President’s Fate Is Now in Hands of Senate Jurors

House impeachment managers made a last appeal Monday to a Senate expected to acquit President Clinton, denouncing him as a “pernicious example of lawlessness” who is unfit to finish his term.

The White House defense team fired back with a detailed assault on the perjury and obstruction of justice allegations facing Clinton--as well as the prosecution team that has so vigorously pursued the president’s conviction and removal.

The familiar arguments finished, the Senate was set to begin its long-awaited deliberations today, with advocates of opening the debate to the public facing an uphill battle.

The nearly five hours of closing arguments marked a critical, final juncture in a political and legal controversy that has hung heavily over the nation’s capital--and the country--for more than a year. Still, there was limited suspense as the end inched nearer.

One by one, the 13 House prosecutors urged the silent senators to take one last look at the facts--well aware that there is virtually no chance they will win the two-thirds majority needed to oust Clinton.

“There’s no denying the fact that what you decide, it will have a profound effect on our culture as well as on our politics,” said Rep. Henry J. Hyde (R-Ill.), the lead prosecutor and the day’s last speaker. “A failure to convict will make a statement that lying under oath, while unpleasant and to be avoided, is not all that serious.”

He added pointedly as he surveyed the chamber: “Wherever and whenever you avert your eyes from a wrong, from an injustice, you become a part of the problem.”

White House Counsel Charles F.C. Ruff alone provided the defense response. As he and the other lawyers representing Clinton have done again and again during the month-old trial, Ruff asserted that prosecutors had overreached in assembling the case growing out of the president’s affair with Monica S. Lewinsky.

“I respect them as elected representatives of their people and as worthy adversaries,” Ruff said of the 13 House managers sitting a few feet away. “But I believe their vision to be too dark, a vision too little attuned to the needs of the people, too little sensitive to the needs of our democracy. I believe it to be a vision more focused on retribution, more designed to achieve partisan ends.”

Senators Appear Largely Unswayed

As senators prepared to start haggling over their verdict today, they appeared largely unswayed by the final words.

“I don’t know whether any minds were changed but there was some food for thought there,” said Sen. John H. Chafee (R-R.I.), a moderate who has not declared how he will vote.

Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle (D-S.D.) suggested that he did not need to hear from all 13 managers. “I don’t know that the House needed all three hours to get their message across,” Daschle said.

Daschle and the Senate’s other 44 Democrats are expected to vote to acquit Clinton, and on Monday the main unanswered question about the verdict was whether enough Republicans would join them to keep the two charges from winning at least a majority.

But the House managers made clear that they were speaking as much for the history books as to the senators before them.

“The president’s attorneys have done their best to disguise the truth,” said Rep. Steve Chabot (R-Ohio). “They produced smoke so thick that it continues to cloud this debate. But, if you look through the smoke and the mirrors employed by these very able lawyers, you will see the truth.”

Even as he argued for conviction, Hyde put forward a longshot request to delay the final vote, which is scheduled for Thursday or Friday.

In a letter to Senate leaders, Hyde said that new questions about whether White House aide Sidney Blumenthal lied in his recent deposition for House managers warranted the delay.

But senators said that the momentum for completion appeared too great for any postponement.

Blumenthal had testified that Clinton referred to Lewinsky, a former White House intern, as a “stalker” in a conversation early last year--a time when word of the affair had surfaced but the president was denying it. Prosecutors have alleged that one way Clinton obstructed justice was by lying to aides who were to testify before the federal grand jury investigating the case.

Three journalists signed affidavits this week questioning Blumenthal’s assertion that he never repeated the president’s remarks to the press.

“This evidence goes to the heart of the truth-seeking purpose of this impeachment trial,” said Hyde, recommending subpoenas for the appearance of Christopher Hitchens, a Vanity Fair writer; his wife, Carol Blue, a freelance reporter; and R. Scott Armstrong, a former Washington Post reporter.

Key Issues Still Undecided

Although an acquittal is expected from the Senate later this week, key issues remain undecided.

Senators pushing to open the Senate’s deliberations had been gaining support, but it appeared they would fall short.

“It’s going to be difficult to reach the two-thirds majority [to open deliberations], but I have not lost hope,” said Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Texas), who has led the effort to deliberate in public.

Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.) publicly came out against the effort Monday, slowing its momentum. A Lott spokesman said that the senator opposed opening the debate “because the Senate is at this moment as close to a jury as it gets. No jury in the Western world is open. Now is not the time to change that precedent.”

Critics of open proceedings have said that the presence of television cameras would prevent free exchanges. And if the proceedings are closed, some senators said, they would be recorded, enabling the Senate to vote later to release transcripts.

Meanwhile, a resolution censuring Clinton that would be offered immediately after the presumed acquittal verdict remained the subject of an intense struggle, as rival camps tinkered with the wording and some sought to kill the effort outright.

The main opponent of censure, Sen. Phil Gramm (R-Texas), vowed to block a vote before the Senate breaks for its weeklong Presidents Day recess at the end of the week. “It only takes one person to guarantee we’re not going to vote on this this week,” Gramm said, all but threatening a filibuster.

But Daschle vowed to press the matter when the Senate returns later in the month by adding censure language to other legislation.

Hyde, in his closing argument, mocked the censure effort, saying that Democrats pursuing it were offering tougher language than is in the articles of impeachment.

During the final arguments, House prosecutors agreed with White House lawyers on one point--the momentousness of the vote before the Senate. But they parted company on their interpretations of the case’s evidence--and the verdict for which it calls.

Chabot called the vote the most important senators will ever cast and urged them to think hard about their oath to do impartial justice.

“Before you turn out the lights and head home, you must make one final decision,” Chabot said. “It’s a decision that should not be influenced by party affiliation or by politics or by personal ties. It’s a decision that should be guided by our Constitution, by our laws and by your own moral compass.”

Rep. Stephen E. Buyer (R-Ind.) used harsh terms to describe the president’s actions.

“President Clinton, by his persistent and calculated misconduct and illegal acts, has set a pernicious example of lawlessness, an example which by its very nature subverts respect for the law,” Buyer said. “His perverse example inevitably undermines the integrity of both the office of the president and the judicial process.”

The White House, not surprisingly, saw things differently.

“There is only one question before you, albeit a difficult one,” said Ruff. “Would it put at risk the liberties of the people to retain the president in office? Putting aside partisan animus, if you can honestly say that it would not, that those liberties are safe in his hands, then you must vote to acquit.”

Times staff writer Janet Hook contributed to this story.