House Panel Delays Vote on Releasing Clinton Video

After haggling behind closed doors for nearly eight hours, the House Judiciary Committee on Thursday unexpectedly delayed a decision on whether to release a videotape of President Clinton answering questions about his sex life and 2,000 pages of other material in the Monica S. Lewinsky scandal.

The day’s debate was marked by contentious disagreements among the lawmakers over what parts of the report from independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr should be shielded from the public because of their sexually explicit nature, according to Capitol Hill sources. The committee members often went line by line--or “sex act to sex act,” as one source said--arguing about what to release.

For the most part, the committee’s Republicans overruled efforts by Democrats to edit material from the report, the sources said.

Finally, exhausted lawmakers adjourned about 6 p.m. EDT without even getting to the all-important issue of the videotape, sources said. The panel--composed of 22 Republicans and 15 Democrats--is to meet again today, and it appears nothing will be made public before Saturday.

“The tone of the debate was intense,” said Rep. Chris Cannon (R-Utah). “We’re talking about stuff that makes me blush, that makes me sick to my stomach.”

In related developments Thursday:

* Fallout from a published report about a past extramarital affair involving Judiciary Committee Chairman Henry J. Hyde (R-Ill.) prompted House GOP leaders to ask the FBI to investigate charges of harassment against members of Congress as they deliberate on whether to begin impeachment proceedings against Clinton.

Suggesting that the White House was behind publication of the story about Hyde--as well as recent reports on sexual indiscretions by two other House Republicans--Majority Whip Tom DeLay (R-Texas) proclaimed: “We will not be intimidated by this kind of sleazy activity.”

The White House denied that it was “dishing dirt.”

* David E. Kendall, Clinton’s private attorney, said that he had asked Starr to destroy the video of the president’s grand jury testimony about his affair with Lewinsky but was turned down.

“The only purpose of preserving this videotape . . . was to ensure its public release and embarrass the president,” Kendall complained.

* A federal judge in Little Rock, Ark., acting on a request from Hyde, released to the Judiciary Committee a copy of Clinton’s separate video deposition in the Paula Corbin Jones civil lawsuit against the president.

In the deposition, Clinton denied having sexual relations with Lewinsky--an assertion that touched off Starr’s investigation into perjury by the president. Hyde, in his request for the video deposition, said, “It would assist in the review we are currently undertaking.”

Jones’ lawsuit, which has since been dismissed, charged Clinton with sexual harassment stemming from an incident several years ago in which he allegedly propositioned Jones in an Arkansas hotel and exposed himself to her.

* House Republicans suggested that other committees investigating Clinton’s campaign fund-raising practices and other controversies should consider filing reports to Hyde’s panel as it decides whether there are grounds for impeachment.

Rep. Dan Burton (R-Ind.), who chairs a committee that has focused on fund-raising improprieties by the Democratic National Committee and Clinton’s campaign during the 1996 election, said he will review his panel’s findings and may turn over to Judiciary any information that bears on impeachment.

* Clinton was conducting political and legislative business as usual, traveling to Cincinnati and Boston on a fund-raising trip and reiterating his threat to veto a GOP bill that would cut taxes by $80 billion.

Clinton opposes any tax cuts until the future solvency of Social Security is assured.

The day’s stormy, prolonged Judiciary Committee session and the panel’s ultimate failure to make a decision on releasing grand jury material--especially the videotape of Clinton’s testimony--took observers by surprise. Although a spirited debate was expected, House Republicans were aiming for release of the material today.

Democrats See Ulterior Motive

The meeting proceeded at a torturous pace Thursday. Republicans pressed their case that the vast majority of the material must be unsealed to allow the public to weigh Clinton’s truthfulness, while Democrats charged that the GOP simply wants to further erode the president’s stature by needlessly making public vulgar details.

Hyde, summing up the day, said that a series of party-line votes was taken. He added: “We’re partisan, sure. It was strongly partisan, vigorously partisan. I prefer that it would go more smoothly.”

Some of the outnumbered Democrats depicted themselves as under siege. “We’re doing everything we can” to prevent release of some of the material, said Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Los Angeles). But, she said, the Republicans “are rolling over us.”

But there also is some division among House Democrats.

While most were cringing at the release of the videotape and related documents, Rep. Gary A. Condit (D-Ceres) and Rep. Peter Deutsch (D-Fla.), neither members of the Judiciary Committee, pushed for a resolution calling for immediate release of all of the 17 boxes of material that Starr delivered to Congress.

“There are Democrats who want all the information out,” said Condit. “We want it out now.”

At the White House, Clinton aides were mindful of the irony that the committee was meeting behind closed doors to decide whether to release testimony that, had it not been turned over to Congress for use in possible impeachment hearings, would stay secret.

“We find it somewhat puzzling that the House doesn’t believe the public has a right to see the debate about what the public has the right to see,” White House spokesman Joe Lockhart said.

Starr ‘Insisted’ on Videotaping

Of the video of Clinton’s testimony on Aug. 17, Kendall, the president’s private lawyer, complained that Starr’s office had “insisted that it had to videotape his testimony because one or more grand jurors purportedly” would be absent. “I asked [Starr’s office] to agree to discard the videotape after showing it to any grand juror who missed the testimony,” Kendall said. “The [office] refused to do so.”

Kendall said that he did not know if any grand jurors were, in fact, absent or whether the prosecutor videotaped the testimony of any other witnesses.

In the Hyde matter, House leaders from both parties angrily warned that harsh punishments will befall anyone leaking information on the sex lives of lawmakers.

Rep. Martin Frost of Texas, chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, said that he would not dispense party campaign money to any candidate who “initiates an attack on the personal private life of an opponent in a congressional election.”

Rep. John Linder of Georgia, chairman of the GOP campaign committee, also minced no words. “The despicable action against Henry Hyde . . . has brought this entire discussion of public discourse to a new low. Private lives unrelated to policy . . . [are] simply off limits.”

Fallout from the Hyde episode prompted comment from rank-and-file lawmakers as well.

“We ought to take a deep breath and be as kind as we can to each other,” said Rep. Charles B. Rangel (D-N.Y.). “If purity was a qualification to vote, we may not have a quorum.”

Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Huntington Beach) added: “This is unconscionable. None of us is perfect, but we will not be intimidated. We will not be blackmailed.”

Hyde admitted the long-ago affair, acknowledging “my youthful indiscretions.”

According to the Internet magazine Salon, Hyde was involved for five years with a married woman in the 1960s while he too was married and serving in the Illinois Statehouse.

The GOP immediately accused the White House of leaking the Hyde matter to the press.

“Abuse of power is far more serious than having an affair 30 years ago,” DeLay said on the House floor. “I urge the president to stop his allies from engaging in this kind of conduct. All of those who blindly support this president ought to be ashamed.”

Eight top Republican leaders sent a letter to FBI Director Louis J. Freeh asking him to investigate their charges, saying that efforts to intimidate lawmakers would be a violation of federal criminal law.

The White House staunchly denied any involvement in peddling the Hyde story.

Chief of Staff Erskine Bowles said that any administration staff member who did so would be fired.

The White House has similarly denied it was behind other recent revelations about Republicans.

Burton, head of the committee investigating the 1996 fund-raising abuses, admitted earlier this month that he had fathered a child in an extramarital affair in the 1980s.

Rep. Helen Chenoweth (R-Idaho) earlier this month confirmed that she had engaged in a long-term affair with a married man after receiving an inquiry from the Idaho Statesman.

She had run a television ad criticizing Clinton for the “sordid spectacle” of an extramarital affair

. In the Hyde case, Salon, an online magazine, denied that its story was linked in any way “whatsoever” to any White House effort to tar House Republicans.

Norman Sommer, a Florida retiree who contacted Salon regarding Hyde’s affair, also approached The Times this summer about the affair. Sommer is a friend of Fred Snodgrass, whose then-wife, Cherie, was involved with Hyde when he was an Illinois state representative.

The Times did not publish the story. Explained Doyle McManus, The Times’ Washington bureau chief:

“We don’t write about a politician’s sex life unless it comes up in the context of an issue of legitimate public concern, such as sexual harassment or abuse of power. We looked at the allegations about Rep. Hyde and found no public interest issue.”

Hyde’s onetime mistress--now living in Texas, remarried and known as Cherie Soskin--told the San Antonio Express-News that she was separated from her first husband when the affair began.

She also told the newspaper that Hyde told her he was single.

Times staff writers Marc Lacey and Alan C. Miller in Washington and Greg Braxton in Los Angeles contributed to this story.

* CLINTON’S RALLY CRY: President tells Ohio donors that election focus should be on issues GOP wants to avoid. A23

* UNFLINCHING FOUNDERS: Alexander Hamilton’s adultery wasn’t deemed a “high crime or misdemeanor.” B9

* SANDY BANKS: It’s easy to pass judgment, but the reality is, every marriage has its own set of rules. E1