EXCLUSIVE: SECRET SERVICE AGENTS CONFIRM LEWINSKY STORY!
Capitol Hill Blue
7/20/98 By Doug Thompson
Secret Service agents confirm key parts of former White House intern Monica Lewinsky's story about being alone with President Clinton on specific dates and phone calls that Clinton made to her, Capitol Hill Blue has learned.
"Agents can, and will, confirm to the grand jury that the President was alone with Miss Lewinsky in the Oval Office on more than one occasion" including a key December 28, 1997, meeting after Lewinsky was subpoenaed in the Paula Jones sexual harassment case, a source close to the subpoenaed Secret Service agents confirmed Sunday.
At least two agents will testify that Clinton and Lewinsky were observed embracing and one may say the President and young woman were engated in "mutual fondling," although no agent is known to have observed the pair in a sex act.
The testimony expected this week will also confirm that the President made phone calls to Lewinsky while he was out of the country on official business.
"Basically, the testimony of certain agents will be in direct conflict with previous sworn statements of the President," the source said.
Such testimony establishes perjury by Clinton, who has sworn under oath that he was not alone with the former intern. However, retired Secret Service officer Robert Ferguson told the grand jury on Friday that Clinton was alone with Lewinsky on several occasions. Two current officers, Gary Byrne and John Muskett. Byrne said they saw Lewinsky on her last days at the White House before she was transferred to the Pentagon.
Clinton's sworn testimony of Jan. 17 denying he had a sexual relationship with Lewinsky provides a starting point for Starr's questioning of Secret Service personnel. Under questioning by Paula Jones' lawyers, Clinton testified about being an acquaintance of Lewinsky because she was a friend of his secretary, Betty Currie.
"It seems to me she brought things to me once or twice on the weekends," Clinton testified of Lewinsky. "In that case, whatever time she would be in there," she would "drop it off, exchange a few words and go." In her job with the White House office of legislative affairs, said Clinton, Lewinsky would bring materials dealing with various issues when Congress was in session.
In Friday's testimony, however, the three agents painted the picture of a President who knew Lewinsky well and who spent "considerable" time with her behind closed doors in the Oval Office.
Sources say additional testimony this week will poke even more holes in the President's version of events.
"It will become clear why the White House fought so hard to keep the agents from testifying," the source said.
Lawyers for some of the agents, however, continue to downplay what the officers may have seen or heard.
Michael Leibig, an attorney for three of the subpoenaed agents, said the uniformed officers protecting the president are trained not to pay attention to private conversations, a reporter suggested they may know if the president lied in a deposition.
Leibig said unlike normal police officers who are trained to take note of goings on around them, uniformed Secret Service agents are chiefly concerned with the president's safety.
"Once they've cleared the security issues, they're specifically trained not to pay attention to what's going on," he said.
But Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott says White House attempts to keep Secret Service personnel from testifying in the Monica Lewinsky investigation suggest a coverup effort.
''If there's no problem there, tell the truth and be done with it,'' Lott, R-Miss., said Sunday. ''That's why I don't understand about the Secret Service agents, without getting into the legal niceties and arguments that they have. They appear to be hiding something.''
White House spokesman Jim Kennedy called that an affront to the people sworn to safeguard President Clinton.
''It's regrettable that the majority leader appears to question the integrity of people who put their lives on the line every day in the service of their country,'' he said.
''The legal issues involving the Secret Service are being handled completely independently by the attorney general and the secretary of the Treasury,'' Kennedy said. ''And they are basing their decisions on the advice of the law enforcement professionals of the Secret Service.''
John Czwartacki, Lott's spokesman, said the senator's comment about ''hiding something'' referred to stonewalling by the White House in the investigation, not to the Secret Service.
Lawyers for some Secret Service plainclothes agents and uniformed officers who have been subpoenaed by Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr said their clients have no salacious stories to tell a grand jury about Clinton and Ms. Lewinsky, a former White House intern who reportedly told a friend of sexual encounters with the president.
They said concern centers on the side effects of their testimony.
John Kotelly, attorney for the head of the president's personal security detail, Larry Cockell, said on ABC's ''This Week'' that agents worry that their testimony could erode ''the trust that has been built up, and it has to start anew with every president that comes into office.'' He said the erosion of that trust could mean ''the president may ... feel a need to push the Secret Service away.''
Kotelley also suggested the questioning may not turn up much in the way of specifics.
Secret Service agents are close to the president in public situations, he acknowledged, ''but in cases where ... he is in private situations, secure situations like in the White House, the president has privacy and the Secret Service respects that privacy.''
Justice Department lawyers appealed unsuccessfully to federal courts last week to block the questioning on security grounds.
Three current or former Secret Service employees testified to a grand jury Friday. Cockell and other agents and officers are expected to be questioned this week.
At least two officers have told Justice Department lawyers they saw Clinton and Ms. Lewinsky alone, though not in an embarrassing situation, Newsweek magazine reports in this week's issue.
Starr especially wants to know about the evening of last Dec. 28, which he believes to be important in making an obstruction-of-justice case, Newsweek reported. That may have been the last White House meeting between the president and Ms. Lewinsky, soon after the young woman was subpoenaed in Paula Jones' sexual harassment lawsuit against Clinton, the magazine said.
Starr is trying to determine whether the two discussed how Ms. Lewinsky would deal with questions about her relationship with Clinton. Both have denied having a sexual affair.
freerepublic.com
|
