House Panel Votes to Release Clinton Video on Monday

The Republican-led House Judiciary Committee brushed aside protests from angry Democrats and voted Friday to release President Clinton’s videotaped testimony in the Monica S. Lewinsky case and 2,800 more pages of material that includes the former intern’s recollections of her sexual escapades with Clinton in the White House.

Shortly after the committee’s decision, House officials announced that the videotape and the other material would be released Monday morning. The action ends two days of closed-door partisan fighting in which Republicans repeatedly rebuffed Democrats’ attempts to keep documents sealed or at least to tone them down before they are released.

With Republicans making full use of their majority status on the 37-member panel, Friday’s vote was the first of many likely defeats for Clinton in the influential committee and suggests that a full impeachment investigation may be inevitable.

And as the gulf widens over how any impeachment inquiry should proceed, the spirit of camaraderie promised by House GOP and Democratic leaders 10 days ago with the arrival on Capitol Hill of independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr’s report on his Lewinsky investigation has already dissolved into harsh political rhetoric and attacks.

Indeed, the committee’s proceedings this week do more than set the stage for the unprecedented broadcast of the questioning of a president about his sexual activities. They also offer a vivid forecast of what is likely to happen when the panel turns to the weightier questions about Clinton’s fate: partisan, emotional sessions with clashes of starkly different views of what to do about his conduct.

“The tone is set,” said one senior Democratic aide. “It’s going to be horrible. These guys plain don’t like each other. They don’t like each other’s politics.”

The material to be released Monday will include all of Clinton’s and most of Lewinsky’s testimony to the grand jury, along with supplementary documentary evidence, charts, graphs, timelines, memos, phone records, receipts, Secret Service records and White House visitor lists, sources said.

In addition, they added, the most salacious new material will provide detailed descriptions by Lewinsky of her orgasms, the way Clinton undressed her and their phone sex conversations.

Starr’s lengthy summary of his investigation that was released Sept. 11 by the House contained many graphic sexual passages from Lewinsky’s grand jury testimony. But Republicans on the Judiciary Committee argued that the additional material needs to be made public because of Clinton’s insistence that he did not lie when he testified that he and Lewinsky did not have what he considered sexual relations.

Democrats angrily countered that the Republicans simply want to embarrass the president.

“If you thought there was graphic sexual material in the [summary] report itself, there’s more of it” in the backup material, warned Abbe Lowell, chief Democratic investigator for the Judiciary panel.

When the committee session ended about noon Friday, Democrats were so enraged that they immediately lambasted the Republicans’ tactics as “unfair” and “destructive.” They argued that the precedents set for nonpartisanship during Congress’ handling of the Watergate scandal were being completely ignored.

“In 1974,” said Rep. John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.), the Judiciary Committee’s senior Democrat who also sat on the panel during its Watergate hearings, “we kept the records for seven weeks, going over them, before there were any releases.

“This time we’ve dumped process and fairness on its head.”

But Judiciary Committee Chairman Henry J. Hyde (R-Ill.) defended the process, saying that each side is being heard. “We had vigorous, spirited debate, but it was civil,” he said.

After emerging from behind closed doors Friday, the committee released a breakdown of its votes on various motions dealing with the grand jury material.

Both sides agreed to delete 120 passages because the sexual detail was deemed unnecessary, to protect the privacy of individuals tangential to the investigation or to maintain national security. But Democrats unsuccessfully sought to delete 27 more passages.

Most of the votes split along party lines (the committee is composed of 22 Republicans and 15 Democrats).

A unified Republican majority easily rejected Democratic motions to delay release of the material and to edit out additional sexually explicit material.

In one case, the committee adopted a proposal by Rep. Bob Barr (R-Ga.), a longtime Clinton critic, that called for restoring details about an episode in which Clinton and Lewinksy allegedly used a cigar as a sex prop. The committee’s Republican and Democratic staff had recommended that some of the details be deleted.

The Barr proposal was adopted, 20 to 16, with Rep. Asa Hutchison (R-Ark.) breaking ranks to join Democrats in voting against it.

The GOP members also rejected a Democratic request that sought to open to the public the panel’s debate on releasing the grand jury material, to provide a full transcript of the meetings and to allow the White House a preview of the material before it is publicly unveiled.

While the debate about releasing the videotape and the documents was conducted over 11 hours in private, future decisions about opening an impeachment inquiry will be made in public. Committee members may behave differently then, but it is clear that both sides are pursuing strategies all but guaranteed to ensure partisan division.

Democrats have mounted a full-bore campaign to discredit the proceedings as unfair, although none want to defend Clinton’s conduct. On Friday, one Democrat after another criticized their GOP counterparts.

“We got rolled,” said Conyers. “But we’re still fighting.”

“It is increasingly clear the Republicans have absolutely no intention of conducting this investigation under the bipartisan principles that the Watergate investigation followed,” said House Minority Leader Richard A. Gephardt (D-Mo.).

At the White House, spokesman James Kennedy called the Judiciary Committee’s actions this week “a rush to prejudgment and an effort to get out the most salacious material at the speed of light, not at the proper pace of justice.”

White House officials said it was inappropriate that the material will be released on the Jewish holiday, Rosh Hashana. GOP House leaders expressed regret about the timing but said that they wanted to avoid any leaks once the material has been copied and is ready for release.

White House officials noted that, also on Monday, Clinton will be delivering his annual address to the United Nations.

Republicans “want to knock this guy down even when he’s representing the entire nation in the eyes of the world,” a senior White House official said. “I don’t think that will sit well with the American people. I think they are just hell-bent on overturning the election.”

As they go on talk shows over the weekend, White House officials intend to hammer home their complaints about partisanship and unfairness by the Judiciary Committee, hoping to focus attention on Republican motives rather than a president who has admitted an inappropriate relationship with Lewinsky.

But Republicans pressed their case that the public should be allowed to contrast the graphic sexual descriptions provided by Lewinsky with the president’s continued insistence that he did not commit perjury when he denied having sexual relations with her.

“We were forced to do this by the president,” Barr said.

Rep. Steve Buyer (R-Ind.) warned: “America, you may think you got the details [in the Starr report]. You did not get the details.”’

Republicans also said that they were methodical and fair in deciding how much to release.

“We won’t rush to judgment, and we won’t refrain from judgment,” House Speaker Newt Gingrich told an audience of political conservatives at the same time the House panel was wrapping up its Friday hearing.

Times staff writers Marc Lacey and Elizabeth Shogren contributed to this story.

* LAWYERS UPSET: Grand jury testimony is usually kept secret, so many attorneys oppose release of Clinton’s. A25

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* The latest scandal coverage, including the Starr report, White House rebuttals and The Times Poll of public opinion about President Clinton, is available at the Times’ Web site.

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