Choice of Witnesses May Hold Key for Prosecution

The House managers’ bid to call a close friend, a loyal aide and a former intimate acquaintance of President Clinton as witnesses in his Senate impeachment trial represents a go-for-broke attempt by the prosecution to dramatically portray the strongest part of its case.

During 10 days of legal presentations in the trial, some senators have said that they believe the obstruction-of-justice allegations against Clinton are the weightiest grounds for possibly removing him from office.

The three witnesses the prosecution has chosen for subpoenas--presidential confidant Vernon E. Jordan Jr., senior White House advisor Sidney Blumenthal and former intern Monica S. Lewinsky--all figured prominently in episodes in which prosecutors allege that Clinton subverted the legal system to try to keep his illicit relationship with Lewinsky from being discovered. Each of the three would be questioned closely about such events if the Senate approves the managers’ subpoena request today as expected.

However, the prosecutors still face formidable obstacles in converting the testimony of the three into the legal breakthrough they need to shake up a trial that now appears headed toward the president’s acquittal.

“The managers will try to point out discrepancies between the witnesses and the president,” said Stephen Saltzburg, a professor of law at George Washington University and a former Justice Department official in the Reagan and Bush administrations.

They also will be counting on the dramatic impact of first-person accounts from major figures. But, Saltzburg added, “I don’t think these three witnesses will advance the ball one whit.”

Indeed, two of the witnesses are strongly sympathetic to Clinton--one still works for him. They have already been questioned extensively and have shown no interest in clearing up vagaries that the prosecution would like to address.

And the third, Lewinsky, seems strongly disinclined to go beyond what she has already said about the issues in question.

Tactic Likened to ‘Hail Mary’ Pass

“A trial lawyer’s worst nightmare is to have to sponsor key witnesses who are actually rooting for the other side,” said Bradford A. Berenson, a white-collar defense attorney.

“The whole strategy of calling these witnesses is something like a ‘Hail Mary’ pass. They see themselves down by a touchdown at the end of the fourth quarter and they’re putting up a long one in the hope they can change the outcome.”

Notably absent from the witness list was presidential secretary Betty Currie, a participant in critical episodes involving Clinton’s relationship with Lewinsky. Currie could have been questioned about the retrieval of gifts that Clinton had given Lewinsky and about Clinton’s alleged attempts to coach Currie’s recollections of his contacts with the former intern. Both incidents support the obstruction of justice impeachment article against Clinton.

Republican managers, however, decided to drop her to keep the witness list short. Others familiar with the case suggested that the prosecutors also were concerned that Currie would prove a sympathetic figure more helpful to the president’s defense.

At the same time, the prosecutors urged the Senate to request an appearance by Clinton, which was widely dismissed as a public relations gesture, since he has no intention to testify and the Senate resolution on witnesses does not include him.

If the prosecutors fail to break new ground in the preliminary depositions with the witnesses behind closed doors, the already-weary Senate may not allow them to question the witnesses in the trial. This would mean that providing the Senate and public with compelling and dramatic testimony about Clinton first-hand still might not happen.

The House managers said they want to pursue inconsistencies in testimony about the gifts Clinton gave Lewinsky that subsequently were hidden, about the role of the president and Jordan in helping Lewinsky find a job and about whether Clinton urged Lewinsky to file a false affidavit for the Paula Corbin Jones sexual harassment lawsuit.

Lewinsky, who was granted immunity for her grand jury testimony last year, looms as the most important witness.

Rep. Ed Bryant (R-Tenn.), a House manager, told the Senate that the prosecutors want to ask Lewinsky about “the tone and tenor of her conversations with the president” as well as what Clinton knew about the false affidavit she filed in the Jones case. Lewinsky said in the affidavit that she and Clinton did not engage in a sexual relationship.

The prosecutors would seek to undercut Lewinsky’s claim that “no one ever asked me to lie, and I was never promised a job for my silence” by attempting to show that Clinton implicitly prodded her to file the false affidavit and assisted her job search to gain her cooperation.

Rep. Bill McCollum (R-Fla.), another manager, said the prosecutors will not ask Lewinsky about “explicit sexual relations with the president”--a prospect that has made senators uncomfortable.

McCollum’s statement suggests that the prosecutors may not try to fortify the second major allegation against Clinton--that he is guilty of perjury--through the Lewinsky deposition. A number of senators have suggested that the perjury impeachment article is the weaker of the two.

Questions About What Jordan Knew

Jordan, a prominent Washington attorney, will be quizzed about whether he knew Lewinsky and Clinton were sexually involved and whether he helped find her a job in New York to keep her from betraying Clinton in her Jones lawsuit testimony. Jordan has said his job assistance and her affidavit were not connected.

“It is expected that Mr. Jordan’s testimony will lead to reasonable and logical inferences from the evidence,” the managers said in a document supporting the testimony.

The managers want to ask Blumenthal, a presidential aide, about a conversation he had with Clinton on Jan. 21, 1998, after the allegations about the Lewinsky relationship became public.

Blumenthal’s testimony “would provide evidence that the president lied to his aides knowing that they may be called to testify before the grand jury,” the managers said in their legal papers. Blumenthal has testified that Clinton told him he rebuffed sexual advances by Lewinsky, whom he depicted as a “stalker.”

McCollum said the managers debated until the end about whether to call Currie or Jordan. Ultimately, he said of Currie: “We didn’t need her to prove the strongest obstruction-of-justice charge.” Nonetheless, legal experts expressed surprise that Currie--with her first-hand knowledge of episodes central to the obstruction allegations--was not included.

Berenson said that, because of Currie’s increasingly faulty memory with each of her grand jury appearances, “a witness like that might be broken down under cross-examination.”

But, he added, “She is a clerical employee, a woman and an African American and all of those things might have made the Senate uncomfortable at the prospect of going after her.”

Times staff writer Janet Hook contributed to this story.