Starr Recalls Lewinsky as Probe Goes On

Independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr forged ahead Tuesday with his investigation of President Clinton, presenting new evidence to the grand jury and summoning Monica S. Lewinsky for more testimony--this one day after Clinton publicly urged the special prosecutor “to stop the pursuit of personal destruction.”

Amid indications that the president remains in legal jeopardy despite his historic testimony Monday, Starr must decide whether to attempt to subpoena Clinton for additional questioning--a controversial move that could tie up the matter in court for months.

Starr also must decide whether to recall other witnesses on the basis of testimony by the two principals in the case: Lewinsky, who will testify again Thursday, and Clinton. Possibilities include Betty Currie, Clinton’s personal secretary who ended up with the gifts Clinton had given the former White House intern, and Vernon E. Jordan Jr., Clinton’s friend and golfing companion who helped Lewinsky find a lawyer and lined up a job for her.

The resolution of the Lewinsky case is particularly important to Starr’s investigation because if he sends an impeachment report to the House of Representatives, he is expected to rely on evidence that the president may have lied about his relationship with the ex-intern and conspired to keep their affair secret.

The Whitewater matter is expected to fade into the background.

“I think it [report to the House] will focus on the Lewinsky saga because that’s the only area where they have compiled ‘substantial and credible evidence’ about the president himself,” said Bradford A. Berenson, an attorney supportive of Starr’s investigation.

On Tuesday, the grand jury heard from former Clinton political advisor Dick Morris about five conversations he said he had with the president immediately after the scandal broke in January.

Morris, who was disgraced two years ago by his own sex scandal involving a high-priced prostitute, described Clinton as “very remorseful” at the time.

In a television interview after Clinton’s testimony, Morris said that in the first days of the controversy he met with the president several times at the White House. He said Clinton told him he was not guilty of the allegations against him, but acknowledged he did do “something,” without specifying what that was.

Interviewed on Fox News, Morris said that in a Jan. 21 meeting with the president, Clinton told him: “I just slipped up with that girl. . . .I didn’t do what they said I did. But I did do something.” Morris said he was told by Clinton, “There would likely be gifts and messages on her answering machine.”

But Morris said Clinton decided against making a public confession because a poll he asked Morris to conduct showed that Americans would respond very negatively if Clinton admitted he had not been truthful about Lewinsky in his sworn deposition in the Paula Corbin Jones sexual harassment suit against him.

In his televised statement Monday night, however, Clinton said that although his answers in the Jones deposition were “legally accurate,” he “did not volunteer information.”

As for the president’s grand jury testimony Monday afternoon, Clinton lawyer David E. Kendall admitted that he did not fully answer “a few highly intrusive” questions involving sex.

But Starr’s prosecutors may be unwilling to accept the president’s refusal and are debating whether to seek a court order forcing him to comply.

Such a move could trigger a constitutional crisis, however, since the president’s lawyers could argue that under the separation-of-powers doctrine, a federal judge cannot enforce a subpoena against the chief executive.

That issue was averted recently when the president agreed to testify voluntarily before the grand jury once Starr agreed to withdraw the subpoena.

Starr’s wide-ranging inquiry began four years ago as an investigation of the Clintons’ real-estate dealings in Arkansas, but in recent months it has focused exclusively on the Lewinsky matter.

The law creating independent counsels requires such a prosecutor to submit a report to the House if he finds “substantial and credible evidence” that the president may have committed an impeachable offense.

Although the Whitewater phase of Starr’s inquiry may have compiled evidence of suspicious dealings, it appears not to have led to direct evidence of a crime involving the president.

Lawyers are sharply divided over whether lying about a sexual relationship or conspiring to hide evidence in a civil suit would rise to the level of an impeachable offense. The dispute may well preview the upcoming debate before the House Judiciary Committee.

Clinton’s supporters say the allegations, stripped of their ominous-sounding legal language, mean simply that the chief executive and the intern tried to keep their relationship secret.

Lawyers for Jones were trying to show a pattern of misbehavior on his part involving young female employees. Informed of rumors about Lewinsky, they subpoenaed her to submit a sworn statement about whether she had a sexual relationship with Clinton.

Starr has sought to determine whether the president conspired to obstruct that court proceeding by urging Lewinsky to keep quiet or by getting her a job outside of Washington.

Even if this were true, it should not be grounds for an impeachment inquiry, said Jeffrey Connaughton, a former lawyer for the Clinton White House.

“You don’t run a president out of office for sexual impropriety,” he said. “I think Ken Starr should be the one held responsible for going down this road. It is sickening [Clinton] had to endure a criminal investigation into his private sex life.”

But former Ronald Reagan administration attorney Theodore Olson said obstruction of justice is a serious matter, even if it involves a civil lawsuit and sex.

“Obstructing justice in a federal civil case is clearly an impeachable offense,” Olson said. “It is prosecuted. You can go to jail for that.”

He cited the case of two former Texaco executives who were alleged to have hidden evidence and destroyed documents after the company was sued for racial discrimination by its African American employees. One of the executives had secretly recorded meetings in which they spoke of shredding documents and “purging the books” of incriminating evidence.

When the tapes were revealed, the Clinton administration’s Justice Department brought criminal charges against the two for obstruction of justice. However, they were acquitted in May by jurors who said they were not convinced documents were destroyed.

Meanwhile, Jones said Tuesday that Clinton’s admission that he lied about Lewinsky shows he lied in her case as well.

“I think that anyone who takes a serious look at the record would agree that Mr. Clinton has not been truthful about many things in my case,” she said in a statement issued by the conservative Rutherford Institute, which has funded her case. “Men like Mr. Clinton do not take responsibility for their conduct because it is the right thing to do. They do it, if at all, because they are forced to.”

A federal judge in Arkansas dismissed her lawsuit in April, but her lawyers have asked the U.S. court of appeals in St. Louis to revive it.