media organizations.

In his interview with radio reporters, the President was asked directly whether there was any truth to the womanizing charges.

“I have nothing else to say,” Clinton said. The stories are “outrageous and they’re not so,” he added.

Clinton used the previously scheduled interviews to reflect on his first year in office, listing what he believes are its signal accomplishments: approval of the North American Free Trade Agreement, successful conclusion of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade world trade talks, passage of the Brady bill gun control law, reduction in federal bureaucracy under the “reinventing government” program and approval of a long-term deficit reduction plan.

The President also cited the appointment of Ruth Bader Ginsburg to the Supreme Court, the signing of the peace agreement between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization and the success of his policy of assisting Russia’s transition to democracy and free markets.

He said that the low point of the year was the death on Oct. 3 of 18 American soldiers in Somalia.

“I think it’s worked out pretty well and history will record that we had a very good first year and we laid a foundation for a good four years, and I just want to keep building on it,” Clinton said.

Also Wednesday, three major television networks canceled long-scheduled interviews with Mrs. Clinton after her aides said that she should not be asked about the allegations.

The interviews with the CBS, ABC and NBC morning programs had been scheduled several weeks ago and at the time the networks had told Mrs. Clinton’s staff they wished to talk to her about Christmas at the White House.

“I decided to hold them to that,” said Lisa Caputo, Mrs. Clinton’s press secretary.

Broder reported from Washington and Rempel from Los Angeles. Times staff writers David Lauter and Douglas Frantz contributed to this story from Washington.