Rep. Hyde Urges Lott to Let Witnesses Be Called

Less than a week before senators return to Washington to take up the case against President Clinton, key players sent conflicting signals Wednesday on how they would conduct only the second presidential impeachment trial in the nation’s history.

The chief House manager in the case strongly urged the Senate to conduct a full-blown proceeding that allows a “fair presentation of the evidence” on whether Clinton should be removed from office for his conduct in the Monica S. Lewinsky scandal.

In a three-page letter to Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.), House Judiciary Committee Chairman Henry J. Hyde (R-Ill.) also formally requested that his prosecution team be given the opportunity to call a “limited number of witnesses.”

Hyde was responding to a comment Lott made earlier this week saying that he favors calling no witnesses and believes the trial could be wrapped up in just two weeks.

Three senators also expressed disagreement with Lott’s proposal for a limited trial and said that witnesses in the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal, possibly including Lewinsky herself, should be called to testify about whether the president committed perjury or obstructed justice.

Because senators are scattered around the country for the holidays, party leaders have been unable to assess the views of their members or devise a strategy. In the absence of a clear plan or set of options, individual senators have begun jockeying for position, using the media to float their own views on whether the trial should be long or short, with witnesses or without.

Letter Asks for Delay Until February

No decisions on the shape of the trial will be made until the Senate convenes Wednesday.

Meanwhile, the House prosecution team has been pressing its position.

Hyde’s letter strongly encouraged Lott to refrain from convening a quick trial in January and to instead hold the trial in February after both Hyde’s team and the White House have formally responded to the charges and complex pretrial motions have been settled.

“The Senate should hear from live witnesses,” Hyde wrote. “Indeed, federal courts have long recognized the importance of live testimony in their rulings and their instructions to juries.”

He also discouraged Lott from calling a vote in the Senate before the trial to determine whether there is even a consensus to go forward.

In the impeachment of four federal judges on various charges of perjury and obstruction of justice, he said, senators voted overwhelmingly that the offenses warranted removal from office.

“I believe that a fair presentation of the evidence and a full defense by the president can be expeditious. We need not sacrifice substance and duty for speed,” Hyde wrote.

Although Democrats were quick to welcome Lott’s proposal for a speedy trial without witnesses, there were signs of a rebellion brewing among rank-and-file GOP senators.

Lott would have the trial formally open on Jan. 7 but not actually begin until Jan. 11 at the earliest. It would then proceed quickly, without witnesses, possibly concluding after only two weeks.

Lott would let the Senate consider censuring Clinton only if two-thirds of senators vote to acquit him.

One top Senate Democratic aide said Democrats view Lott’s proposal as an omen that the disconnect between congressional Republicans and the public finally may be coming to an end.

“But we’re very aware that we’re not running the show,” the aide said. “All we can ask for is a fair and expeditious process. Beyond that, we have to let the Republicans fill in the blanks.”

Asked about Lott’s proposal, Sen. Mike DeWine (R-Ohio) said pointedly in a news conference that ultimately it will be the full Senate that “will determine how this trial will proceed. There’s absolutely no doubt about that.”

He said the question about witnesses should be settled “on an item-by-item basis” by a majority of the Senate, as stipulated by Senate rules governing impeachment trials.

And he added that, although he agrees with Lott’s desire to “move this trial as quickly as we can,” haste must not be the overriding consideration.

“I think ultimately we’re going to be judged not on how long this trial takes; we’re going to be judged on how well we do it,” DeWine said.

A conservative, DeWine said he flatly opposes censuring the president, “whether before, during or after the trial.” If a censure deal is worked out, “the deep wounds opened in this country by impeachment will remain unhealed.”

“The Senate should either convict or acquit the president--and nothing else,” he said.

Lott also drew fire from Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), a moderate who has defied party orthodoxy on many high-profile issues.

“As a juror, it’d be helpful to me to hear from some of the witnesses on some of the issues,” she said in a telephone interview from Portland, Me.

“But that doesn’t mean it’d have to be a circus or a spectacle. Direct testimony would be most helpful in resolving prior testimony that is contradictory.”

Collins cited the conflicting information given earlier in the case by Lewinsky and Betty Currie, Clinton’s personal secretary, regarding the circumstances under which Clinton’s gifts to the former White House intern ended up under Currie’s bed.

Resolving such testimony, Collins said, could be “a key issue in deciding whether or not the president tried to obstruct justice.”

In still another potential wrinkle, Sen. John H. Chafee (R-R.I.), also a moderate, said in an interview that he would not consider supporting a censure resolution unless it also contained some punishment--in the form of a fine against Clinton.

Earlier this week, Lott warned that such a “censure-plus” approach would raise “all kinds of constitutional problems.”

Hyde’s prosecution team, meanwhile, forged ahead with its plans.

The managers--Hyde and 12 other Republican members of the Judiciary Committee--said that, in addition to calling witnesses, they may try to present “new evidence” that they say shows a “practice and pattern” of attempts by Clinton to circumvent justice.

Asked to elaborate, a GOP aide working closely with prosecutors said only that the new evidence would show Clinton “getting people to sign affidavits that aren’t true.”

The impeachment article charging Clinton with obstruction of justice accuses him of, among other things, encouraging Lewinsky to file a false affidavit in the Paula Corbin Jones sexual harassment case.

Rep. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.), one of the managers, said the identities of some other women may become known during the Senate trial because of evidence that they, like Lewinsky, were encouraged by Clinton to lie in the Jones case about their relationships with him.

“There’s some other witnesses who filed affidavits that I believe were not truthful, and the reason they didn’t present the evidence truthfully is they were afraid,” Graham said in an interview to be aired this weekend on CNN’s “Evans, Novak, Hunt and Shields” show.

“And I think that may come out over time. . . . That is possible. That scenario has been brewing for a long time,” Graham said.

But Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle (D-S.D.) said last week that the decision on whether to include additional evidence is entirely up to the Senate, which he thought would rule it “out of order.”

Discussions on How to Proceed

Staff aides in the Senate, the House and the Supreme Court, meanwhile, quietly have been discussing the mechanics of the proceeding. The Republican House aide said that Judiciary Committee staffers have been holding lengthy discussions with aides to both the Republican and Democratic leaders in the Senate.

“Our folks are making clear that we want the option of presenting witnesses,” the aide said. “And I think in the end some accommodation will be made.

“We are not asking for the moon here. We’re not asking for a process that would delay this by months and months but [would] allow us to make our best case.”

Clinton embarked Wednesday afternoon on the same New Year’s holiday vacation he and his family have taken the last 14 years, arriving at Hilton Head, S.C., for a conference of academics, business leaders, politicians, journalists and others.

Almost as soon as he, First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton and their daughter, Chelsea, arrived at their borrowed beachside residence, the president and his retriever, Buddy, headed out for an hourlong walk along the surf at sunset.

Times staff writer James Gerstenzang contributed to this story.