PAULA'S NEW SIDEKICK

By Jay Branegan/Washington

In most battles, disarray in the enemy ranks is a cause for celebration. President Clinton and his legal team should have been exultant last week when the attorneys for Paula Corbin Jones, who is suing the President for allegedly making a crude sexual advance in an Arkansas hotel room six years ago, abruptly withdrew from the case, citing "fundamental differences" with their client. The lawyers, Joseph Cammarata and Gilbert Davis, had been representing Jones for three years, so their sudden exit just eight months before the scheduled trial seemed to suggest that all the steam had gone out of her case.

But the Clinton team is keeping the champagne corked because the news is bad news for them too: a case that had been edging toward a settlement for months is now off the rails and careering toward a trial. The lawyers quit because Jones, with the encouragement of her influential "friend and adviser," a glamorous California conservative commentator named Susan Carpenter-McMillan, rejected an apparent offer of $700,000 and a vaguely worded statement from Clinton that Jones did nothing improper. While it's not clear at all that Jones can win, the President has even more to lose, in standing and reputation, if the case proceeds to a jury. A trial would offer the spectacle of the Commander in Chief answering allegations that, as Governor of Arkansas, he called Jones, then a 24-year-old state employee, into a Little Rock hotel room, dropped his pants and asked her to "kiss it," revealing what Jones claims are "distinguishing characteristics" on his genital area.

Moreover, chances to settle out of court further dimmed last week when one of the two insurance companies paying for Clinton's defense dropped out, while the other may do the same. For months White House officials hoped that Clinton, who says he doesn't remember meeting Jones and denies the sexual-harassment allegations, could mitigate the embarrassment of a cash settlement by having his insurers write the check. But paying out of his own pocket would seem a clearer admission of guilt.

Details of just what went wrong inside the Jones camp were hard to come by, but it appears that Cammarata and Davis told their client that the deal at hand--the full $700,000 she'd originally asked for, plus a statement of regret from Clinton about any harm to her reputation--was the best she could do and strongly urged her to take it. But Jones, now married with two young children and living in California, has long said she was in this fight to win an apology, not a payoff. And with Carpenter-McMillan's backing, she rejected her lawyers' advice. The attorneys promptly filed, and were granted, a motion to dump the case. Says Carpenter-McMillan: "This case was never about money. It was always about language."

Now, though, it's also about Carpenter-McMillan, a striking blond who is a fixture on California talk shows. A self-styled "conservative feminist," she was particularly prominent as an abortion opponent until 1990, when she admitted she'd had one herself as an unmarried college student. She still opposes abortion but has turned her attention to child-abuse issues as head of the Women's Coalition, an organization largely funded by her wealthy husband that operates out of their Los Angeles home.

Carpenter-McMillan is the source of the Jones team turmoil. After a three-year friendship with Jones, she decided the attorneys weren't doing enough to counter damaging publicity about Jones. "Joe [Cammarata] didn't want to say anything, and that's why I got involved," she says. Opponents say Jones has been body-snatched by the Clinton bashers. "This thing was political from the beginning, and now it's gotten more political," says James Carville, Clinton's former campaign manager and Jones' fiercest public critic.

Carpenter-McMillan says she's just encouraging Jones to follow her instincts, but that may not be prudent in such a pressure-cooker case. "Can a nonlawyer steer this vessel to port, or is Paula going to go down with the ship?" asks feminist attorney Gloria Allred. Carpenter-McMillan says she's looking for a new lawyer to take the case, "one that I feel really good with." And who might that lawyer be? Carpenter-McMillan denies that her husband William, a personal-injury attorney, will now take over. But then she chirps, "Wait till my husband demands pictures of the President's genitals."

Clinton's team hasn't been sure-footed throughout the case either. Washington superlawyer Robert Bennett, for instance, ran afoul of the President's backers in the feminist community when he threatened to drag Jones' sexual history into court. And some of his critics point out that he was brought in to settle the case, not try it. If a deal isn't struck soon, Jones may not be the only one looking for a new attorney.

--With reporting by Karen Tumulty/Washington

With reporting by Karen Tumulty/Washington