WASHINGTON INSIGHT

FAMILY AFFAIR: President Clinton is gearing up an extra-large effort to help Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) keep her seat in next year’s election, beginning with a probable appearance at a fund-raiser next month. “California’s an important state and it’s a competitive seat,� a White House aide explains. “Plus, they’re related.� Well, sort of. In 1994, Boxer’s daughter, Nicole, married First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton’s younger brother, Tony, in the White House’s Rose Garden. Boxer’s announced GOP opponents are state Treasurer Matt Fong, San Diego Mayor Susan Golding and millionaire businessman Darrell Issa; a fourth possible challenger is Rep. Sonny Bono (R-Palm Springs).

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TOP SECRET? The amount of money the federal government spends on espionage and intelligence is one of the worst-kept secrets in Washington. The total annual budget for the U.S. intelligence community--which includes, among other agencies, the CIA, the National Security Agency, the National Reconnaissance Office and military intelligence--is $28 billion. But the government insists on keeping the spy numbers classified, supposedly out of fear that a budget figure would tip off America’s “enemies.� Fed up with this charade, the Federation of American Scientists filed a Freedom of Information Act request for the information--only to have the CIA refuse to release what it considers classified. So this week, the group took the matter a step further, filing a lawsuit against the CIA to force the disclosure of the budget numbers. “Neither the CIA nor Congress has been able to shake this budget number loose, so we are going to,� vowed Steve Aftergood, director of the group’s Project on Government Secrecy.

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THE PEN(ITENTIARY) IS MIGHTIER . . . Seems like everybody wants to find work for former associate attorney general and key Whitewater figure Webster L. Hubbell. Officials and friends of the Clinton administration helped arrange at least a dozen job deals for Hubbell in the year after he resigned his post in the face of criminal investigations of his fraudulent law firm billings. Hubbell has served a prison sentence for having bilked his ex-clients and partners of $482,410, and self-appointed journalism ethics guru James Fallows apparently wanted to offer the ex-con another gig. But when reporters at the Washington-based U.S. News & World Report caught wind of their editor’s proposal for a first-person piece about rich white guys in jail, they spiked the idea.

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LEND ME YOUR EARS: Call it an extremely press-friendly policy or a case of someone desperate for ink. Rep. Jim Saxton (R-N.J.), chairman of Congress’ Joint Economic Committee, sent out a press release last week headlined “Only FIVE More Days ‘Til The FOMC!!!� The advisory was not, of course, meant to promote Tuesday’s meeting of the Federal Reserve’s Open Market Committee, but rather Saxton’s views on the Fed, “interest rates, monetary policy and price stability.� Saxton’s five-day notice for interview scheduling may set a new standard for press availability.

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WHO YOU GONNA BELIEVE? Last year, former FBI agent Gary Aldrich created a stir by charging in a widely publicized book that Clinton frequently sneaked out of the White House, hidden in the back seat of a car under a blanket and the cloak of darkness, to spend time at a nearby Marriott Hotel. This week, the New Yorker magazine quotes Aldrich as saying “the Marriott thing was not quite solid,� and blaming the sensational charge on his publisher, Regnery. “It was hypothetical,� he said, according to the magazine. But Aldrich and his publisher now say he was misquoted and didn’t mean to retract the allegation.