Ray to Add Staff in Clinton Probe

The new independent counsel in charge of various long-running probes connected with President Clinton declared Sunday that he is hiring more investigators to help determine whether to seek criminal charges in matters including the Monica S. Lewinsky affair.

Independent counsel Robert W. Ray, who took over from Kenneth W. Starr in October when the probes were widely considered to be winding down, said on ABC-TV’s “This Week” that Clinton’s acquittal by the Senate last year on impeachment charges reflected a political judgment and did not necessarily end the matter.

‘No Person . . . Is Above the Law’

“It is now my task as a prosecutor with a very limited and narrow focus to determine again whether crimes have been committed and whether, in the appropriate exercise of discretion, it is appropriate to bring charges,” Ray said.

He added that a larger principle is at issue: “That no person, including the president of the United States, is above the law. I intend, by following through with this process, to vindicate that principle.”

A White House spokesman, Jim Kennedy, had no comment Sunday evening. Clinton attorney David E. Kendall could not be reached.

The independent counsel’s statement served as a sobering reminder for Democrats that the threat of further disclosures related to the Whitewater real estate affair or the Lewinsky sex scandal still hangs over the president’s party during an election year.

“When this matter came before the United States Senate, both Democrats and Republicans were of the view that the criminal justice process should be allowed to work once the president left office,” Ray said. “This is not a right-wing matter, this is not a matter exclusively of the concern of Republicans. This ought to be a bipartisan matter.”

He said he expected to decide before the end of this year whether to prosecute.

Joseph E. diGenova, a former U.S. attorney and independent counsel on an unrelated matter, called Ray’s comments “a little bombshell.”

“I guess the reason he did the TV [interview] was to get out that they haven’t made up their mind about what they’re going to do about the president,” diGenova said.

Last year, the Senate, refusing to remove Clinton from office, acquitted him on two articles of impeachment passed by the House of Representatives. The articles accused Clinton of perjury and obstruction of justice in connection with an investigation of his relationship with Lewinsky, a former White House intern.

In April, after the Senate trial, federal Judge Susan Webber Wright found the president in contempt for deliberately misleading the court about his sexual encounters with Lewinsky.

Wright determined that Clinton misled the court in a January 1998 deposition in a civil case, over which Wright presided, and later contradicted himself in his sworn grand jury testimony in Starr’s Lewinsky investigation. The judge later fined Clinton $90,000--the first such penalty assessed against a president.

Whitewater Final Report Pending

Last week, Ray announced that he would not seek any charges in the so-called “Filegate” matter, closing an investigation of possible wrongdoing related to FBI files that found their way to the Clinton White House.

Other pending issues include the final report on Clinton’s Whitewater real estate deal and an investigation of the 1993 firing of White House travel office employees. Both matters could affect First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton, a candidate for the U.S. Senate in New York.

Clinton’s defenders argue that the president--and the nation--have taken enough punishment.

“My basic view is that the common-sense view of the American people is the right view, which is the president has been punished,” said Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.), appearing on the show after Ray. “He has a mark of Cain on his forehead he can never erase, and we ought to move on and go on to other things.”