Time for Final Play by Trial Managers

As last chances go, this is theirs.

For three days this week--today, Tuesday and Wednesday--the impeachment trial against President Clinton stands in recess as House managers, desperate to save their case before the Senate, and already on record as not having the votes to remove Clinton, will conduct videotaped depositions of three witnesses.

With the Senate moving toward a verdict in two weeks, the deposition phase represents the Republican managers’ final play, one last Hail Mary attempt to try to oust Clinton from office by proving that he obstructed justice in trying to cover up an extramarital affair.

The three depositions begin today with Monica S. Lewinsky, the barely adult White House intern who fell for the president and then talked to her girlfriend, whose tapes of their conversations fell into the hands of independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr.

Lewinsky has testified repeatedly that no one ever asked her to lie and that she was never promised a job in return for her silence. But House managers believe that, if senators hear her describe her relationship with Clinton, they will be convinced that he committed high crimes and misdemeanors.

“If there is one witness you and the American people honestly do need to hear,” Rep. Ed Bryant (R-Tenn.) told the Senate last week, “it is Monica Lewinsky.”

Tuesday the managers will depose Vernon E. Jordan Jr., the presidential friend who was called on to help land Lewinsky a job, allegedly as payback for her denial of an affair with Clinton in an affidavit in the Paula Corbin Jones sexual harassment lawsuit.

Jordan has testified that Lewinsky told him she did not have “a sexual relationship” with the president and that he never told her to lie.

But Rep. Asa Hutchinson (R-Ark.), the House manager who will question Jordan, says: “His testimony goes to the heart of one of the elements of obstruction of justice. That is, the job search and the false affidavit and the interconnection between those two.”

Wednesday comes Sidney Blumenthal, a reporter-turned-Clinton aide who told the grand jury that the president confided in him that he was merely trying to help a “troubled” Lewinsky who was stalking him, making sexual demands.

“Mr. Blumenthal’s testimony,” said manager James E. Rogan (R-Glendale), who will question the aide, “puts him in direct conflict with the claims of the president and shatters the myth of the president’s truthful but misleading answers given under oath.”

That is the lineup; the outcome is far from certain.

In what amounted to a test vote last week, all but one senator toed the party line in casting votes for or against dismissing the two articles of impeachment. Indeed, the 56-44 vote demonstrated that the Republicans are far short of the 67 needed for convicting Clinton.

Now come the depositions, each of them beginning at 6 a.m. PST, for up to eight hours each.

The Lewinsky deposition--by far the most intriguing and sure to bring out the paparazzi--will be held inside the Mayflower Hotel, where she was first debriefed a week ago.

The Jordan and Blumenthal depositions will be staged in Room S407, a fourth-floor office on the Senate side of the Capitol and a place so secretive that it normally is used to give senators classified briefings on national intelligence matters.

The videotape and a transcript of each deposition will be given to the secretary of the Senate, who will maintain the materials for review by individual senators and Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, who is presiding over the trial.

Two White House lawyers will attend each session, where they may make objections. Any objections will be noted for the record but will not stop the process.

The Democrats picked Sens. Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont, John Edwards of North Carolina and Christopher J. Dodd of Connecticut to attend the depositions but made no immediate decision on which proceeding each would attend.

For the Republicans, Sen. Mike DeWine of Ohio will attend the Lewinsky deposition, while Sen. Fred Thompson of Tennessee will sit in during the Jordan appearance and Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania will attend Blumenthal’s.

One of the two senators at each deposition will administer the oath to the witness, and each witness will be allowed to have his or her attorneys sitting close by.

On Thursday, the trial picks up again, and the managers could ask senators to call Lewinsky, Jordan or Blumenthal, or all three, for live testimony.

They could ask the Senate for permission to conduct additional witness interviews, or they could present affidavits of new material gathered during the week. They do plan to ask that the Senate publicly release the tapes and transcripts.

All of those requests require Senate action, but it remains unclear how the Republican-led Senate would respond to any initiative from the managers. But as the trial moves into its fourth week, members from both parties are becoming increasingly weary and anxious for an end.

The three managers who will question the witnesses returned to their home districts over the weekend, preparing questions, reviewing transcripts and brushing up on the factual disputes they will attempt to amplify.

The idea of witnesses represents a clear victory for the managers, who long have fought for having the key players in the Clinton-Lewinsky drama speak to the Senate.

Rep. Bill McCollum (R-Fla.) warned the Senate last week that history may not look kindly on them if they do not allow witnesses. He noted that “in the not too distant future” Lewinsky will have a gag order lifted from her immunity agreement with Starr, clearing the way for publication of her book and a televised interview.

“At that point in time,” McCollum said, “she is going to have the public judging her, and they are going to be judging this case, as will history. And I suggest that the public at that point in history as well will be judging you and not judging the Senate well if it doesn’t let her come here and testify.”

Bryant, who will quiz Lewinsky, said that, absent Clinton, she alone could become the tell-all witness.

He hopes to glean information about her talks with Clinton over her affidavit in the Jones case, what Clinton and Jordan did and told her to advance her job search, and, most important, whether she stands by her grand jury statement that no one asked her to lie or offered her job help in return for her silence.

Even a nuance here or there could be enough for the managers to keep their case alive.

From Lewinsky, Bryant looks for a witness who, while she “admired” the president, “would be a person who in all likelihood would be forthcoming.”

From Jordan, Hutchinson wants clarification on whether Clinton specifically tapped his longtime friend to help rid him of his Lewinsky “problem.” Despite Jordan’s grand jury testimony that he did not know of the affair, Lewinsky indicated to the grand jury that Jordan was well aware of her sexual relationship with the president and Clinton’s desire to have her transferred out of town.

And from Blumenthal, House managers hope to demonstrate that Clinton used him and other aides to further his obstruction of justice by getting them to lie on his behalf.

White House lawyers dismiss the deposition phase as a fruitless search. Starr already has amassed more than 10,000 pages of grand jury testimony, more than 800 pages of depositions and thousands of pages of documentary evidence, audio transcripts and FBI interviews, they said.

“We are not at all afraid of what the witnesses would say,” David E. Kendall, a private attorney for Clinton, told the Senate last week. “Instead, we know what they are going to say because it is all right there in the volumes before you.”

Times researcher Tricia Ford contributed to this story.