Grand Jury Is Set to Hear Lewinsky’s Side of the Story

More than six months after allegations of an extramarital affair and obstruction of justice first threatened to topple the presidency, Monica S. Lewinsky is expected to enter the U.S. Courthouse today to tell her story under a grant of full immunity from prosecution.

The former White House intern is expected to tell grand jurors what she already has told independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr’s prosecutors in private sessions: that, contrary to sworn statements she and President Clinton made in January, they had a sexual relationship that began in 1995.

On the eve of Lewinsky’s appearance, the president traveled to Capitol Hill on Wednesday for an ebullient pep rally with House Democrats, but participants in the closed-door caucus said no one even mentioned Starr’s long-running inquiry.

With their fate in the November elections tied largely to the president’s, Democrats bent over backward during the meeting to show unity with a besieged chief executive who is struggling to keep his focus on the nitty-gritty of government as his own day of testimony approaches.

There were loud cheers and whistles as Clinton and Vice President Al Gore entered the room.

“I haven’t heard as long an ovation . . . since the State of the Union address,” said Rep. Nick Lampson (D-Texas), perhaps unwittingly recalling another surreal moment in the saga of the Lewinsky matter: when Clinton delivered his annual speech to an apparently adoring Congress and nary a mention was made of the raging controversy.

At the courthouse, meanwhile, the six-month-long parade of grand jury witnesses continued unabated.

Deputy White House Counsel Lanny A. Breuer, who spent five hours before grand jurors on Tuesday before objecting to some specific questions, returned Wednesday for his second secret session in the courtroom of Chief U.S. District Judge Norma Holloway Johnson.

Legal sources said Breuer sought to raise objections of attorney-client privilege or executive privilege to some questions posed by Starr’s prosecutors, who also attended the hearing. Breuer can bring such challenges to Johnson’s attention despite appellate court rulings that generally held Starr has the right to ignore such privileges when questioning White House lawyers in his criminal investigation, legal experts said.

White House officials, pointing out that the issue is under court seal, said they could not comment on whether Breuer asserted executive privilege.

Breuer left the courthouse after the hearing, and five Secret Service witnesses and former Deputy White House Chief of Staff Harold M. Ickes were brought before the grand jury. More than 20 past and present Secret Service personnel have been questioned about their knowledge of Lewinsky’s visits to the White House after her transfer to the Pentagon in April 1996.

Asked by the grand jury if he had ever seen the president and Lewinsky alone together, Ickes said he had “absolutely no recollection” of that, according to a source familiar with his testimony.

Ickes testified that he had once seen Lewinsky and the president in the same room, a time when Ickes accompanied Clinton to the office of the White House chief of staff, where Lewinsky worked. But Ickes said he did not notice any “special relationship” between the two, the source said.

At the White House, some officials conceded they are nervous about Lewinsky’s imminent testimony, while others said they were comforted by public opinion surveys showing that most Americans still support the president.

“From the White House point of view, the news is probably not going to be good,” said a former senior White House official on the grounds that he not be identified. “I think it would be better if [Lewinsky’s] lawyers came out and briefed the press” after her testimony. If the information drips out day after day through the media, the former official said, “it will be poisonous” for the president.

Some House Democrats admitted that their silence on the subject during their meeting with Clinton was not a sign of indifference to whether the president had a sexual relationship with Lewinsky.

“Everybody would like to know what the story is,” said Rep. James P. Moran (D-Va.). “You’d have to be brain-dead not to be curious.”

But no one thought Wednesday’s session was the time or the place to ask.

“The silence was deafening on the so-called Washington scandals,” said Rep. Vic Fazio (D-West Sacramento), chairman of the Democratic caucus, who said he and others preferred to stick to the legislative issues that directly affect Americans.

If anyone had brought up the subject, said Rep. David E. Skaggs (D-Colo.), “it would have been unpleasant all around.”

During a question-and-answer session, Democrats passed up the opportunity to raise the issue, which could land firmly in lawmakers’ laps in the coming months once Starr delivers a report to the Hill on what he believes to be impeachable offenses.

Instead, everybody stuck to issues. Clinton vowed to veto any tax-cut bill that takes money from the budget surplus instead of saving it for Social Security. He also pledged to veto the Republicans’ managed-care bill and brought up the farm crisis and economic woes in Asia.

As lawmakers flowed out of the caucus room after the hourlong unity rally, a horde of journalists shouted out questions about the Lewinsky matter. Some Democrats grimaced. Others scolded the media for their obsession with the case. The most oft-repeated line was that the meeting stuck to what voters care about, and that does not include Lewinsky.

“I said at the meeting that I go door to door in my district and what people say to me is, ‘When are you going to stop all the investigations, wasting our tax dollars on endless investigations, and when are you going to deal with my problems?’ ” said House Minority Leader Richard A. Gephardt (D-Mo.).

“Health care, education, Social Security, Medicare, the environment--those are the issues that people think about and talk about every day,” he added.

“I think Republicans will pay a dear price in November because they have not dealt with people’s everyday kitchen-table problems but rather have been interested in investigating everybody and everyone in an endless fashion,” Gephardt said.

Republicans scoffed at the notion.

“I think the Democrats are fairly desperate,” said Rep. Mark E. Souder (R-Ind.). “They don’t know what’s going to hit them tomorrow.”

From the very start of the Lewinsky investigation, Democrats have stuck by the man who has largely defined their legislative agenda.

In February, when the controversy was in a fever pitch, Clinton was warmly received at a closed-door party retreat at a resort in the Virginia countryside.

Earlier this week, that same support was evident when Clinton discussed legislative strategy at the White House with the Congressional Hispanic Caucus and attended an evening fund-raiser for African American candidates.

Times staff writers Janet Hook, Robert L. Jackson, Elizabeth Shogren and Erin Trodden contributed to this story.

Hear an analysis by Times political writer Ronald Brownstein on the impact Monica S. Lewinsky’s testimony may have on President Clinton and the nation. Go to The Times’ Web site, at: https://www.latimes.com/scandal