For House Managers, Push for Witnesses Is ‘Do-or-Die’ Matter

Although the House prosecution team frequently refers to her by her first name, none of the 13 managers seeking President Clinton’s removal has met Monica S. Lewinsky.

They’ve never asked her a single question. They have heard not one reply. Her testimony they have read in transcripts. Her voice they know only from the surreptitious tape-recordings of her telephone conversations with a onetime friend.

But Judiciary Committee Chairman Henry J. Hyde (R-Ill.) and the rest of the prosecutors want desperately to change that. So desperately that they petitioned independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr to make her available to them (the issue is to be decided this weekend by a federal judge).

And the prosecutors also want to make the acquaintance of Clinton’s secretary, Betty Currie, and his confidant, attorney Vernon E. Jordan Jr. Upping the ante, the prosecutors said in a letter to Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.) Friday that they want Clinton himself added to their witness list.

Despite the do-or-die push by prosecutors, senators appear increasingly hesitant to extend the trial to allow any witnesses at all. That could deny the House managers what they consider their last chance to salvage a case that has much stacked against it: unwavering opposition among Democratic senators, a forceful White House defense and unbudging public disdain.

On top of that, the managers’ push for witnesses hit another obstacle Friday: In a potentially significant shift of views among the senators, even some Republicans said they want to end the trial quickly and will oppose calling witnesses.

The House managers, in turn, used their responses to senators’ questions Friday to plead for witnesses.

But subpoenaing witnesses to the well of the Senate, even if it is allowed, is by no means a slam-dunk for the prosecution’s case.

The White House, for instance, wasted no time Friday in making clear that the president would not appear as a witness.

“The president has already testified as part of the investigation,” said Jim Kennedy, the spokesman for the White House counsel’s office. Additional testimony, he said, “would only have the effect of prolonging the trial indefinitely.”

Damaging Accounts Seen as Unlikely

As for Lewinsky, Currie and Jordan, they would come forward only reluctantly and most likely offer no more damaging accounts of the president’s actions than the cloudy ones they delivered during their numerous appearances before Starr’s grand jury.

And for every damaging tidbit prosecutors might elicit from Lewinsky and other witnesses, White House lawyers would likely bring forth other information that aids the defense.

“There is some element of risk to the prosecution case by calling witnesses,” allowed House manager Bill McCollum (R-Fla.), who wants to call them nonetheless.

Prosecutors say witnesses would rivet the public, bring to life testimony relegated so far to fine print and raise the possibility, however remote, that one of them might inadvertently ratchet up their account of what the president said and did.

Legal experts agree with them, to a point.

“To help the House managers, the witnesses they’ve identified would have to testify contrary to their grand jury testimony, and that isn’t likely to happen,” said E. Lawrence Barcella, a former federal prosecutor.

But he added: “It does throw an unpredictable element in there. Every good trial lawyer knows that even the best prepared witness can end up being unpredictable with any given answer.”

Uncertainties of Trial Testimony

It would be next to impossible, another lawyer said, to assemble the 67 votes needed to convict the president.

“The political forces are such that the Democrats are going to have to stick with the president unless there’s a smoking gun,” said Paul Rothstein, a law professor at Georgetown University. “It would have to be a Perry Mason breakdown and confession.”

If, however, their trial testimony were in keeping with what they told the grand jury, the three central witnesses would simultaneously strengthen and weaken the prosecution case.

Lewinsky would testify that she and the president did have sexual contact that the president denied under oath before the grand jury. But she also would say that she sought help from the president in her job search long before her name appeared on the witness list for the Paula Corbin Jones sexual harassment lawsuit.

She would say that nobody asked her to lie, a point prosecutors would dismiss. But she would say nobody discouraged her from lying either, a statement they would play up.

“It is unpredictable what effect actually seeing Monica Lewinsky testify will have on the public and then on the Senate,” said Robert J. Giuffra Jr., who was a Republican counsel to the Senate Whitewater Committee. “Possibly just telling her story could change public opinion. If Monica Lewinsky testifies on the floor of the Senate, the whole country will watch.”

Jordan, an experienced lawyer and longtime presidential friend, would repeat his assertions that he helped Lewinsky get a job for noble, not nefarious, reasons. He would deny he was part of any obstruction of justice.

Currie would repeat her denial that it was Clinton who directed her to pick up the gifts that he had given to Lewinsky. She would offer a rather neutral account of the leading statements, some of them clearly false, that the president made to her.

During the White House defense, presidential lawyers have repeatedly downplayed what such witnesses have to offer.

White House special counsel Gregory Craig argued that Lewinsky has little more to offer than explicit testimony about sex. White House Counsel Charles F. C. Ruff imitated Jordan before the senators and told them that he had nothing new or damaging to tell the Senate.

White House Deputy Counsel Cheryl Mills buttressed Currie’s account of events and lavished her with praise for her honesty, loyalty and friendship. Mills appeared almost to be laying the groundwork for prosecutors’ questioning of Currie, which would inevitably raise questions about her credibility and leave the impression that she participated in Clinton’s alleged effort to obstruct justice.

“The risk to the Republicans is that Jordan and Currie might be incredibly strong witnesses for the president,” Giuffra said. “They could strongly bolster the president’s case.”

Giuffra and others said the all-male House prosecution team should find a female lawyer to question Lewinsky and Currie to decrease the discomfort that might result from a male prosecutor prying into a young woman’s sex life and badgering another woman about her participation in a cover-up.

“What if Cheryl Mills cross-examines Betty Currie?” Giuffra asked. “From the standpoint of television and the atmospherics of the trial, you don’t want [Georgia Republican] Bob Barr to be the person examining Betty Currie.”

The prosecution team, however, dismisses any notion that it would have to strong-arm anybody to prove its case.

“The managers include some very seasoned U.S. attorneys who are well-versed in the ways and art of examination and cross-examination,” responded Sam Stratman, Hyde’s press secretary. “They can do it with dignity. They can elicit the facts. They can make a case.”

While prosecutors agree on the need for witnesses, there is dissension on precisely who to call. Amid senatorial skepticism, a witness list that once named 15 individuals has been scaled back to just a few.

Expansion of Witness List Is Opposed

Rep. Asa Hutchinson (R-Ark.), for one, has argued against expanding the witness list to include so-called Jane Does--women not related to the Lewinsky allegations who could possibly testify about false affidavits they filed denying sexual relationships with the president.

Hutchinson proposes instead calling a lawyer who was present during Clinton’s deposition in the Jones case to point out that the president was paying attention when his own attorney, Robert S. Bennett, denied that there was any sex between Lewinsky and Clinton.

Rep. James E. Rogan (R-Glendale), however, is in the pro-Jane Doe camp.

“We have made no hard and fast decision on that,” said Rogan, who maintained that he was interested in the other women’s false affidavits, not their relations with the president. “I personally think some of this evidence can be very probative.”

But Joseph E. diGenova, a Republican attorney who served as an independent counsel himself, doubts the senators will ever allow live testimony. Even if they do, he predicted little chance the witnesses would hand prosecutors the smoking gun he says they need.

“You would have to convince people who appear unconvincible, given their public statements, to vote to remove,” diGenova said of the solid bloc of Democratic votes against conviction. “You would have to move a mountain.”