2 Sides Meet, Address Impeachment Issues

After shaking hands and exchanging pleasantries, the two sides in the impeachment battle began doing Wednesday what was bound to happen next--butting heads.

In their first face-to-face meeting, President Clinton’s top lawyers and congressional investigators discussed the upcoming hearings on whether Clinton should be impeached for lying under oath and otherwise trying to cover up his affair with former White House intern Monica S. Lewinsky.

Meeting behind closed doors on Capitol Hill, House Judiciary Committee aides spelled out a formal White House role in the impeachment process--including the opportunity for presidential lawyers to cross-examine witnesses, object to questions and participate in some, but not all, of the committee’s public and private deliberations.

But in a sign of the inevitable conflict to come, White House Counsel Charles F.C. Ruff, Clinton attorney David E. Kendall and special counsel Gregory Craig left the two-hour-long session largely at odds with House Republican aides.

“We are not yet convinced that this tribunal is operating under a fair, impartial set of rules,” Craig told reporters.

Although the meeting was billed as a mere get-acquainted session for the lawyers, it was a precursor to the full-blown political brawl that is sure to develop as the date approaches for the first hearings on the possible impeachment of a U.S. president in almost 25 years.

Aides predicted that the public hearings will begin sometime in mid-November, although the scope of the case and the witness list remain a work in progress. And lawyers said White House cooperation in distilling the facts in independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr’s report is essential if the hearings are to end by Dec. 31, the target date set by House Judiciary Committee Chairman Henry J. Hyde (R-Ill.).

With most of the committee’s Republican members having publicly stated support for impeachment, the White House and its Democratic allies are fighting for the president’s political survival.

Clinton Lawyers Plan an Aggressive Defense

Emboldened by opinion polls showing public distaste for the months-long Lewinsky saga, Clinton lawyers intend to mount an aggressive defense that makes nothing easy for Hyde and pushes for a speedy end to his effort.

“If they expect us to fall on our sword in abject surrender and [if they] view anything short of that as delay, they are being unfair,” a White House aide said of the president’s impeachment foes. “The president deserves a legitimate defense.”

One concern for the White House is the large amount of uncertainty that remains so soon before the launch of hearings.

The White House lawyers said they are not even sure how many impeachment counts will be lodged against Clinton. The number has fluctuated from Starr’s 11 and the 15 of chief GOP counsel David P. Schippers to the streamlined three counts announced last week by Hyde.

“We think it’s valid for the president to know what he’s being charged with,” Craig said.

But committee lawyers said the complicated case is merely being consolidated into the broad categories of lying under oath, witness tampering and obstruction of justice.

Most unsettling to the White House is that GOP investigators are holding open the possibility that they could expand the inquiry, if Starr delivers more information.

Craig, called in from the State Department to quarterback Clinton’s impeachment defense, also accused the Republican-led committee of refusing to define an impeachable offense and dragging out “one of the most somber constitutional processes.”

White House Accused of Smearing Inquiry

Paul J. McNulty, a GOP committee lawyer, called the discord overblown. He stressed common ground--the desire for a speedy conclusion, for instance--and accused the White House of adopting the time-worn tactic of trying to smear the inquiry before it has begun.

“The president had eight months to tell the truth,” McNulty said. “We have had two weeks since the [impeachment inquiry] passed. . . . They think if you say ‘unfair’ 5,000 times, eventually you just believe them.”

Joining McNulty in the meeting were GOP lawyers Thomas E. Mooney, Jon Dudas and Schippers, as well as Democratic lawyers Abbe Lowell, Julian Epstein, Lis Wiehl and Perry Applebaum.

According to committee procedures, which parallel those used during the Watergate impeachment inquiry when Richard Nixon was in the Oval Office, “the president’s counsel may question any witness called before the committee, subject to instructions from the chairman or presiding member respecting the time, scope and duration of the examination.”

Clinton and his lawyers also will be invited to attend all hearings, including those conducted in closed session. Presidential lawyers will be permitted to object to questions asked of witnesses and to oppose the admissibility of testimony and evidence. Hyde, or the full committee, ultimately would decide such issues.

White House lawyers already have objected to the committee’s plan for conducting depositions, the critical closed-door interrogations of witnesses that form the factual basis for hearings. They want to sit in on the sessions. The committee, noting the presence of Democratic members of the panel, wants the White House shut out.

Craig said the White House wants a follow-up meeting with Hyde to resolve this and other disputes. Chief among them is White House insistence on defining an impeachable offense.

White House officials argued that it would be foolhardy to launch an inquiry without first knowing the proper standard. Without such a definition, Craig said, the process is like “a game being played with rules being made up by one side as the game is going on.”