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Politics : Bill Clinton Scandal - SANITY CHECK -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Who, me? who wrote (6935)	10/3/1998 9:03:00 PM
From: Les H	Respond to of 67261

THE TESTIMONY The View From Just Outside Clinton's Door By JOHN M. BRODER ASHINGTON -- The White House that the American public sees is a place of grandeur and high purpose, the shrine where Presidents greet foreign leaders and host glittering state dinners, where leaders brandish the veto pen and solemnly announce the dispatch of military forces overseas. But seen from Secret Service post E-6, a small desk outside the Oval Office, the White House is a place of intrigue, sometimes juvenile, and of mordant humor about the President's private life, according to the latest batch of testimony released by Congress. The narrow hallways of the West Wing -- the revered seat of American power -- are populated with "rug rats" and "hall surfers," young aides with White House passes who hope to catch a glimpse of the leader of the free world on his way to the bathroom or to grab a can of Diet Coke. Competition for boxes of M&M candies bearing the Presidential seal is almost as intense as that for serious "face time" with the President. Most outsiders would imagine that the President's appointment book looks like that of an orthodontist, scheduled to the quarter-hour. In fact, when Clinton is at the White House, he often has large blocks of uninterrupted time, ordered by Erskine B. Bowles, the chief of staff, who wanted the President to have quiet hours to think, read and make unscripted telephone calls. Clinton's weekends are also often free for such unscheduled "office time." From the accounts provided by witnesses in the Lewinsky investigation, Clinton spent some substantial periods of that time with Monica S. Lewinsky, and, later, consulting with lawyers and aides trying to contain the potential damage from the relationship. The 4,600 pages of testimony, tapes and interviews compiled by Kenneth W. Starr, the Whitewater independent counsel, provide an unprecedented upstairs-downstairs view of life in the White House, a near-contemporaneous account of the daily routine of the West Wing. In the Clinton White House, according to grand jury testimony published on Friday, Secret Service officers consult with an Oval Office steward on how best to dispose of lipstick-stained towels and glasses. A Secret Service agent challenges Ms. Lewinsky, then a 21-year-old intern, about her business in the West Wing until the President directly orders him to admit her to the Oval Office and to close the door behind him. As in previous White Houses, access to the Oval Office is controlled by the Secret Service and the President's watchful secretaries. But one very junior employee, the West Wing receptionist, is granted virtually unlimited access to the Oval Office on a par with that of the First Lady and the Vice President until the President's secretary, Nancy V. Hernreich, cuts her off. One overwhelming impression from the documents is how little privacy the President actually has. His movements are traced almost by the step from his bedroom to his office, as Secret Service officers broadcast his location second by second through their secure radio system. Staffers and bodyguards always know who is with him in the Oval Office, even behind closed doors and drawn drapes. And although Secret Service officers are strictly instructed not to discuss what they see and hear around the West Wing, gossip spreads like kudzu. Many of the rumors appear in the documents accompanying Starr's report to Congress. The independent counsel makes no effort to discern the truth of much of the gossip and the House Judiciary Committee released much of the material unedited. "I mean, we're the Secret Service," Gary J. Byrne testified last summer. "We're there all the time. I mean, we're sort of like doorknobs. I know that's kind of a little hard to fathom, but I mean people have had incredible personal conversations in front of me." Byrne said he befriended Bayani Nelvis, the Navy steward who tended the serving pantry adjacent to the Oval Office, just around the corner from Byrne's post E-6. The Secret Service officer helped Nelvis to reach dishes and glassware on high shelves; the steward confided his concerns about the President to Byrne. One day Nelvis, who was widely known in the West Wing as "Nel," complained to Byrne about some lipstick-stained towels that the President had left in his study. Nelvis told the officer that he was tired of cleaning up that stuff, according to Byrne's testimony. Byrne suggested that Nelvis discard the towels, not send them to the laundry. "My fear was that regardless of whose -- if there was lipstick on there, regardless of whose it was, that when the people that did the laundry saw it, you know, I just didn't want to give anybody any more fuel for any more rumors about the President," he said. Although Byrne already had his suspicions about Ms. Lewinsky, he said he thought that the stains had been left by another woman who worked in the White House. Steven P. Pape, a uniformed officer of the Secret Service assigned to the southwest gate of the White House complex, told the grand jury he offered a wager about the President's behavior to a Secret Service trainee on a Saturday morning in August 1997, when Ms. Lewinsky showed up at his post. He admitted Ms. Lewinsky and then told the trainee, "This is probably the President's mistress, so treat her, you know, decent, but again, don't break the rules for her." Then he bet the new officer that Clinton would leave the White House residence and head for the Oval Office within 10 minutes to meet Ms. Lewinsky, even though the President was not customarily in his office early on Saturday morning. "And I almost lost the bet," Pape told the grand jury in August. "It was 9 minutes and 40 or 50 seconds before -- before he came down for that appointment." Officer Pape, a seven-year Secret Service veteran, said he was troubled by another of Ms. Lewinsky's visits to the White House, this one in October 1997. "She had come, it seems like, on days that she would come, one of them particularly was kind of depressing, because I want to say it was the President and the First Lady's, either their anniversary or, or something to that effect," Pape told the grand jury. "And I just made a mental thought of that was not the way to celebrate a traditional family anniversary, in my opinion." Ms. Lewinsky visited Clinton in the small study off the Oval Office on Oct. 11, 1997, a Saturday, for nearly an hour to discuss efforts to find her a job in New York. The President said that he had spoken to Bowles about getting her a favorable job recommendation and said he would enlist the aid of Vernon E. Jordan Jr., a Washington power broker and confidant of the President. Ms. Lewinsky testified that although their sexual relationship had ended several months earlier, Clinton held her by the arm and kissed her forehead. The day was the Clintons' 22d wedding anniversary. nytimes.com