Counsel considers indictment of Clinton
Lewisky case still called 'open matter' for probers
By David A. Vise Washington Post, 4/11/2000
WASHINGTON - Independent counsel Robert W. Ray regards the investigation of President Clinton's relationship with Monica S. Lewinsky as an 'open matter' and is actively considering seeking an indictment against the president after he leaves office next January.
Rather than winding down the independent counsel's office after the departure of Kenneth W. Starr and Clinton's impeachment trial, Ray recently hired six new lawyers with significant prosecutorial and other experience, as well as one investigator, and has an FBI agent detailed to his staff. In addition, Ray has projected spending $3.5 million over the next six months, an increase over the $3.1 million spent during the past half-year.
Among the criminal charges being weighed against Clinton in the Lewinsky matter are perjury, obstruction of justice, making false statements, and conspiracy to commit those crimes when he was questioned under oath about his relationship with the former White House intern.
'It is an open investigation,' Ray said in an interview yesterday. 'There is a principle to be vindicated, and that principle is that no person is above the law, even the president of the United States. That is what we have been charged with doing.'
Ray previously has said he would defer any decision about whether to indict Clinton until after the November elections. But the new disclosures about the aggressiveness of the investigation indicate that this is not an academic exercise and that an indictment of the president is under serious consideration.
Clinton's private attorney, David E. Kendall, declined to comment.
Reid Weingarten, a former senior trial attorney in the Justice Department's public integrity section and a Washington defense lawyer, said yesterday that the public would be surprised by the direction of Ray's investigation.
In addition to examining Clinton's testimony about Lewinsky, Ray's investigation involves allegations that Clinton made false statements about his relationship with Kathleen E. Willey, and that others subsequently sought improperly to silence her.
Ray does not intend to make a decision about whether to indict Clinton until after the president is out of office next January, because the indictment of a sitting president would be subject to constitutional challenges that would go on for years. Under the independent counsel law, Ray, who joined the office about a year ago and has been serving as independent counsel for six months, is required to act in a speedy manner.
'By waiting, I am being prompt,' Ray said yesterday.
Ray said he recently hired seven new officials to replace people who departed. Overall, the independent counsel's office has 44 employees, including lawyers, investigators and support staff, 10 fewer than it did one year ago.
In his impeachment referral to Congress, Starr said he believed there was 'substantial and credible information' that Clinton lied under oath, both before the grand jury and in his deposition in the Paula Jones civil lawsuit, and that he obstructed justice in trying to cover up his affair with Lewinsky.
Starr suggested to the House Judiciary Committee in November 1998 that he had not reached a conclusion on the tougher question of whether the evidence against Clinton was enough that a 'fair-minded jury would convict based on these facts, with the witnesses ... as we find them, beyond a reasonable doubt.'
The House voted to impeach Clinton on charges of perjury and obstruction of justice, but the Senate voted not to remove him from office.
Last year, a federal judge in Arkansas ordered Clinton to pay nearly $90,000 to Paula Jones's legal team for giving false testimony about his relationship with Lewinsky, marking the first time that a sitting president has been punished for contempt of court.
Ray, who recently announced that he had completed an investigation into the White House's improper handling of FBI files, will probably issue final reports this summer about the White House travel office firings and by fall about the Clintons' Whitewater investment. Ray's office will not seek indictments in either case, meaning Hillary Rodham Clinton's Senate campaign in New York will not be tarnished by criminal charges.
But depending on the timing of Ray's reports, which he submits to a special three-judge panel, and the timing of their public release by the judges, the Senate race still could be influenced by information in the reports. If the Whitewater report is not ready for release in September, the independent counsel's office will wait until after the election, avoiding allegations of an 'October surprise.'
This story ran on page A01 of the Boston Globe on 4/11/2000.
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