Independent Counsel Says Clinton Probe Continues

Independent counsel Robert W. Ray considers the investigation of President Clinton’s relationship with Monica S. Lewinsky an “open matter” and is actively considering seeking an indictment against the president after he leaves office next January.

Rather than winding down the independent counsel’s office after the departure of Kenneth W. Starr and Clinton’s impeachment trial, Ray recently hired six new lawyers with significant prosecutorial and other experience, as well as one investigator, and has an FBI agent detailed to his staff.

In addition, Ray has projected spending $3.5 million over the next six months, an increase over the $3.1 million spent during the last half-year.

Among the criminal charges being weighed against Clinton in the Lewinsky matter are perjury, obstruction of justice, making false statements, and conspiracy to commit those crimes when he was questioned under oath about his relationship with the former White House intern.

“It is an open investigation,” Ray said in an interview Monday. “There is a principle to be vindicated, and that principle is that no person is above the law, even the president of the United States. That is what we have been charged with doing.”

Ray previously has said he would defer any decision about whether to indict Clinton until after the November elections. But the new revelations about the aggressiveness of the probe indicate that this is not an academic exercise and that an indictment of the president is under serious consideration.

Clinton’s private attorney, David E. Kendall, declined to comment.

Reid Weingarten, a former senior trial attorney in the Justice Department’s public integrity section and a Washington defense lawyer, said Monday that the public would be surprised by the direction of Ray’s investigation.

“I believe the great majority of Americans fervently wish that this matter was behind them and they will be chagrined by the news,” Weingarten said. “I, however, have a great deal of experience with independent counsels, and I am not the least bit surprised that this one, like so many others, has great difficulty in closing the book.”

In addition to Clinton’s testimony about Lewinsky, Ray’s investigation involves allegations that Clinton made false statements about his relationship with Kathleen E. Willey, and that others subsequently sought to silence her.

Ray, 40, does not intend to make a decision about whether to indict Clinton until after the president is out of office next January, because the indictment of a sitting president would be subject to constitutional challenges that would go on for years.