October 5, 1998
Lewinsky Case Documents Are
Expected to Give GOP a Boost
By JEFFREY TAYLOR
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
WASHINGTON -- While the House Judiciary Committee's latest
document dump helps President Clinton by casting his adversaries in an
unflattering light, it also shows important details Republicans on the House
Judiciary Committee will probably pursue in impeachment proceedings.
The evidence, among other things, suggests
the Clinton administration was worried earlier
than was previously known about independent
counsel Kenneth Starr's interest in the
president's relationship with Monica Lewinsky. It shows the weak memory
and elusive testimony of Betty Currie, Mr. Clinton's secretary, which is
likely to get further scrutiny. And it establishes a connection, in Ms.
Lewinsky's mind, between silence about her affair with the president and
the prospect Mr. Clinton's powerful friends might help her get a desirable
job.
Taken together, these details from 4,600 pages of testimony and other
materials released Friday give the committee's Republican lawyers tools to
try to buttress and perhaps even expand Mr. Starr's case for
impeachment.
Democrats, in turn, point to elements of the evidence that work to the
president's advantage, particularly statements by Ms. Lewinsky that clearly
support Mr. Clinton's narrow definition of "sexual relations" and the
controlling tone of former White House employee Linda Tripp as she
secretly recorded her conversations with Ms. Lewinsky. Ms. Tripp, says
Democratic Rep. Zoe Lofgren of California, comes off as "an older
woman trying to set up a younger one."
White House Seeks Definition
Moreover, in a letter to the top Republican and Democratic members of
the Judiciary Committee, the president's lawyers and the White House
counsel argue that the panel has an obligation to define impeachable
conduct before voting on whether to begin proceedings.
"Nothing in the Starr referral is remotely sufficient to warrant an
impeachment inquiry," the letter contends, employing historical precedents
as old as Alexander Hamilton's payment of hush money to keep his own
affairs secret.
But there is plenty in the new evidence for Republicans to bore in on. One
major question will be exactly when the White House first suspected Mr.
Starr was investigating Mr. Clinton's relationship with the former intern.
As of Jan. 16, the documents show, administration aides including Deputy
Chief of Staff John Podesta became aware that reporters were on the trail
of, as Mr. Podesta put it in grand-jury testimony, "a blockbuster story
having to do with Ken Starr and some tapes." The next day, a Saturday,
even as President Clinton swore in a deposition in the Paula Jones
sexual-harassment lawsuit that he hadn't had an affair with Ms. Lewinsky,
Mr. Podesta fielded questions about Ms. Lewinsky from a reporter for
Newsweek magazine.
By Sunday, the Internet-based Drudge Report was reporting that
Newsweek had just killed a story about a sexual affair between a White
House intern and Mr. Clinton. That day, Ms. Currie says in her grand-jury
testimony, the president asked her a series of questions seemingly aimed at
confirming he hadn't had sex with Ms. Lewinsky. That night Mr. Clinton
called Ms. Currie at home, she testified, told her about the Drudge Report,
and asked her to contact Ms. Lewinsky.
Currie's Memory Questioned
Two or three days later -- Ms. Currie says she couldn't remember exactly
which day -- Mr. Clinton called his secretary into the Oval Office: "It was
sort of a recapulation [sic] of what we had talked about on Sunday -- you
know, 'I was never alone with her' -- that sort of thing," Ms. Currie says.
Never forthcoming in her testimony, Ms. Currie grows increasingly vague
on details as her three interviews before the grand-jury progress,
prompting one prosecutor to ask how she can do her job with so many
memory lapses.
Whether Mr. Clinton knew during his conversations with his secretary that
Mr. Starr was investigating his affair with Ms. Lewinsky is important: Ms.
Currie seemed certain to be a witness in the Starr investigation. One of the
grounds for impeachment later asserted in Mr. Starr's report to Congress
is that Mr. Clinton tried to obstruct justice by "attempting to influence the
testimony of Betty Currie."
A central feature of the new documents is the transcript of Ms. Tripp's
tape-recorded conversations with Ms. Lewinsky. The transcript certainly
appears to support the Democratic contention that Ms. Tripp manipulated
Ms. Lewinsky in an effort to implicate the president and his friend, lawyer
Vernon Jordan, who is also a director of Dow Jones & Co., which
publishes The Wall Street Journal.
Link Between Silence, New Job
The transcript also establishes, in Ms. Lewinsky's own words, a link
between her silence about her relationship with the president and her
desire to leave a Pentagon job she says she hated for a more glamorous
position in TV news, at the MTV music-video channel, or at a New York
ad agency. But Ms. Lewinsky speculates in an early conversation with Ms.
Tripp that the president might be hesitant to help her get a job with a big
salary because it might seem "the reason all this is happening is because
she was his [Mr. Clinton's] girlfriend." Later, she observes such a
high-paying position could create the impression that "they gave her [Ms.
Lewinsky] a job to shut her up."
Mr. Clinton's lawyers argue there is no direct evidence anyone promised
Ms. Lewinsky a job in exchange for her silence. Ms. Lewinsky denied in
later grand-jury testimony that the job help was intended to keep her from
disclosing the affair.
Republicans, says GOP Judiciary Committee member Asa Hutchinson of
Arkansas, will delve further into the roles Mr. Jordan played in helping
with Ms. Lewinsky's job search and in advising the president, paying
special attention to the affidavit Ms. Lewinsky filed in the Jones case
denying she and Mr. Clinton had had a sexual relationship.
The newly released records do little to undercut Mr. Starr's charge that the
president lied when he denied stimulating Ms. Lewinsky sexually. The
documents raise new questions about the Clinton administration's
unsuccessful court fight to block Secret Service officers from answering
certain questions. This conflict occurred at a time when prosecutors were
still trying to prove Mr. Clinton and Ms. Lewinsky had an affair, and the
Secret Service officers' testimony was especially damaging on that score.
They testified, based on how much time they spent alone together, that it
was commonly assumed that the president and Ms. Lewinsky were having
sex.
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