WASHINGTON -- While a tearful President Clinton vowed to fight to keep his job, the House laid independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr's voluminous case for Clinton's removal from office before the American people yesterday.
Starr's report contains no major revelations that had not become public through leaks to the news media in recent weeks. But the wealth of detail in its 445 pages, filled with raw, sexually explicit language, spread shock waves across the country as millions of ordinary citizens scanned its contents over the Internet on their personal computers.
Along with lurid descriptions of oral sex and secret assignations near the Oval Office, Starr's prosecutors spelled out the specific crimes they are accusing Clinton of committing: lying under oath, obstructing justice, tampering with witnesses and abusing the power of his office, all in an ultimately futile effort to conceal a sexual affair with Monica Lewinsky.
In all, 11 "grounds" for impeachment are included in the report. With "all phases" of Starr's investigation nearing completion, it appears that Starr found no evidence of impeachable offenses in his four-year, $40 million investigation relating to the Whitewater land deal, the alleged abuse of FBI files, the firing of the White House travel office, Hillary Rodham Clinton's work for the Rose Law Firm and other matters.
For Clinton, the graphic delineation of his trysts with the 22-year-old White House intern are at once a crushing humiliation and a grave threat to his presidency.
After apologizing publicly to Lewinsky and her family for the first time yesterday, Clinton signaled his determination to hold on to the presidency for the final two years of his term. In an emotional speech to religious leaders, a remorseful Clinton said he would instruct his lawyers "to mount a vigorous defense, using all available appropriate arguments," but without hiding the fact "that I have done wrong."
The president's attorneys waged a daylong effort to refute Starr's charges, claiming that the independent counsel had "dangerously overreached" in his investigation. A 73-page memorandum by White House lawyers, made public a few hours before the counsel's report was released, painted Starr as a partisan Republican bent on overturning the results of the 1996 election.
"The simple reality of this situation is that the House is being confronted with evidence of a man's efforts to keep an inappropriate relationship private," wrote White House counsel Charles F. C. Ruff and Clinton's private attorney, David E. Kendall, and their associates. Their "preliminary rebuttal" -- issued even before they had read Starr's report -- argued that Clinton's transgressions do not rise to the level of impeachable offenses.
Clinton's fate now rests with members of the Republican-controlled House, who must decide whether Starr's evidence is sufficient to consider removing the president through the impeachment process.
Clinton's job approval rating remains at 62 percent, about where it was before Starr's report was issued, according to a CNN/Gallup poll taken hours after the report was released yesterday. About the same percentage believed that Clinton should not be impeached.
Analysts caution that such polls taken immediately after an event might not pick up shifts in public opinion, which can take longer to register. For example, six out of 10 respondents in last night's poll had not heard details of the report. The poll had a margin of error of 4 percentage points.
Most members of Congress left town for the weekend soon after receiving the report, deferring judgment until they had time to absorb its contents and listen to the reaction of their constituents.
A vote on whether to start impeachment proceedings could be taken before Congress adjourns next month for the November election. Another option would be for the House to come back into session after the election to consider the question.
While yesterday was surely the darkest of Clinton's presidency, further embarrassments may await. The Starr report only summarizes the voluminous information sent to the House by the independent counsel's office. Additional releases are scheduled this month, after the thousands of pages of grand jury testimony, videotapes and audiotapes -- including hours of recorded conversations between Lewinsky and her one-time friend Linda R. Tripp -- have been screened by the House Judiciary Committee.
A day of high drama at opposite ends of Pennsylvania Avenue began with a previously scheduled White House prayer breakfast. At the same hour, the House began debating, in often partisan terms, the immediate release of Starr's report, which it eventually authorized by a lopsided 363-63 vote.
'Grounds' for impeachment
The report sets out 11 possible grounds for impeaching Clinton. All involve the Lewinsky matter in one way or another. They include: Eight counts of lying about or attempting to cover up his affair with Lewinsky, when the president testified in the Paula Corbin Jones sexual misconduct case and later to a federal grand jury.
Witness tampering. Starr accuses Clinton of trying to "corruptly influence" the testimony of his personal secretary, Betty Currie. The report details Currie's efforts to facilitate and conceal the Clinton-Lewinsky meetings, as well as her involvement in retrieving gifts that the president gave Lewinsky.
Obstruction of justice, for Clinton's refusal to testify for seven months to Starr's grand jury and for lying to his aides, knowing that they would relay his false statements to the grand jury and impede its efforts to find the truth.
Abuse of power, for delaying his appearance before Starr's grand jury, and for lying to the grand jury in his testimony. According to the report, Clinton also lied to the public and Congress, in January and again in his Aug. 17 speech, when he said that he told the truth in his deposition in the Jones case. In his deposition -- which Clinton and his lawyers insist was "legally accurate" -- the president denied having had sexual relations or a sexual affair with Lewinsky.
"The president's actions with respect to Monica Lewinsky constitute an abuse of authority inconsistent with the president's constitutional duty to faithfully execute the laws" of the country, Starr's report concludes.
The report accuses Clinton of "criminally obstructing" justice, first in the since-dismissed Jones suit, then in Starr's investigation of Clinton's actions in the Jones case.
Portions of the referral, as the report is formally known, read more like a cheap romance novel than a historic document. A furtive encounter beside the Oval Office is described at length.
"Ms. Lewinsky testified that, on December 28, 1997, 'when I was getting my Christmas kiss,' in the doorway to the study, the President was 'looking out the window with his eyes wide open while he was kissing me and then I got mad because it wasn't very romantic.' He responded, 'Well, I was just looking to see to make sure no one was out there.' "
After what she termed a "very emotional" visit to the White House on July 4, 1997, Lewinsky concluded: "I just knew he was in love with me."
Dr. Irene Kassorla, Lewinsky's therapist, testified that Clinton was the one who scheduled their sexual encounters and "became Lewinsky's life," according to the report.
The report confirms that the blue dress that Lewinsky wore to the Oval Office on Friday, Feb. 28, 1997, was stained with the president's semen. It said that blood was drawn from Clinton on Aug. 3, 1998, by a White House physician and that DNA tests conducted by the FBI "conclusively" showed a match with the stain on the dress.
Clinton's private lawyer, Kendall, said Starr's "salacious allegations are simply intended to humiliate, embarrass and politically damage the president." But in his report, Starr defends the need to include explicit sexual information as "unfortunate" but "essential" to an "informed evaluation of the testimony."
"They are necessary to assess whether the president lied under oath [when] he denied any sexual relationship at all and in grand jury testimony in which he denied any sexual contact with Ms. Lewinsky's breasts or genitalia."
The president's relationship with Lewinsky is examined in minute detail, over hundreds of pages, and includes explicit descriptions of a variety of sexual activities. Among the most shocking: that the president and Lewinsky used a cigar as a sexual prop during a tryst in a hallway just off the Oval Office. The alleged encounter, one of 10 described in detail in the report, took place on Sunday, March 31, 1996, while Mrs. Clinton was in Ireland.
According to Lewinsky's testimony, she and Clinton engaged in phone sex on numerous occasions. The president would telephone her at home, often after midnight, she testified.
In his testimony to the grand jury on Aug. 17, Clinton testified to "inappropriate sexual banter." Lewinsky testified that he called her about 50 times and that they "spent hours on the phone talking."
There is no allegation, however, that the two had sexual intercourse. The memorandum released by Clinton's lawyers states flatly that intercourse never took place.
That apparently uncontested fact forms the basis of Clinton's claim that he testified accurately in the Jones case when he denied having sexual relations with Lewinsky. Clinton told the grand jury that he personally defined sexual relations solely as intercourse.
Much of Starr's case for impeaching Clinton turns on the prosecutor's conclusion that the president lied in his deposition in the Jones case and again in his testimony to the grand jury last month.
'Abundant and calculating'
"The president's lies about his relationship with Ms. Lewinsky were abundant and calculating," the report alleges.
Starr's report alleges that Clinton lied under oath in the Jones case when he denied having sexual relations. That term was specifically defined in a document handed to the president before he testified.
It read: "For the purposes of this deposition, a person engages in 'sexual relations' when the person knowingly engages in or causes contact with the genitalia, anus, groin, breast, inner thigh, or buttocks of any person with an intent to arouse or gratify the sexual desire of any person. 'Contact' means intentional touching, either directly or through clothing."
Clinton testified to the grand jury that he told the truth in his deposition in the Jones case. He said he never touched Lewinsky intimately during sexual activity. Lewinsky's testimony disputes that assertion, and the report includes, in explicit terms, exactly what she says occurred.
"The president's denials -- semantic and factual -- do not withstand scrutiny," concludes the report. "According to the president, a man could regularly engage in oral sex and fondling of breasts and genitals with a woman and yet not have a 'sexual affair' with her."
The report goes on to say: "The president's 'hands-off' scenario -- in which he would have received oral sex on nine occasions from Ms. Lewinsky but never made direct contact with Ms. Lewinsky's breasts or genitalia -- is implausible."
The grand jury heard testimony from a dozen friends and associates of Lewinsky's who backed up her account of the affair with the president, based on conversations they had with her at the time.
In the end, much of Starr's evidence appears to boil down to a "he said, she said" situation. Among the disputes between the testimony offered by Clinton and Lewinsky is exactly when the affair began.
She dates it to Nov. 15, 1995, during the shutdown of the federal government in a budget dispute between Congress and the White House. He testified that the relationship did not begin until the next year, after she was no longer an intern but a full-time White House staff aide.
There is also conflicting testimony about what Clinton told Lewinsky and his secretary, Currie, to do with dozens of gifts the president had given Lewinsky and that had been subpoenaed by Jones' lawyers. Currie eventually retrieved them and kept them in a box under her bed. She later turned them over to Starr's investigators, at their request.
The report shed light one of the long-standing mysteries of the case: Currie's role. From her desk just outside the Oval Office, she facilitated their encounters and helped keep them secret. She testified that she sometimes came to the White House on weekends for the sole purpose of admitting Lewinsky.
"You know who it is," Currie would tell the security officer on duty in the lobby, when Lewinsky was due to arrive. On one occasion, she instructed the officer to hold Lewinsky in the lobby because she needed to move the president to his private study off the Oval Office, the report states.
Currie "suspected impropriety," according to the report. Clinton "was spending a lot of time with a 24-year-old young lady," said Currie, who testified that she tried to avoid learning details of the relationship.
It will be up to House members to weigh whether they want to have these issues thrashed out in impeachment hearings.
Even if they conclude that Clinton lied under oath, they will have to decide whether that is sufficient for impeachment, particularly since the lies involved private sexual behavior. Some sort of public condemnation of Clinton appears certain, even if the House stops short of launching an impeachment investigation.
House Rules Committee Chairman Gerald B. H. Solomon, a New York Republican, emphasized during yesterday's House debate that releasing the Starr report "is not the beginning of an impeachment process in the House of Representatives." The Judiciary Committee must now report to the House on whether to begin a formal impeachment inquiry.
But it was left to Rep. Henry J. Hyde, the big-shouldered, plain-speaking Judiciary chairman, to capture the quicksilver mood on a day of exceptional drama.
"This has been a movable feast. The situation has changed from hour to hour," said the respected 74-year-old Illinois Republican who is poised to occupy center stage next in the fast-developing saga.
Pub Date: 9/12/98