Boxes Land on the Doorstep of Stunned Capitol

After months of suspense, President Clinton’s fate was finally delivered to Congress on Wednesday in a pair of vans.

But despite unbridled curiosity about what was in the 36 boxes of documents on independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr’s investigation of Clinton’s relationship with Monica S. Lewinsky, officials whisked them to a locked room in an obscure House office building without allowing so much as a peek.

That uncharacteristic discipline was not the only surprise in what was one of the most bizarre, momentous days on Capitol Hill in memory.

“It’s theater of the absurd,” said Rep. Eliot L. Engel (D-N.Y.).

The day was punctuated by rare meetings between sworn partisan enemies, crossed communications between Starr and Capitol Hill and the unexpected arrival of the independent counsel’s report just as GOP leaders were trying futilely to focus attention on their fall legislative agenda.

It was a stunning welcome back to Washington for House members who were just returning to the Capitol from the summer recess, hardly expecting the matter to be dropped in their laps so quickly.

Not that the prospect of receiving the report was not hanging over everything. As House members returned from vacation, they found a political landscape utterly transformed by the fallout from Clinton’s Aug. 17 admission that he had an inappropriate relationship with former White House intern Lewinsky.

Capitol Hill was still abuzz with earnest press conferences on such policy issues as education, the international economy and bankruptcy reform. Lawmakers still droned on with speeches about the gold standard, campaign finance reform and renaming a federal building after former Rep. Ronald V. Dellums (D-Oakland).

But it was the legislative equivalent of Muzak in a political world deaf to anything but the Starr report, which congressional leaders and White House officials expected to arrive sometime in September. But not Wednesday.

Thinking that they still had days--if not weeks--to prepare, House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) and House Minority Leader Richard A. Gephardt (D-Mo.) broke years of icy relations and had an unusually amicable morning meeting about procedures for handling the Starr report. Participants marveled that the two managed to be so civil.

“This is not business as usual,” said Abbe Lowell, the Democrats’ chief investigative counsel on the House Judiciary Committee. “Today was a great day for cooperation.”

Lowell and other aides to the committee then were dispatched by House leaders to break the months of silence between Starr’s office and Capitol Hill. They called the independent counsel to find out when and in what form the report would be delivered to the Hill.

As they waited for the return call, Starr’s 36 boxes of documents were loaded into the back of the two vans, which then plowed through traffic toward the Capitol.

So unsuspecting were House Republican leaders that, as the vans arrived, Gingrich and his lieutenants were trying to conduct a press conference on their legislative agenda.

“All [reporters] want to talk about is Monica,” muttered Rep. Jennifer Dunn (R-Wash.) to a colleague.

But as she spoke, the bizarre scene of the report’s surprise delivery was beginning to unfold in the Capitol Plaza.

A crowd of reporters and tourists began to form, responding to ricocheting rumors that the report was en route.

Capitol policemen by the dozen began to appear, even though no one was sure what they were going to do. A bank of television cameras stood at the ready.

House Sergeant-at-Arms Wilson Livingood, who oversees the Capitol Police, was not told until 15 minutes before the vans pulled up that the armed guards would be needed.

The vans pulled up to the House side of the Capitol, where the grand white marble stairs gleamed in the bright September sun.

Livingood and his men inventoried the contents, then escorted them to a remote House office building where they will be kept under lock and key, protected by armed guards.

Democrats fumed about Starr’s decision to deliver the boxes to the Capitol rather than to the less photogenic office building where they were to be stored.

Engel said that the seemingly flamboyant delivery was a testimony to Starr’s partisan intentions. “It was a three-ring circus,” he said.

By contrast, in May 1974, when special prosecutor Leon Jaworski delivered his report on Watergate, he brought it to the Judiciary Committee in two bulging briefcases.

The boxes are to go unopened until the House decides on procedures for releasing their contents to members and the public.