LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (Court TV) — Rebufffing Susan McDougal's claim that the Starr office was out to "get" President Clinton, a former Whitewater prosecutor testified Monday that he had actually hoped to clear the president's name.

Ray Jahn is one of last witnesses to be called in the month-long trial, which is winding to a close this week. The prosecution called him as a rebuttal witness after McDougal's defense rested on Friday.

McDougal is charged with criminal contempt and obstruction of justice because she refused to cooperate with Kenneth Starr's prosecutors in the Whitewater investigation. In the past three years, she has already been convicted of fraud and civil contempt.

Her defense in this latest trial has consisted mainly of mounting a vigorous attack on the Starr prosecutors' tactics and motives.

She accuses them of threatening her, along with other witnesses, to ferret out information against President Clinton with little regard for its veracity.

On Friday, a former friend of Kathleen Willey, Julie Hiatt Steele, supported McDougal's charge.

She said Starr had indicted her for contempt even though she testified truthfully to the grand jury, because her account undercut Willey's accusation that Clinton made unwanted sexual advances towards her.

McDougal, who testified for five days, claimed that her late ex-husband, James McDougal, invented stories for Starr to win a shorter sentence for his fraud conviction in 1996.

She said he also urged her to lie to assist Starr's pursuit of the president.

In her testimony last week, McDougal said Jahn had pressured her to falsely implicate the Clintons in wrongdoing connected to the failed Whitewater land deal.

On Monday, Jahn responded that he had no agenda against the president. A career prosecutor, he said he votes Democratic and works for a Clinton-appointed federal attorney in San Antonio, Texas.

When he began working on Whitewater in 1995, he recounted, he told Starr "that it was my hope that we would be able to clear the president." He added that he felt a criminal investigation of a sitting president would disrupt the country.

Closing arguments in McDougal's trial are expected to take place in a few days, and the jury should begin deliberating next week.

Court TV's Catherine Heins and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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