Jordan Steady in a Tide of Scandal

Mud has splattered all over town since the Monica S. Lewinsky mess exploded more than a year ago, but none of it seems to have spotted the London-made Turnbull and Asser shirts worn by Vernon E. Jordan Jr.

After testifying five times before a federal grand jury last year, Jordan--Bill Clinton’s golfing companion and confidant--takes the witness chair again today. House impeachment managers struggling to make their troubled case see him as a key to their effort to prove that the president obstructed justice.

To some, Jordan’s previous testimony might strain common sense: Super-lawyer and president’s best friend phones Fortune 500 chairman to arrange job interview for former intern because she “bordered on being a nuisance.”

But no one in Washington power circles is eager to question or judge this larger-than-life (he’s 6-foot-4 and exudes charisma) former civil rights leader, corporate magnate and multimillionaire attorney.

Indeed, so far he has glided through the tawdry scandal with his career undamaged, his social status uncompromised, his record untainted and his presidential friendship back-slappingly intact.

But House prosecutors want another crack at him in a late-inning attempt to prove the charge that Jordan used his influence as a member of nearly a dozen corporate boards to line up a job for Lewinsky. But most people who know Jordan believe that the House managers have met their match:

“By their lights, he’s not going to give them anything,” said Jordan’s attorney, William G. Hundley.

“There is a general sense [that] these guys are barking up the wrong tree if they think they are going to get something out of Vernon,” said Washington lobbyist Jody Powell, former press secretary for President Carter.

“He’ll come out smelling like roses and they’ll come out smelling like the stuff that helps roses grow,” said Julian Bond, national chairman of the NAACP and Jordan’s friend for more than 40 years.

This giant vacuum cleaner of a scandal seems to have left a mark on almost everyone entangled in it: Lewinsky is paparazzi prey; polls show independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr to be one of the most unpopular men in the country; Linda Tripp is the subject of merciless satire on “Saturday Night Live”; Rep. Henry J. Hyde (R-Ill.), once viewed as a tower of fairness as Judiciary Committee chairman, increasingly is seen as overly exuberant in pushing Clinton’s prosecution.

Jordan is Unscathed

But Jordan is unscathed. When he finished testifying last summer, some grand jury members were so taken with him that they asked permission to contact him later about future jobs. “He said he’d be glad to help them,” Hundley recalled.

When Jordan began his grand jury testimony last March, he and Clinton followed the advice of lawyers and put their friendship on ice. As a result, the two were no longer seen buzzing around the links together in a golf cart.

But in August, his testimony concluded, Jordan was waiting with a bear hug at the bottom of the Air Force One steps when the Clintons arrived to vacation on Martha’s Vineyard. The reunion said as much about the president--if Jordan stood by him, he must be OK--as it did about Jordan. He was back near the levers, embracing the most powerful man in the world.

“It said Vernon believed the president. Vernon was out of danger. And he was going to be where the president was,” one observer noted.

At 63, Jordan seems to have an aura about him, a bearing, a magnetism that radiates power and social position. His clothes are exquisite. His voice deep and velvety. His office is festooned with pictures of himself with presidents as far back as Dwight D. Eisenhower.

Married to his second wife, Ann, for 12 years, he has the oddly dual reputation of incurable flirt and man of his word.

“He does have a stately presence,” Hundley said. “He gives the appearance of being above it all. There is nobody quite like him.”

Like any power city, Washington has a handful of top-drawer “fixers”--people who can get a Cabinet member on the phone on a moment’s notice, who can change the course of seemingly inevitable events. Jordan is one of those, the person to go to and the person to whom plenty of powerful people have gone. It was he who offered consolation when Clinton lost reelection as Arkansas governor in 1980. As president-elect 12 years later, Clinton asked Jordan to test whether retired Army Gen. Colin L. Powell would accept an appointment as secretary of State.

Along with his reputation as a boardroom player, Jordan is renowned for his knack for making people’s lives easier. His friends talk of his radar for anticipating a need and filling it.

“He is somebody who can . . . find just the right tutor for your son, which may not have been your obvious need but he knew it would be your need,” said one Washington observer.

Product of Segregated Atlanta

His skill in navigating this choppy scandal is probably no less impressive than his personal history: A child of segregated Atlanta grows up to be an effective civil rights leader, survives a shot in the back by a white supremacist and goes on to become one of the most influential African American men in the country.

Today, his race is no longer an impediment, even in a Washington high society that is still predominantly white. He is so revered, said former presidential political advisor Dick Morris, that no Washington grand jury would have dared indict him.

“He’s a very popular man in Washington and that popularity may have made it impossible to move against him. He’s had a bit of a free ride because of that,” Morris said. “But Ken Starr will be listening closely to his testimony in the deposition and, if he feels he was lying, I wouldn’t put it past Starr to move against him for perjury.”

The same insiders who will privately scorch Clinton for poor judgment clam up when it comes to Jordan--insisting on anonymity to say even glowing things about him as he is pulled back to impeachment center stage.

The distinction speaks volumes about the essence of Washington power. Like him or not, Clinton will be gone in two years. But Jordan won’t. And few care to alienate him.

Times staff writers Robert L. Jackson and Jack Nelson contributed to this story.