Clinton Could Testify--Soon, Lawyers Predict

The focus of attention recently has been on when Monica S. Lewinsky, the most famous ex-White House intern, will be called to testify before the grand jury.

However, the more intriguing question is whether or when President Clinton will be called to testify.

Many lawyers here, including some with ties to the president or the prosecutor, predict that Clinton will be asked to answer questions under oath, and sooner than most expect. And the outcome of the entire inquiry may turn on whether the president gives a plausible explanation for a set of circumstances that look suspicious.

So far, a strategy of silence has worked well for the White House, better even than the president’s advisors had anticipated. Having simply but firmly denied having had “sexual relations with that woman, Ms. Lewinsky,” Clinton and his aides have refused to say more and changed the subject.

But independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr may soon upset the silence strategy.

“Absolutely. I bet they ask him to testify. That’s the way they are heading,” said one lawyer who has represented prominent Democrats. “I think it will happen within a few weeks, and Clinton has no real legal grounds to refuse” to appear merely because he is president.

Another lawyer who is close to Starr said that seeking Clinton’s answers to questions under oath “is the logical outcome. There is plenty of precedent for it, including in this investigation.”

At an earlier stage of the Whitewater inquiry, Starr went to the White House to question the president and his wife, Hillary Rodham Clinton, under oath about their financial dealings with a failed Arkansas savings and loan. Later, Starr called the first lady before the grand jury to answer questions about the mysterious reappearance of her law firm’s billing records.

Separately, Clinton also provided a videotaped statement for a Whitewater-related trial in Little Rock, Ark.

Clinton advisors have been discussing among themselves how to respond if Starr seeks the president’s testimony in the Lewinsky matter.

“Some people think the attacks on Starr were to lay the predicate so that the president can turn him down,” said one senior advisor, adding that he did not believe that approach would work. “At some point he has to say something. I think it’s very hard not to testify,” he said.

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But another former administration lawyer said that he thinks the president will avoid testifying at all cost. “I think he will say no and stonewall,” he said.

Clinton’s quick denials, followed by the public vow of silence, has allowed him to avoid answering a series of questions that has arisen since the initial reports. They include:

* Why was the former intern at the White House on 37 occasions after she left her job there in April 1996?

* Why was she there on Sunday evening, Dec. 28, just 11 days after she was subpoenaed to give a deposition in the Paula Corbin Jones sexual-harassment case against Clinton?

* Why did Clinton give Lewinsky gifts, including a hat and a brooch, and why did the president’s secretary, Betty Currie, try to retrieve those gifts in December after they were subpoenaed by Jones’ lawyers?

* Why did the president call Currie to come to work on Jan. 18, a Sunday, to discuss the sworn testimony he had given in Jones’ case the day before?

* Why did Vernon E. Jordan Jr., the president’s friend, arrange two job interviews for Lewinsky in New York just two days after she met with the president? And, earlier, why did the president’s deputy chief of staff and his United Nations representative encourage her to take a job at U.N. headquarters in New York?

Each of these questions may have an innocent answer. For example, Lewinsky may have developed an especially close relationship with the president’s secretary, as some of Clinton’s aides have suggested. Moreover, while Lewinsky may have told Linda Tripp and other friends about a sexual relationship with the president, she may be given to making up wild stories, as others have hinted. She may even be, as Jordan put it, a young woman “whose drive, ambition and personality . . . were so impressive” that he was inspired to call several New York executives and urge that they hire her immediately.

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But legal experts believe that Starr will brush aside such benign theories and present this set of circumstances as evidence of a conspiracy to obstruct justice by concealing an intimate relationship. According to this theory, Clinton planned to lie under oath about his relationship with Lewinsky and used his aides and friends to cover up the lie.

The oft-repeated lesson of Watergate was that the cover-up often turns out worse than the original crime.

Much hinges on the testimony of Lewinsky, according to George Washington University law professor Stephan A. Saltzburg. If she denies a sexual affair, or perhaps admits an affair but insists that Clinton took no steps to cover it up, Starr will have a difficult time making his case, he said.

However, if she says that the president suggested she go to New York to avoid testifying, “Starr may believe he can make the obstruction case,” said Saltzburg, an associate independent counsel in the Iran-Contra case. “At that point, the independent counsel will give the president an opportunity to respond. It would be unfair to move ahead without giving him that chance to respond.”

Starr could ask the president to appear before the grand jury, but he will more likely ask him to answer questions under oath at the White House, Saltzburg said.

In his initial statements, Clinton said that “very legitimate questions” were raised by the allegations involving Lewinsky and that he would answer them “at the appropriate time.”

Privately, Clinton’s top aides have said that further dealings with Starr may not ever be appropriate, since they are convinced that he is out to get the president and will twist any testimony to that end.

If the president refuses, however, Starr could raise the stakes and seek a court order forcing him to testify.

“He’s already dragged [Lewinsky’s] mother before the grand jury. Why not the president too?” one former administration lawyer asked rhetorically.

Typically, prosecutors do not subpoena the so-called target of an investigation to appear before the grand jury. They bring an indictment and let the defendant answer at trial.

This case differs fundamentally, however, because a sitting president cannot be indicted, most experts agree. For that reason, Starr may be determined to build the strongest possible case before turning the matter over to the House Judiciary Committee for possible impeachment proceedings, and that could include getting answers from the president.

“The law is pretty clear. You can subpoena a president to testify,” said Michael Gerhardt, dean of the Case Western Reserve Law School in Cleveland and an expert on presidential powers and the impeachment process. “Of course, nobody can be forced to speak. He could take the 5th Amendment.”

That possibility worries Clinton’s defenders. It would be “an act of political suicide” for him to invoke the 5th Amendment, said one.

Some Democratic lawyers speculated that the president, if facing an order to testify, might publicly denounce Starr’s investigation as a partisan witch hunt that lacks legal authority to indict the president.

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“We usually manage to avoid a constitutional crisis, but it’s possible it could happen in this situation,” said Saltzburg. “If the president thumbs his nose at Starr and claims a presidential privilege, we could have a constitutional clash.”

Of course, no one can foresee just how the investigation will play out.

But many lawyers think that the investigation will move quickly. Unlike the complicated Whitewater saga, there are relatively few key players in the Lewinsky matter, and many of the facts already have been revealed.

“I’d be shocked if we don’t know by the end of March how this is going to play out,” Saltzburg said.

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Times staff writers Doyle McManus and Robert L. Jackson contributed to this story.