Clinton Urged to Face Congress, Tell His Side

As the White House braced for the release of reams of new material about President Clinton and Monica S. Lewinsky, prominent lawmakers seized Sunday on the notion that Clinton take the unparalleled step of appearing before Congress to explain his actions, even before a decision is made on whether to pursue impeachment.

Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) proposed that Clinton end the nation’s “political water torture” by answering questions before the House Judiciary Committee, which will decide whether to recommend impeachment to the full House of Representatives. Kerry also said the president should respond fully to the media’s queries--”one session, until you’re finished.”

The White House greeted the idea with qualified support.

Kerry offered his suggestion on the eve of the scheduled distribution of Clinton’s videotaped Aug. 17 testimony before a federal grand jury, along with a transcript of Lewinsky’s grand jury testimony, and some 2,800 pages of supporting evidence compiled by independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr, including memos, phone records, receipts and Secret Service logs.

The airing of the Clinton videotape is likely to eclipse Clinton’s address this morning at the opening session of the U.N. General Assembly in New York. The tape is expected to show the president alternately expressing regret for his extramarital encounters with the former White House intern and offering legalistic replies or declining to answer pointed questions from Starr’s prosecutors and grand jurors.

The lurid chronicle of the Lewinsky affair, already made public in Starr’s 445-page referral to the Judiciary Committee on Sept. 11, will be buttressed by even more graphic details contained in the grand jury testimony. Among other things, Lewinsky is said to have provided lengthy descriptions of alleged phone-sex conversations between her and the president.

The new documents are scheduled to be made public at 9 a.m. EDT. At the same time, the videotape of Clinton’s grand jury testimony will be released to television networks: CNN, Fox News, MSNBC and C-SPAN said they will air the tape in its entirety; ABC, CBS and NBC plan to run excerpts after reviewing it.

But Kerry and other lawmakers noted that the unprecedented release of the four-hour videotape does not represent a full airing of Clinton’s version of events. The video, noted Kerry, “is not the president’s full version,” but only his responses to prosecutors’ questions.

“I believe the president would be well served to explain exactly what he did, exactly what he was thinking,” by appearing before the Judiciary Committee, said Kerry, who is a potential presidential candidate in 2000.

“And let’s vote and let’s move one way or the other,” he said on NBC-TV’s “Meet the Press.” “But the nation is being ill served by this political water torture that’s taking place in a highly calculated, highly partisan way.”

Kerry said the president could testify before Congress within weeks, before the end of the current session and the November congressional elections.

On the same program, two conservative Republicans endorsed Kerry’s call.

“If the president would come forward, tell the truth, the whole truth, nothing but the truth, answer questions--I think it would be a very quick way to jump-start this process,” said Sen. John Ashcroft (R-Mo.), another potential presidential candidate who has urged Clinton to resign.

Added Judiciary Committee member Rep. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.): “I like the idea. . . . I have four or five things I want to talk to the guy about.” The Starr report, he noted, “is full of hearsay.”

White House spokesman Joe Lockhart said in an interview that a presidential appearance before the Judiciary Committee is “certainly worth considering” and that the administration would “not rule out” the possibility.

Lockhart said Kerry’s televised comments were the first time he had heard the suggestion.

The discussion of a possible congressional appearance by Clinton provided one of the few areas of agreement as key members of Congress and senior White House aides appeared on news talk shows to pre-spin today’s document release and argue over the meaning of “high crimes and misdemeanors”--the standard set by the Constitution for a presidential impeachment.

The videotape of Clinton’s testimony was variously described as “rather boring” and “pretty compelling,” and the president as “remorseful” and “defiant,” by members of Congress who have already seen it.

“I’ve seen purse-snatch cases when I was a D.A. that were more memorable,” said Rep. James E. Rogan (R-Glendale).

By itself, said Graham, “it’s not going to be a knockout blow.”

Of course, Graham’s definition of a “knockout blow” appeared to be somewhat different than that of others.

On “Meet the Press,” Graham said lying in a deposition that a judge deemed inadmissible in a dismissed civil suit “may not be” perjury. But if Clinton lied to the grand jury, “that’s a slam dunk,” he said, and a “high crime.”

Countered Rep. Robert Wexler (D-Fla.): “You need to have a subversion of the government” to justify impeachment.

While the debate raged over the airwaves, poll-takers were disagreeing as well. According to their soundings, anywhere from 29% to 46% of respondents want Clinton to leave the presidency. (That camp includes the new Miss America: Only hours after Nicole Johnson was crowned, she said “it would be better for him to resign.”)

Clinton himself appeared briefly at a fund-raiser on a Potomac River cruise ship Sunday morning. Then he and his wife, Hillary Rodham Clinton, sought solace at church services.

One congressional scholar took a dim view of Kerry’s proposal. Presidential testimony at this early stage would amount to “eroding the constitutional integrity of the impeachment process,” said Thomas Mann of the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank.

Short-circuiting the process could weaken the presidency and eat away at the separation of powers between the legislative and executive branches of government, he said.

“It’s a really bad idea,” Mann said.

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WASHINGTON OUTLOOK

Scrutinizing our leaders’ private lives nears a point where there’s no turning back. A5

* A PANEL DIVIDED

Partisan bickering is a way of life for members of the House Judiciary Committee. A14

The President’s Testimony

* See President Clinton’s videotaped testimony as soon as it is made available to The Times by the House Judiciary Committee today: https://www.latimes.com.