White House Launches Impeachment Defense

The White House on Tuesday mounted what it called “a powerful case against the impeachment of this president,” arguing from morning to night before an at-times abrasive and exhausted House Judiciary Committee that President Clinton should not be removed from office.

To bolster its case, the White House also issued a 184-page report that sought to rebut allegations in the investigation by independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr and again offered contrition for the president’s admitted personal failings in the Monica S. Lewinsky scandal.

“There are no grounds for impeachment,” proclaimed Gregory B. Craig, special counsel to the president, testifying before the frostily divided, GOP-led committee which appears destined later this week to vote for the president’s impeachment.

“As surely as we all know that what he did is sinful, we also know it is not impeachable,” Craig said.

Despite the high rhetoric on the first of two days of testimony by the White House as the panel winds down its impeachment inquiry, committee Republicans seemed little persuaded and--in fact--all the more determined to make Clinton pay for his misdeeds by forfeiting the presidency.

“It added nothing to the facts,” said Chairman Henry J. Hyde (R-Ill.) as he left the session with several hours to go. He characterized the hearing as more “a seminar on impeachment law” than a defense of Clinton’s conduct.

One moderate Republican House member, however, indicated that he would vote against impeachment.

Tuesday’s 11-hour hearing was consumed by a series of White House panels of constitutional experts, veteran lawyers and Watergate-era lawmakers, who also seemed to fall short of swaying the GOP committee members against having the full House vote next week on one or more articles of impeachment.

It is this larger group--the full House, where the president’s fate appears too close to call--that the Clinton legal team is staking its defense, hoping to send the 435-member body a sharp message that Clinton’s conduct does not call for impeachment.

The one part apologetic, one part combative defense was clearly aimed at those few undecided lawmakers, mostly moderate Republicans, who might break with their party and vote against impeachment, thus sparing the country the specter of a president standing trial in the Senate.

“There can be no more solemn moment in the history of the Republic,” Craig warned. “There could be no more soul-searching vote in the career of a member of Congress. Please do not let the power of partisan politics on either side blind your eyes to the truth.”

Even with the written White House report, Republicans accused the administration of not directly addressing the charges against Clinton and answering whether he should stay or go.

“Zero facts, zero evidence,” Rep. Bob Inglis (R-S.C.) said in dismissing the White House presentation.

But Craig countered: “We believe the president should be given a presumption of innocence and that the burden should be on the committee to call fact witnesses.”

Three Panels of Witnesses

To make their case, Craig and other Clinton lawyers presented three panels of witnesses in which:

* Constitutional scholars and other experts argued that Clinton’s offenses are not impeachable, and one Yale University professor tried to debunk the conventional wisdom that this “lame-duck” 105th Congress can legally send an impeachment matter to the 106th Congress when it convenes in January.

“Nothing could be further from the truth,” said Bruce Ackerman, a Yale University professor of law and political science.

* Three Democrats who sat on the House Judiciary Committee during Watergate scandal impeachment hearings said that the charges against Clinton fall far short of the case against President Richard Nixon.

“Unless this committee and the House act on a bipartisan basis and reach out for common ground, as we did during Watergate, unless you have the full support of the American people for the enormous disruption of our government that an impeachment trial will entail . . . you should not, you must not vote to impeach,” implored former Rep. Elizabeth Holtzman (D-N.Y.).

* Two veteran Democratic lawyers from the Nixon period who late in the day contrasted his crimes with the allegations against Clinton.

James Hamilton, a former associate counsel on the Senate Watergate Committee, said that articles of impeachment against Nixon were based on “great and dangerous offenses against the state,” while Clinton’s alleged offenses “do not indicate he is a danger to the nation.”

Clinton Attends Social Security Panel

Clinton has not appeared before the committee and on Tuesday he attended instead a conference on reforming Social Security. He then left Washington for Tennessee for a memorial to Vice President Al Gore’s father, who died Saturday.

When a reporter shouted: “Do you think you will be impeached?” Clinton boarded his helicopter without answering.

On Capitol Hill, outgoing House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) told reporters that he will not be presiding over the impeachment debate if it comes to the full House next week, although he will show up to vote.

Outside the committee room, the White House saw a glimmer of hope in its effort to win support from the small group of Republican moderates who are likely to tip the balance when the matter comes before the full House.

Congressional sources said that Rep. Amo Houghton (R-N.Y.), a Republican moderate, would announce his opposition to impeachment today. And Democrats compiled a list of 26 other moderate Republicans they consider “persuadable,” including California Reps. Steve Horn of Long Beach, James E. Rogan of Glendale and Brian P. Bilbray of San Diego.

The written report from the White House, released Tuesday evening, provided its most detailed rebuttal to date of the charges likely to be included in articles of impeachment.

The Clinton lawyers rebutted the allegations of perjury, obstruction of justice and abuse of power with scholarly and legal arguments as well as point-by-point factual dismissals of claims by the committee’s lawyers.

On the charge of perjury, the lawyers cited specific examples to suggest that the committee is confusing what it thinks the president said with what he actually said.

For instance, instead of denying that Clinton had ever been alone with Lewinsky, they argued that Clinton’s answer that he did not “recall” being alone with her did not constitute perjury. They also said that a perjury charge cannot be based on disagreements between how Clinton and Lewinsky described sexual contact.

Rebutting obstruction of justice charges, the lawyers denied there is any evidence that the president tried to conceal the gifts he gave Lewinsky.

“This document, the contents of which we learned from television news, appears to contain no new evidence or challenge the truthfulness of any testimony the committee now possesses . . . “ Hyde said in a statement late Tuesday. “What it also includes is more legal hairsplitting and semantic gymnastics we have come to expect from this White House.”

Craig, in his remarks to the committee, appealed to Republican sensibilities, saying that dishonesty and hiding wrongdoing are not the sort of faults that the framers of the Constitution would interpret as “high crimes” or even “misdemeanors.”

“I make only one plea to you and I hope it is not a futile one coming this late in the process,” he said. “Open your mind. Open your heart.”

On the issue of perjury in Clinton’s deposition in the Paula Corbin Jones sexual harassment lawsuit, Craig said he was “willing to concede” that the president’s answers under oath were “evasive, incomplete, misleading--even maddening.”

“But,” he said, “it was not perjury.”

On perjury before the federal grand jury, Craig said “fair-minded Americans” would agree with Clinton’s interpretation of sexual relations as being intercourse and not just oral sex--a differentiation insisted upon by the president.

On obstruction of justice, Craig denied that the president helped Lewinsky in a job search or tried to hide his gifts to her in a campaign to keep their affair secret.

“In truth,” Craig summed up, “I would not be fairly representing President Clinton if I did not convey to you his profound and powerful regret for what he has done.

“He has insisted and personally instructed his lawyers that no legalities or technicalities should be allowed to obscure the simple moral truth that his behavior in this matter was wrong. . . .

“He is genuinely sorry for the pain and the damage that he has caused and for the wrongs he has committed.”

Even testimony from some of the experts brought harsh exchanges from Republicans.

Sean Wilentz, a history professor at Princeton University, cautioned the lawmakers against impeachment, saying that Clinton’s actions did not reach the severity of high crimes.

“If you believe they do rise to that level, you will vote in favor of impeachment and take your risks at going down in history with the zealots and the fanatics,” he said.

“If you understand that the charges do not rise to the level of impeachment, or if you are at all unsure and yet you vote in favor of impeachment . . . history will track you down and condemn you for your cravenness.”

Many Republicans were insulted.

“That type of name-calling by the president’s defense is disappointing and demeaning to this proceeding,” said Rep. Stephen E. Buyer (R-Ind.).

Others testifying included the Watergate veterans who contrasted the case against Clinton with the one they heard a quarter-century before in the same committee room against Nixon.

Clinton’s conduct is “entirely different” from the “appalling crimes” of Watergate, said the Rev. Robert F. Drinan, a former Massachusetts congressman who predicted an “explosion of anger” by the public if the House votes for impeachment.

The former lawmakers also said that it would be inappropriate for the committee to go forward if it is clear that the impeachment case will not be held up in the Senate.

“When we voted to impeach President Nixon we not only believed he should be removed, we believed he would be removed and he had to be removed,” Holtzman said.

The Watergate-era lawyers said that evidence of Nixon’s abuse of power included his attempt to use the CIA to impede the FBI’s investigation of the Watergate burglary, the White House-directed break-in of the Beverly Hills office of Pentagon worker Daniel Ellsberg’s psychiatrist and Nixon’s firing of Archibald Cox, the first Watergate special prosecutor, Hamilton testified.

In one of the few slaps at Starr, former associate Watergate prosecutor Richard Ben-Veniste said that, while Watergate prosecutors were “bent on uncovering criminal activities,” Starr’s long-running investigation “has seemed more concerned with driving President Clinton from office.”

Republicans on the panel often rebuked Hamilton and Ben-Veniste, declaring that the two lawyers had presented no new facts on behalf of Clinton.

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

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Times on the Web

* The full text of the White House rebuttal to the case for impeaching President Clinton and live video coverage of the House Judiciary Committee hearings are on The Times’ Web site:

https://www.latimes.com/scandal