Hyde Schedules Fast Track for Vote on Hearings

The House Republican who will preside over any hearings on the fate of President Clinton set a speedy timetable Thursday for opening a formal impeachment inquiry and announced that he may broaden his investigation to include matters beyond the Monica S. Lewinsky scandal.

Rep. Henry J. Hyde (R-Ill.) said that he expects his House Judiciary Committee to vote Oct. 5 or 6 and the full House to vote by Oct. 9 on whether to convene hearings to determine if Clinton committed perjury or obstructed justice in concealing his sexual liaisons with the former White House intern and, if so, whether he should be impeached.

Any decision to expand the House inquiry beyond the Lewinsky matter depends on what the committee receives from the office of independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr, Hyde said. It could encompass other White House controversies--such as the Clintons’ involvement in the Whitewater real estate development in Arkansas before his presidency, irregularities with confidential FBI files and the firing of the White House travel office staff.

“We want to hear anything and everything--good, bad, indifferent, exculpatory, accusatory--that bears on the main question,” Hyde said. “There may be other matters that we feel bear on the main question of the fitness of the president for this office.”

At the White House, presidential spokesman Mike McCurry cautioned that the public may chastise Hyde for moving too quickly and unfairly and he warned that the committee’s work so far has raised “quite legitimate concerns about the way in which politics intersects with these proceedings.”

And House Democrats, who prefer public hearings before any inquiry is launched, decried the Hyde committee for not seeking testimony from Starr or Lewinsky before moving ahead with a full House vote.

“This is an effort to run out the clock before the [Nov. 3] election,” charged Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.), a leading Judiciary panel member. “They’re trying to make the president look bad and their side good. The Republican position is totally hypocritical.”

Hyde’s Picture Put Beside Rodino’s

Hyde announced the House timetable at a press conference in the Judiciary Committee room, flanked by two large portraits--one of himself, the other of former Rep. Peter W. Rodino Jr. (D-N.J.), who chaired the committee during the Watergate scandal of the Nixon administration. Hyde’s portrait had been unveiled only a day earlier.

“The reason I have called this meeting is for you all to admire the picture up there,” he joked to reporters, a finger aimed at the painting of himself.

But the allusion was not lost on anyone. Republicans and Democrats have continually pointed to the Watergate hearings as a model for bipartisan action during an impeachment process.

Hyde and his boss, House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.), realize that they need Democratic support for an impeachment review to overcome public opinion polls that give high ratings to Clinton’s job performance and low performance ratings to GOP leaders in Congress.

On Thursday, Hyde vowed that he is his own man and that he is not operating under the directions of Gingrich or other Republican leaders.

“As to whether I am in charge of the investigation,” he said, “all I know is every time I give advice to Newt he nods his head affirmatively.”

But the chairman also echoed Gingrich’s comment Wednesday that Republicans will be led by the Constitution rather than public sentiment.

“Our guide is deliberate speed, not too fast that people can accuse us of rushing to judgment and not too slow so people can accuse us of deliberately stretching it out for political purposes,” Hyde said. “This is one of those ‘damned if you do, damned if you don’t’ ” situations.

Sometime after the votes on whether to conduct impeachment hearings, which is expected to pass, the House would set a timetable for those proceedings. Lawmakers could decide to start the hearings sometime later this year or wait until the new Congress convenes in January. Because the 105th Congress ends this year and impeachment proceedings are expected to last several months, information from hearings begun this year would be reported to the 106th Congress, which then could resume the process.

When Starr sent his referral on the Clinton-Lewinsky case to Capitol Hill on Sept. 9, he noted that there were other matters he was continuing to investigate.

These include his original mandate to review the Whitewater land transactions made by Clinton and First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton before they moved to Washington.

Other open-ended investigations involve allegations that the Clinton White House improperly tapped into confidential FBI files of Republican officials, and allegations that a presidential aide perjured himself during a congressional investigation by testifying that Mrs. Clinton played no role in firing people in the White House travel office.

Rep. Sheila Jackson-Lee of Texas, another Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, said the panel should determine the scope of its investigation--large or small--before it proceeds.

“We have more to do than just schedule meetings,” she said. “People are frightened by this process. They want to know who’s next, who will be ruined next without due process?”

Another committee Democrat, Rep. Martin T. Meehan of Massachusetts, argued that voting in the next two weeks to start an impeachment process is much too soon.

“The timetable clearly demonstrates to the American people that this is a political stampede,” he said. “This has been their timetable since the beginning.”

At the White House, McCurry said that public opinion remains the most important barometer of how best to proceed.

“On the face of it, Chairman Hyde looks every bit the reasonable gentleman that he is,” McCurry said. “And I think the American people will hold him accountable to that very important standard he set today, to be fair and to be bipartisan if not nonpartisan, and to conduct these proceedings under the rule of law.”

Asked if the White House sees impeachment in the House as a foregone conclusion but that Clinton can avoid conviction in the Senate, McCurry said:

“We’re just, practically speaking, facing the reality of what the numbers are in the House of Representatives. It doesn’t mean that we like it, doesn’t mean we agree with it.”

For his part, Clinton told reporters at a White House function that he was busying himself with other issues, such as the economy. “It is utterly foolish for people to be diverted or distracted from the urgent challenges still before us,” the president said.

” . . . The right thing to do is for us all to focus on what’s best for the American people,” he said. “And the right thing for me to do is what I’m doing. I’m working on leading our country, and I’m working on healing my family.”

This morning, the Judiciary Committee meets in a closed-door session to decide how much more material from Starr’s investigation to send to the Government Printing Office on Monday. That material, possibly as much as 60,000 pages, will then be released to the public later next week, probably Wednesday or Thursday, Hyde said.

Much of the debate today will center on the secret tape recordings Linda Tripp made of her conversations with Lewinsky, who allegedly talked about how she and Clinton and others were scheming to obstruct justice in the Paula Corbin Jones sexual harassment lawsuit against Clinton.

At issue is whether Tripp altered some of the tapes to entrap Clinton and whether she herself is heard on the tapes encouraging Lewinsky to set up Clinton.

In his testimony to the grand jury, the president complained that Tripp was trying to trick him and Lewinsky into committing wrongdoing.

Hyde Calls Tripp Tapes ‘Very Long’

Hyde said that the only problem with the Tripp tapes is that they are “very long” and “very garrulous.”

“There is a lot of information that really does not pertain to this investigation,” he said. “There is information there that really could be embarrassing to innocent people, third parties. . . .

“On the other hand, there is information that should be released. We can redact transcripts of the taped material and release those. That, so far, seems to be the best way.”

Democrats complained that releasing transcripts rather than tapes was unfair, especially since the committee released the videotape, rather than a transcript, of Clinton’s testimony.

Frank said that he did not understand why Clinton’s presumably secret grand jury testimony was so quickly made available to the public while the Tripp tapes are being held back.

In a bit of sarcasm, he said, “apparently Linda Tripp isn’t like everybody else.”

Times staff writer James Gerstenzang contributed to this story.

Complete video transcripts of Clinton’s testimony and all of the supporting documents that have been released by the House Judiciary Committee are available on the Times’ Web site. Go to:

https://www.latimes.com/scandal

* INSIDE HOLLYWOOD: Many criticize Clinton, but remain loyal to his agenda. B1