More on Clinton from abroad: (no pun intended)
Times of London - United States - September 7, 1998
Clintons return to hostile Democrat
reception
FROM BRONWEN MADDOX IN WASHINGTON
PRESIDENT Clinton returned from Russia and Ireland
yesterday to face the worsening crisis over his presidency as
more leading Democrats deserted his cause and Washington
waited tensely for the impeachment report from Kenneth
Starr, the prosecutor.
A stunned and panicky White House is bracing itself for the
report on Mr Clinton's affair with Monica Lewinsky, which
could arrive in Congress this week, and which is set to be
even more sexually explicit and legally perilous than his
supporters had feared.
In Ms Lewinsky's final two hours of testimony on August 26,
Mr Starr asked such detailed and intimate questions that he
arranged for all lawyers and stenographers in the room to be
women, according to Time magazine. In a further
unexpected blow this weekend, Parris Glendening, the
Democratic Governor of Maryland, pointedly distanced
himself from Mr Clinton by cancelling a fund-raising event
with the President which would have given him crucial cash
for his difficult re-election fight.
The White House had counted Mr Glendening as one of the
President's most vocal defenders, but was rebuffed when it
tried to persuade him to go ahead with the event. Even in
strongly Democratic Maryland, the Governor's private polls
show public support for Mr Clinton withering, according to
The Washington Post.
The Starr report on Mr Clinton's affair with the former White
House trainee, which will provide the formal basis for
impeachment hearings or pressure for Mr Clinton's
resignation, could be delivered to Congress as early as this
week, according to Newsweek.
Six of Mr Starr's prosecutors are racing to complete the
300-page manuscript. He has also roped in the Christian
author and legal scholar Stephen Bates - described as a
"genuinely moral conservative" by colleagues - to bolster the
team.
Waiting for the report, which will determine the future of the
Clinton presidency, has sent Washington into a fever.
Republicans have accused the White House of planning a
"glass-house" counter-attack, "outing" Republican sexual
scandals in retaliation. This weekend Dan Burton, a
Republican moralist, who called Mr Clinton "a scumbag" just
months ago, was forced to admit he had fathered an
illegitimate son during his marriage.
Yesterday the capital was awash with rumours of the
report's details, from stories that Mr Clinton had a sexual
affair with another trainee, to tales that he had groped a
woman in the back seat of the presidential limousine.
On Capitol Hill, party leaders were trying to calm the fever,
urging members to wait until they could consider the facts
before calling for Mr Clinton's resignation or impeachment.
Asked whether he expected the US to have President
Clinton or President Gore in a year's time, Trent Lott, the
Senate leader, said carefully: "It depends what is in the Starr
report."
This week Newt Gingrich, the House Speaker, will hold an
unprecedented meeting with Richard Gephardt, leader of the
Democratic minority, to decide who will see the most explicit
parts. But privately aides admit there is no chance of keeping
the sexual details secret behind a "firewall".
Democrats, who had hopes just months ago of reclaiming the
House of Representatives, are now fearing a rout in the
November elections. They are terrified that Republicans will
increase their majority in the 100-seat Senate to 60.
The desperate and demoralised "spinners" in the White
House have reverted to the tactic of "prebuttals" which they
used in last year's campaign finance controversies - leaking
sensitive information to try to control the light in which it is
presented. In recent days they have revealed that the
relationship was briefer and more sporadic than widely
assumed - just half a dozen encounters, with a final tryst in
February 1997.
the-times.co.uk |
