ALTHOUGH Bill and Hillary "Clinton were not on trial, the guilty verdicts in the Whitewater case have opened up a nightmare vista just when they hoped this chapter from their Arkansas past would close.
In two weeks' time, the First Couple will be hosting President "Robinson at a glittering White House dinner; but there will be a shadow. On June 17th, the trial opens of two Arkansas bankers accused of illegally funnelling funds to Bill Clinton's 1990 campaign to be re elected governor.
The prosecution is also alleging that one of the accused was given a state post by Mr Clinton as a pay off. Yet again the President will be called to testify by video link.
On the day the trial opens, a Senate committee which has been investigating the White House handling of other aspects of the Whitewater affair is expected to issue a critical report. This time Hillary Clinton will be a target because of the mysterious disappearance and reappearance of her billing records when she was doing legal work for a bank involved in Whitewater. Her alleged role in the dismissal of the White House travel office staff is also under scrutiny.
This month will also see The sentencing of Jim and Susan McDougal, one time friends and business partners of the Clintons, on 22 charges of fraud. Pressure is on them to co operate with the special prosecutor, Mr Kenneth Starr, and provide information which could implicate the Clintons in return for leniency.
Two congressional committees investigating the White House handling of Whitewater and two grand juries examining possible criminal actions which could reach to the Clintons are now being revved up again.
It just goes on and on. The sexual harassment case against the President by Ms Paula Corbin Jones has been revived in the public mind after an illjudged attempt by his lawyers to use his title of commander in chief of the armed forces to have it postponed indefinitely.
And yet, the Clintons are getting on with it. The strain is clearly there but the White House is fighting back. Hillary Clinton has raised her profile with an interview in Time magazine in which she discusses having another child or adopting one when the election is over.
She also bared her soul in a half hour television interview on the Jim Lelirer Neshour on the very day the Whitewater verdicts came in. She spoke with feeling about "living with this extraordinary kind of atmosphere" and confessed that she did not dare to keep a diary in case it got subpoenaed by one of the multiple investigations.
But until this week and the Little Rock verdicts, the President's re election campaign was running so smoothly that the Republicans were almost screaming their frustration at his "me too" tactics. Time and again, the President was stealing their clothes on welfare reform, crime, the budget deficit, and opposition to homosexual marriages.
Bob Dole has had to leave his beloved Senate. He has shed his dark suits and ties in an attempt to catch up with his younger rival who is showing superb political skills envied by the Republicans while they denounce his "all things to all men" or "flip flop" tactics.
Until now the conventional wisdom was that Whitewater was incomprehensible to ordinary voters. While it referred originally to the ill fated investment in a holiday home development by the Clintons and the McDougals back in 1978, the term now covers a multitude.
It can refer to the tragic suicide of the White House assistant counsel, Vince Foster, a former legal colleague and friend of Hillary; to the dismissal of the White House travel office staff; to the legal work Hillary did for the McDougal's bank before it crashed; to just about anything in the Clintons' past the media decide has a sleaze factor. No wonder that the major book on Whitewater is entitled Blood Sport.
The pundits debate heatedly over whether Whitewater is having any significant effect on the electorate which will chose Mr Clinton or Mr Dole next November. It is recalled that the "IranContra" affair raged during Ronald Reagan's presidency but left him largely unscathed and turned Oliver North into a hero.
But for the first time in months, Mr Clinton's huge lead over Mr Dole in the polls has been checked. The 22 points gap has narrowed to 16. The number who believe that the President is "hiding something" has climbed to 60 per cent.
After years of talk and inquiries about Whitewater, the American public now see an Arkansas jury finding the business partners of the Clintons guilty of frauds which ended up costing the taxpayer dollars $65 million (£42 million). So it is not just endless chatter anymore. The law is taking its course and there is no knowing where it might stop.
Democratic strategists like Senator Chris Dodd and political advisor, James Carville, concede it has been an unhappy week for the Clintons but insist that Whitewater will not be a factor in the election campaign when it really counts next autumn. It is too far removed from people's everyday lives, Mr Carville says, and there are some skeletons in the Dole cupboard, such as his former banker and campaign manager, Dave Owen, who was imprisoned for fraud.
Before the bad news from Little Rock this week, Bill Clinton was able to joke to an audience in Boston that if he were single he would not mind dating the 500 year old "Ice Maiden" mummy now on display in Washington after being recovered from an Inca sacrificial site in Peru. This is a wise cracking side of Bill Clinton that many younger voters can relate to rather than 73 year old Bob Dole's arcane Senate jargon.
But he won't risk any jokes about Whitewater.