Exploring the Evidence Thus Far

This much is known: President Clinton and former White House intern Monica S. Lewinsky had some sort of personal relationship, exchanged gifts and embraced on the White House lawn after his reelection.

But what is not yet clear is whether their relationship was sexual, and if Clinton used his power as president to help her find a new job in return for her agreement to lie about their past.

A number of key pieces of evidence could spell the difference. There are secretly taped conversations in which Lewinsky allegedly speaks of an affair with the president, an unexplained Dec. 28 meeting at the White House just days after she was subpoenaed to testify in the Paula Corbin Jones lawsuit and a swift job offer in New York arranged by the president’s personal friend, Vernon E. Jordan Jr.

In addition, federal investigators have turned up a mysterious “talking points” summary, whose author is unknown, that seems to urge another witness to lie about what she saw outside the Oval Office.

While much of the public focus has been on whether or not Clinton and Lewinsky engaged in sex, the legal case will focus on whether she or Clinton committed perjury. The circumstances of the Dec. 28 meeting and the job offers arranged by Jordan could prove decisive.

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For now, the big question is what will happen with Lewinsky.

If she strikes a deal to cooperate with independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr, she could emerge as the chief witness in any criminal case that might follow.

Should Starr’s talks with her lawyer, William Ginsburg, continue to falter, and should prosecutors corroborate her story with other sources, the 24-year-old former Beverly Hills woman could find herself joining Clinton, and perhaps Jordan and others, as a criminal defendant.

Starr’s federal grand jury, meeting in secret in the shadow of the Capitol building, is just now gearing up. The initial witnesses have included Clinton’s personal secretary Betty Currie and former Deputy Chief of Staff Evelyn Lieberman, presumably to talk about visits by Lewinsky to the White House before and after she was moved to the Pentagon in April 1996. The final witnesses are likely to be Lewinsky and her friend and fellow Pentagon worker, Linda Tripp.

Here is a look at the key evidence that is known now:

THE TAPES

The case has its roots in a series of secretly recorded audiotapes that Tripp made during 20 hours of telephone conversations last fall with Lewinsky, along with a tape made after Starr’s office outfitted Tripp with special electronic wire for a final face-to-face conversation she had with Lewinsky.

Although sources have said Lewinsky is heard on the tapes intimating that she had sexual encounters with Clinton and the urgency to commit perjury, only Newsweek magazine has published excerpts.

But the published transcripts have been but a fraction of the 20 hours, and it deals only with the question of whether Lewinsky was trying to get Tripp to lie under oath about Clinton and any past extramarital encounters he may have had.

Lewinsky says at one point to Tripp, according to Newsweek: “I would lie on the stand for my family. That is how I was raised.”

Although Tripp disagrees, Lewinsky adds: “I was brought up with lies all the time. . . . that’s how you got along. . . . I have lied my entire life.”

Tripp tells Lewinsky that she will not lie, and even that does not shake her. “Look,” Lewinsky says, “I will deny it so he [Clinton] will not get screwed in the case.”

While the tapes may seem like a smoking gun for prosecutors, defense lawyers are likely to challenge their admissibility in any trial, especially since all but the last one were made over her home phone in Maryland, where it is illegal to tape-record someone who has not given consent. Local prosecutors have said they will take no action on the matter until Starr’s investigation is finished. But the defense could attempt to use the tapes for its own advantage, seeking to interpret them for the jury as evidence that Tripp was setting up Lewinsky and trying to use her in an effort to entrap the president.

For instance, at one point on the tapes, after peppering Lewinsky with questions, Tripp says: “I can’t be involved in this. I can’t be a party to all this ugliness that will do nothing except destroy people.”

CRUCIAL MEETING

If Starr tries to bring an obstruction of justice charge against Clinton, it could center on a single meeting between the president and Lewinsky.

Clinton’s attorney in the Jones matter, Robert S. Bennett, was notified on Dec. 5 by her lawyers that they intended to subpoena Lewinsky to testify under oath about whether she had a sexual relationship with the president. They had picked up a rumor involving a White House intern a few months before.

On Dec. 17, Lewinsky was given a court order to testify. In one of the taped conversations, she said she was worried about what to say when questioned.

On Dec. 28, she was cleared into the White House, reportedly by Currie, to meet in the Oval Office during the evening, according to sources who have spoken with Lewinsky.

The president and his aides have refused to confirm or deny the meeting, or to release logs showing who entered the White House that day.

If the report is true, attorneys will want to know why Lewinsky was there. It had been nearly 20 months she since left her job at the White House.

Ten days after the reported meeting, she filed a sworn statement denying she had had a sexual relationship with Clinton. Ten days after that, Clinton reportedly denied under oath that he had a sexual relationship with Lewinsky.

Those two statements put both Clinton and Lewinsky at risk of perjury charges if they indeed had a sexual relationship.

JOB OFFERS

Just five days after Bennett learned Lewinsky would be questioned in the Jones case, Jordan, the president’s friend and advisor, contacted officials of American Express in New York seeking a new job for her. She had one interview, but no job offer materialized.

On Dec. 30, two days after her reported meeting with Clinton, Jordan arranged further job interviews in New York for Lewinsky with Revlon, a cosmetics firm where he sits on the board, and Young & Rubicam, an advertising firm.

Why would the president’s friend take such an intense interest in the welfare of a young former intern?

In his one public statement, Jordan said he found Lewinsky’s “drive, ambition and personality were impressive,” adding that “at no time did I ever say, suggest or intimate to her that she should lie” in the Jones case.

Jordan also said he drove Lewinsky to the office of a lawyer, Francis Carter, who helped her prepare her sworn statement denying an affair with Clinton.

TALKING POINTS

The most mysterious document to emerge so far is the typed instructions that Tripp says Lewinsky handed her on Jan. 14, the same day she received a formal job offer from Revlon.

Like Lewinsky, Tripp had been ordered to give a statement to Jones’ lawyer. In a Newsweek story last August, Tripp had been quoted as saying she saw Kathleen Willey emerge from the Oval Office one day in November 1993, with her clothes “disheveled.” According to Newsweek, Tripp said Willey told her that she had been groped and fondled by Clinton.

The document is titled “Points to Make in Affidavit.” It urges the reader--presumably Tripp--to tell a quite different account of what she had seen.

“You never saw her go into the Oval Office or come out of the Oval Office,” the document says. “You have never observed the president behaving inappropriately with anybody.”

Whoever wrote the instructions could be charged with encouraging a witness to lie.

The document includes misspellings and amateur touches that suggest it was not written, or at least not typed, by a lawyer. So far, no one has supplied Lewinsky’s answer to a simple question, “Monica, who gave you the talking points?”

GIFTS

During the first week of the crisis, FBI agents searched Lewinsky’s apartment at the posh Watergate complex in Washington, coming away with a series of items that could eventually lead to hard evidence linking her with the president.

Those items, Ginsburg said in an interview with The Times, include T-shirts, hatpins and a book of Walt Whitman poetry--all of which she received from Clinton. Also seized were a number of blue and black dresses and a pantsuit, the defense lawyer said.

It also has been reported that Clinton gave her a dress, a contention Ginsburg flatly denied Friday night on the ABC television show “20/20.” He characterized the presidential gifts as “small and inconsequential” and said the closest thing to a dress from Clinton is “a long T-shirt.”