Excerpts from yesterday's impeachment hearing before the House Judiciary Committee:

Independent counsel Kenneth Starr's prepared statement:

I appreciate both the seriousness of the committee's work and the gravity of its assignment. ... I recognize that the House of Representatives -- not an independent counsel -- has the sole power to impeach. My role here today is to discuss our referral and our investigation.

Indeed, the evidence suggests that the president repeatedly tried to thwart the legal process in the Jones case and the grand jury investigation. That is not a private matter. The evidence further suggests that the president, in the course of these efforts, misused his authority and power as president and contravened his duty to faithfully execute the laws. That, too, is not a private matter.

At the outset, I want to emphasize that our referral never suggests that the relationship between the president and Ms. Lewinsky in and of itself could be a high crime or misdemeanor. Indeed, the referral never passes judgment on the president's relationship with Ms. Lewinsky. The propriety of a relationship is not the concern of our office. The referral is instead about obstruction of justice, lying under oath, tampering with witnesses, and misuse of power.

The conversation between the president and Ms. Lewinsky on Dec. 17 was a critical turning point. The evidence suggests that the president chose to engage in a criminal act -- to reach an understanding with Ms. Lewinsky that they would both make false statements under oath. At that moment, the president's intimate relationship with a subordinate employee was transformed into an unlawful effort to thwart the judicial process. This was no longer an issue of private conduct.

Indeed, the president made false statements to the grand jury and then that same evening spoke to the nation and criticized all attempts to show that he had done so as invasive and irrelevant. The president's approach appeared to contravene the oath he took at the start of the grand jury proceedings. It also disregarded the admonitions of those members of Congress who warned that lying to the grand jury would not be tolerated. It also discounted Judge Wright's many orders in which she had ruled that this kind of evidence was relevant in the Jones case.

REP. HENRY HYDE, R-Ill., Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee:

There are many voices telling us to halt this debate, that the people are weary of it all. There are other voices suggesting we have a duty to debate the many questions raised by the circumstances in which we find ourselves, questions of high consequence for constitutional government.

... And just perhaps, when the debate is over, when the rationalizations and the distinctions and the semantic gymnastics are put to rest, we may be closer to answering for our generation the haunting question asked 139 years ago in a small military cemetery in Pennsylvania -- whether a nation conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal can long endure.

REP. JOHN CONYERS, D-Mich., ranking minority member:

Today's witness, Kenneth W. Starr, wrote the tawdry, salacious and unnecessarily graphic referral that he delivered to us in September with so much drama and fanfare. And now the majority members of this committee have called that same prosecutor forward to testify in an unprecedented desperation effort to breathe new life into a dying inquiry.

... Now no one defends the president's conduct, but even Republican witnesses at our hearing only last week testified that even if the alleged facts are proven true, they simply do not amount to impeachable offenses. The idea of a federally paid sex policeman spending millions of dollars to trap an unfaithful spouse or the police civil -- or the police civil litigation would have been unthinkable prior to the Starr investigation.

Let there be no mistake -- it is not now acceptable in America to investigate a person's private sexual activity. It is not acceptable to force mothers to testify against their daughters; to make lawyers testify against their clients; to require Secret Service agents to testify against the people they protect; or to make bookstores tell what books people read.

... While an independent counsel can and should pursue a case with vigor, I and many others believe that Mr. Starr has crossed that line into obsession. ...

We have many questions about the way you conducted your investigation, Mr. Starr. Fairness dictates that the committee and the American people learn whether you have created a climate for the purpose of driving a president from office who has twice been elected by the people of this great nation.

*

QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS:

Democratic counsel ABBE LOWELL: ... I asked whether you had or any of your office members told the attorney general that your law firm -- that you were still a member of and getting a salary from -- had indeed been sought out to be Paula Jones' lawyers. I understood you saying you may not have known that.

My question is you're telling me that Richard Porter, your partner, did not ever inform you that he had been asked to consider representing Paula Jones and had in fact assisted her in getting the attorneys she ultimately chose. Is that what you're saying?

STARR: Well, my best recollection is no. I know Richard Porter. I've had communications with him from time to time. But in terms of a specific discussion with respect to what the law firm may be -- may be doing or may not be doing I'm not recalling that specifically, no.

LOWELL: You do recall, though, that it was a matter that you admit that on at least six occasions you personally had had conversations with Paula Jones' attorneys over legal issues in the Paula Jones case.

STARR: I'm not sure. I had had conversations with them, just as I had conversations with others, including -- and I think the record of these proceedings should reflect that ...

And fault my judgment if you will, but it just frankly did not occur to me, as I think happens to a lot of us in life, that you just don't

view that as relevant information -- and if I may say so, especially since my position had been so well-known, and including the contacts with Ms. Jones' attorneys, who reached out to me with respect to the constitutional immunity issue solely, exclusively.

LOWELL: Mr. Starr, while we're on the subject of the Jones case, I think it is now from the material you sent to Congress pretty clear that your office did absolutely nothing to stop Linda Tripp from meeting with Paula Jones' attorneys to help them set up for the Jan. 17 deposition of the president. And the fact is, is it not, that you had the power at that moment and the reason at that moment to forbid her from having those meetings, but your office chose not to do so? Isn't that right?

STARR: That is, I think, an unfair characterization. That is to say, it is once again assuming that there was information as to communications that she may or may not have been having. We did not, to the best of my knowledge -- we did not have any information that she was in fact communicating with the Jones attorneys. And indeed, the record will show we began working almost instantly at cross purposes with the Jones attorneys in order to protect this investigation.

STARR: The reason that she [Monica Lewinsky] was being approached, Mr. Lowell, was that she was trying to get Linda Tripp to commit perjury, and since you've inquired about this, her mother had made it clear that she was willing to help finance an operation for Linda Tripp so she could leave the jurisdiction and thereby avoid being confronted in the Jones deposition. That's what this was all about.

Could I say one other thing? In fairness ... the issues with respect to our conduct that evening have been litigated. You can ask, obviously, all the questions that you want. But usually if a witness believes that he or she has been mistreated, if her rights have been violated, there's a place to go. And it's called a courthouse.

REP. BARNEY FRANK, D-Mass.: ...

You tell us that months ago you concluded that no -- that the president was not involved in the FBI files and you've never had the evidence he was involved in the Travel Office. Yet now, several weeks after the election, is the first time you're saying that.

Why did you withhold that before the election when you were sending us a referral with a lot of negative stuff about the president, and only now, despite your saying that the statute suggests you tell us as soon as possible, you give us this exoneration of the president several weeks after the election?

STARR: Mr. Frank, what we have tried to do is be responsive to Congress, which has said provide us with information.

REP. HOWARD COBLE, R-N.C.: ...

Judge Starr, what evidence did you find to support your conclusion that President Clinton's action involved public misconduct as opposed to private misconduct (a)? And (b) what evidence, if any, is there that President Clinton breached the public trust?

STARR: ... In terms of the public nature of the conduct, it seemed to me, as I sought to set out both in the referral and this morning, that the key is this is no longer -- and I respectfully disagree ... with the suggestion that this is "lying about a private sexual relationship." Rather, this is the integrity of the judicial process.

Pub Date: 11/20/98