Testimony Echoes Taped Lewinsky Claims

A young woman who was a friend of former White House intern Monica S. Lewinsky has testified before a federal grand jury that Lewinsky told her she had engaged in sexual activity with President Clinton, The Times has learned.

The witness offered the first sworn testimony known to echo claims Lewinsky made in secretly tape-recorded conversations with another friend, Linda Tripp, that she was having an affair with Clinton.

The new testimony represents a potentially significant step for independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr’s inquiry into allegations that Clinton was intimately involved with Lewinsky and urged her to lie and otherwise cover up their relationship. Such actions could expose the president to possible charges of obstruction of justice, perjury and suborning of perjury.

Clinton has publicly denied having “sexual relations” with Lewinsky. And both he and the former White House aide have made similar denials in sworn depositions in the Paula Corbin Jones sexual-harassment lawsuit, according to sources familiar with the case.

In the conversations taped by Tripp without her knowledge, Lewinsky talked extensively about being sexually involved with the president and described what she said were efforts by Clinton to lie and conceal the affair from lawyers representing Jones, who were trying to bolster their harassment case with evidence of other improprieties.

For Starr, the new witness lends credence to the parts of Lewinsky’s conversations with Tripp in which the former Beverly Hills resident talks about her relationship with Clinton. The testimony also increases the pressure on Lewinsky, who is under subpoena to appear before the grand jury.

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The new witness testified before the grand jury for roughly three hours on Thursday afternoon and declined to identify herself afterward to reporters. Her lawyer, Ralph J. Caccia, also declined to name her and did not return telephone calls.

However, people familiar with the matter identified the witness as Neysa “Chris” Erbland, a friend of Lewinsky’s from her high school years in the Los Angeles are. They said that Erbland, 25, told the grand jury that Lewinsky had recounted to her that she engaged in oral sex with the president.

A White House spokesman, Joe Lockhart, said Friday night that he would not discuss the matter. “We don’t have any comment on grand jury testimony,” he said.

Clinton has denied having “sexual relations” with Lewinsky but has otherwise declined to discuss in detail the nature of the relationship. Lewinsky started her tenure at the White House in 1995 and transferred, with White House backing, to a public-affairs post at the Pentagon in April 1996. She visited the White House at least 36 times after shifting to the Pentagon, according to records and interviews.

In other developments:

* The Justice and Treasury departments reached agreement with Starr on allowing retired Secret Service officer Lewis Fox to provide limited testimony to the grand jury. Starr has agreed to avoid questions that could divulge information about the techniques and methods used to protect the president.

Fox has said he remembers Lewinsky coming to the Oval Office several times during the fall of 1995 to deliver papers to Clinton. He is uncertain, however, about how long she spent with Clinton or whether the two were alone together.

* Negotiations continued over Starr’s desire to take testimony from active-duty Secret Service officers, with discussions focusing on a possible compromise that would let the Secret Service provide information about Clinton’s movements and White House visitors but not specific things agents may have seen Clinton himself do or say.

The Secret Service, as it has in the past, is arguing that its ability to protect the president could be compromised if it is drawn into the investigation and agents are forced to testify. “We’re strongly opposed to anything that might compromise our ability to protect the president or his family, or anything that would dilute the confidence the first family has in our mission,” said one Treasury source.

But even though officials said no agreement is at hand, some sort of compromise is ultimately expected to emerge.

* Lewinsky and her mother, Marcia Lewis, spent the day at the Watergate apartment they share, following Lewinsky’s return from Los Angeles on Thursday. “I’m sure it was a happy reunion,” Lewinsky’s attorney, William Ginsburg, said. “They seemed happy and comfortable to see each other.”

Ginsburg reiterated his criticism of Starr for requiring Lewis to testify before the grand jury for two days this week. “I hope he’s finished torturing her and my client.”

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When Erbland emerged from the grand jury Thursday evening, she appeared unshaken by the experience. Erbland’s stylish and upbeat manner stood in contrast to many of the other witnesses who have appeared over the past three weeks.

Erbland on Thursday refused to comment, other than to smile and reply “No” under her breath when a reporter asked her if she was “from here,” meaning Washington.

Starr’s staff is seeking to establish whether Clinton was intimately involved with Lewinsky and if he asked her to lie about it under oath and to help cover it up.

If prosecutors compile credible evidence showing that Clinton did so, it would subject him to accusations that he suborned perjury or obstructed justice. Both are felonies.

Under the formula now being discussed to permit active-duty agents to testify, sources say, Secret Service members might answer prosecutors’ questions about where Clinton was on particular occasions and what if any visitors he received. But they would avoid revealing anything they saw or heard the president do or say.

Information about the president’s customary movements, and the methods used to protect him, would also be off limits.

The formula resembles an arrangement used for a 1992 congressional investigation involving George Bush when he was a candidate for vice president in 1980, though substantial differences exist.

Candidate Bush had been accused of attending a secret meeting in Paris with representatives of Iran shortly before the 1980 presidential election. Bush was allegedly trying to broker a deal delaying release of American hostages in Teheran until after the election, avoiding the possibility of an “October surprise” that could have lifted incumbent President Carter’s sagging political fortunes.

Such action would have been an improper--possibly illegal--venture into foreign policy by then-private citizen Bush.