GOP Argues Witness List Necessary in Clinton Trial

Several House impeachment managers pressed Sunday for a streamlined Senate trial of President Clinton, proposing to call only about half a dozen witnesses--led by former White House intern Monica S. Lewinsky--and promising limited questioning free of salacious details.

The entire impeachment proceeding could be wrapped up by mid-February, according to Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.), one of several trial managers who appeared on weekend talk shows to make the case for presenting witnesses.

Although the House managers are, in effect, Clinton’s prosecutors, the senators, who serve as the jury, have the power to decide for themselves whether to permit testimony in the trial.

“That’s all I’m asking for, a meaningful trial that will go down in history,” Graham said on NBC-TV’s “Meet the Press.” If the Senate obliges, he said, “I can live with censure” rather than the president’s removal from office.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) said on the same program that she is already drafting a censure resolution that would condemn Clinton for his behavior in the Lewinsky affair but allow him to serve out his term.

Feinstein and colleague Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) stepped forward in Clinton’s defense, both of them playing down the need for appearances by witnesses in the impeachment trial.

As senators continued to congratulate themselves for last week’s bipartisan compromise on the initial phase of the trial, they simultaneously wondered if the fragile accord between Republicans and Democrats will hold.

The Senate voted unanimously Friday to allow opening statements to proceed and then let individual senators submit questions in writing before deciding whether to allow witnesses.

Pretrial motions from the White House and the House managers are due today. The trial is scheduled to begin Thursday, when the House managers will present their arguments for impeaching Clinton on two counts: perjury and obstruction of justice.

In talk show appearances, senators were already disagreeing about how they will deal with the issue of witnesses, and they were splitting along party lines over other impeachment trial questions.

Even the House trial managers differed over which witnesses they believe are necessary to make their case.

The House managers had originally hoped to schedule 10 to 14 witnesses, but “that’s not going to happen now,” said Rep. Asa Hutchinson (R-Ark.) on CBS-TV’s “Face the Nation.”

House managers Graham, Hutchinson and Rep. James E. Rogan (R-Glendale) all want tocall Lewinsky, along with Clinton’s secretary, Betty Currie, and trusted advisor Vernon E. Jordan Jr.

Managers who met with a committee of six senators last week agreed that they would accept Lewinsky’s grand jury testimony relating to allegations that Clinton committed perjury, “which is where the sexual detail is included,” said Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (D-Conn.) on “Face the Nation.”

Lieberman added: “I was very pleased” that no one was proposing to force Lewinsky to testify before the Senate about the specifics of what happened between her and Clinton inside the White House.

None of the House managers wants to summon Linda Tripp, who taped Lewinsky’s confidences and then turned the cassettes over to independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr, launching the investigation that led to Clinton’s impeachment by the House.

Graham, however, said he would like to bring before the Senate other women who were rumored to have had sexual relations with Clinton but who denied those rumors under oath in affidavits filed in the Paula Corbin Jones sexual harassment lawsuit against the president. The women filed the Jones affidavits without being publicly identified, except as “Jane Doe” followed by a number.

Graham said he wants to know if any of those women were pressured into their denials.

“We should have the right to call any witnesses before the Senate that can show that there’s a pattern of obstruction of justice here,” he said. “This is very much the essence of this case.”

Hutchinson, for one, disagreed, saying: “I would have some reluctance of moving in that direction.”

Other potential witnesses mentioned by House managers are top White House aides John Podesta and Sidney Blumenthal, and Kathleen Willey, a former White House volunteer who has described an unwelcome sexual advance from the president.

Still, Democrats made clear that a challenge to hearing any witnesses at all remains likely.

“I don’t think Monica Lewinsky can add one iota of additional information,” said Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle (D-S.D.) on “Face the Nation.”

Said Boxer on “Meet the Press”: “Even if it’s all true, exactly as the House managers put it forward, does this rise to the level of impeachment? Does it rise to the level of high crimes and misdemeanors? That’s the threshold question, and I don’t understand why the House feels they have to sully the floor of the United States Senate when they didn’t bring the witnesses before the House.”

Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) went even further, saying the Senate is faced with a “pile of dung” and calling the House impeachment a “sham partisan action.”

Though all of the senators who expressed opposition to witnesses Sunday are Democrats, Graham said on “Fox News Sunday” that as many as six Republicans also consider witnesses “an affront to the dignity of the Senate.” If they join with the Senate’s Democrats, they could provide a majority against calling witnesses.

But Sen. Mike DeWine (R-Ohio) said unresolved factual disputes in grand jury testimony suggest that “in all likelihood, most of us are going to think we need some witnesses.”

Of course, the witness issue will be moot if the Senate decides after opening arguments to dismiss the trial. But even Daschle, the Democrats’ leader in the Senate, said he doubts that, with 55 Republican members, the required 51-vote majority can be mustered for dismissal.

Graham also conceded that the necessary two-thirds majority for conviction is probably unreachable.

Feinstein said she wouldn’t reveal the wording of her proposed censure motion because, in the end, censure “may not be appropriate.” But, she added, “I think that impeachment is not meant to be punishment. Impeachment is meant to remove a threat to the nation’s well-being.”

The senators sparred over whether they will vote on the witness list as a whole or one at a time. They argued as well over whether the president should address Congress in a State of the Union address. All agreed it would be awkward, but Democrats said the world needs to know that business as usual continues uninterrupted.

The White House said Clinton still plans to present his speech Jan. 19.

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OH, SAY, CAN YOU SEE?: Howard Rosenberg argues for live coverage during senators’ debate in Clinton trial. F1