by Peter Baker
Bill Richardson, the former U.N. ambassador who had just been installed as secretary of energy and had once served in the House as chief deputy whip, had been calling around to his friends in the Democratic caucus and summarizing the results in memos sent to Podesta. Anxiety seemed to be the order of the day. House Minority Whip David Bonior reported to Richardson that he had to talk several Democratic congressmen out of giving speeches calling on Clinton to resign. Several members reported that Congressman Tim Roemer of Indiana, who was influential among his fellow New Demo crats, was off the reservation. Congresswoman Anna G. Eshoo of California complained to Richardson that the president had dragged everyone out on a limb with him and needed to own up to his problems.
Within the White House, Podesta feared that someone on the presidents staff would quit in an opportunistic protest and bask in the admiration of the news media. We need to make sure somebody doesnt want to be the hero running into enemy arms, he had warned Doug Sosnik and Rahm Emanuel in a private meeting. The group worried about Mike McCurry, the media-friendly spokesman who was already scheduled to leave his post in early October. Sosnik, whose office was located next to the press secretarys, was assigned the McCurry Watch to look for signs of disaffection. To keep the rest of their troops in line, White House officials accustomed to spinning anything even drafted talking points for how they should respond when asked about being betrayed by the boss.
Question: Do you forgive him for misleading you and the country?
Answer: Its been said that he who cannot forgive others breaks the bridge over which he must pass himself. Of course I do.
Clinton, back in Washington really for the first time since his grand jury appearance and nationally televised speech three weeks earlier, soaked in all the ominous reports that Monday night in Ruffs office and recognized that something had to be done. He agreed to summon the House and Senate Democratic leaders to separate meetings in the White House residence to apologize in person; he would do the same with his cabinet. He would also try to recruit someone to lead his defense effort against any impeachment drive, an berlawyer as some began to call it. David Kendall and Chuck Ruff were not the political bulldogs he would need now that the matter was heading into the congressional arena. Erskine Bowles had been a steady right hand for budget negotiations but clearly did not possess the political temperament for this sort of mission. The ideal candidate would be a distinguished political figure like former Senate majority leader George J. Mitchell, who could take over as White House chief of staff just as Howard Baker did when Ronald Reagans presidency was threatened by Iran-contra. But Mitchell had been resisting all entreaties.
The White House team was not sure it could rely on the Democratic congressional leadership either, so Podesta had quietly begun taking steps in case the president was deserted by his own party. Given the strained relationship with Gephardtnot to mention his recent comments on impeachmentPodesta was trying to build his own independent whip operation loyal to Clinton that could rally members without help from the party hierarchy. Through intermediaries, Podesta had reached out to a variety of House Democrats he thought might agree to participate in such a rump group particularly influential Old Bullsand had received commitments from some key members, including Congressman Vic Fazio of California, chairman of the party caucus, who offered to lead the group. But others were more reluctant. Congressman Howard L. Berman, perhaps the most respected Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, where any impeachment inquiry would start, had declined to participate, saying he could only advise them as long as his role was low-key. Podesta had asked former White House lobbyist Howard Paster to approach Congressman John D. Dingell of Michigan, the dean of the House and its longest-serving member, to see if he would head up the rump Clinton whip group, but Dingell refused. Steve Elmendorf, Gephardts chief of staff, found out about the behind-the-scenes maneuvering from Paster and complained to Podesta that he should at least keep them informed about such efforts.
As the White House team batted around ideas on this evening, though, the president was still not fully aware of just how politically isolated he was. Unbeknownst to him, one of his own top advisers was quietly sounding out Democrats about approaching the president to resign. Harold M. Ickes, the profane, brass-knuckled New Yorker who had served as Clintons deputy chief of staff in his first term and masterminded his reelection in 1996 only to be passed over for chief of staff in the second term, was telling senior Democratic officials and allies around town that they needed to consider whether it was time to cut the partys losses and push the president out of office.
Ickes, the namesake son of Franklin D. Roosevelts famously hard-nosed interior secretary, had remained loyal to the president in the twenty months since his unhappy departure from the White House and had grown even closer to Hillary Clinton. But Ickes considered the current scandal a dire threat to the Democratic hold on the presidency. Impeachment by the House and even conviction by the Senate appeared to be real possibilities, particularly given the mood among Senate Democrats. So Ickes began sounding out key players within the party about resignation. This might be an honorable way out, he told them. If Clinton really was in danger of being removed by Congress, Ickes said, this would avoid a divisive ending and put Gore into the Oval Office early enough to let him repair the damage to the party and give him a fighting chance in 2000. Ickes believed that the party had to have a serious discussion about the option. The party was more important than its leader.
To that end, Ickes talked with leaders of the interest groups that dominate internal Democratic politics, particularly labor unions, people such as John Sweeney of the AFL-CIO, Gerald McEntee of AFSCME, and Sandy Feldman of the American Federation of Teachers. Clinton would probably never agree to step down voluntarily no matter how slim his chances were, but Ickes told people that the only possible way to convince his ex-boss to give up power would be to put together a coalition of interest groups and key senior members from Congress to go to him as a delegation and tell him there was no way to hold the White House in 2000 unless he resigned. Gore himself might have to be enlisted.
One of the power players Ickes met with was Sweeney, president of the AFL-CIO, still perhaps the single most dominant force within the Democratic Party even after decades of decline. Ickes and Sweeney got together over breakfast at the Washington Hilton Hotel, and the former White House aide presented his case. Sweeney listened, but was not yet ready to abandon Clinton.
Lets wait and see, Harold, he said. Lets see how this unfolds.
CHAPTER THREE
. . . go to the White Houseand tell him he has to resign
The menacing jaws of a Tyrannosaurus rex greeted all visitors to Newt Gingrichs private sanctuary, and few guests did not take away at least some sense of irony. In the conference room in the House Speakers second-floor office suite in the Capitol, Gingrich, a lifelong paleontology buff, kept a glass-encased three-foot skull from the king of dinosaurs, a loan from the Smithsonian Institution. As Gingrich, House Majority Leader Dick Armey, his Democratic counterpart, Dick Gephardt, and other senior lawmakers and aides gathered in what had become known as the Dinosaur Room on the morning of Wednesday, September 9, they faced a menace of a different sort.
With recess over, the House was just now returning to Washington for the first time since President Clintons admission, and lawmakers were on edge about what it would mean for them with an election just fifty-five days away. While everyone assumed that Ken Starr planned to send the House a report outlining allegations of impeachable offenses by the president, House leaders had done precious little to prepare for its arrival at their doorstep. Gingrich, nervous about the strongly ideological tilt of members on both sides of the House Judiciary Committee, had months ago floated the idea of taking the issue away from the panel and handing it over to a special task force he could more easily control, only to be faced down by Judiciary chairman Henry Hyde, who insisted his committee should not be circumvented.
This meeting,
long delayed, could no longer be put off and was itself something of an accommodation. Gingrich and Gephardt did not like each other and only rarely tolerated each others company. In the nearly four years Gingrich had been Speaker, he and Gephardt had only met privately perhaps three or four times. Joining them this morning were Hyde and the ranking Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, John Conyers Jr. of Michigan, as well as the chief investigators each side had hired in recent months, David P. Schippers by the Republicans and Abbe D. Lowell by the Democrats. Unac customed to congressional protocol, Lowell blithely took a seat at the conference table along with the lawmakers, only to realize belatedly that staff members were expected to sit in chairs behind the principals. Trying to cover his faux pas, Lowell grabbed Schippers and pulled him up to the table too.
This is as serious a thing as well ever do, Gingrich said as he opened the meeting.
Gephardt concurred and began by reaching out to Gingrich: Let it be a way for Congress to look good. Ill go halfway and even more to reach a sensible goal. I dont have any partisan goals or objectives here.
But having pledged his good faith, Gephardt quickly called attention to what he saw as the first sign that Republicans were not prepared to work with Democrats in a bipartisan mannerrumors that Rules Committee chairman Gerald B. H. Solomon of New York was ready with a GOP plan for how to proceed. Weve already heard that Solomon has a draft of procedures and rules and we havent received it. Thats not right, Gephardt said. Watergate should be the model for cooperation between both sides, he added.
Gingrich and Hyde assured him that they wanted to work across party lines. This will ultimately fail if the Democrats dont get on board, said Hyde. It is a recipe for failure if it is partisan. While we are the majority party, we retain respect for the minority. This was the most serious undertaking since World War II, he added, and he wanted to work so closely with Conyers that the two Judiciary leaders would come out looking like statesmen, not political ward-heelers.
The first test of that would come over the question of what to do with whatever material Starr sent. No one in the room had much clue what it might include, and because of the heightened political sensitivities surrounding the case, congressional leaders and aides had avoided even contacting prosecutors to ask. For weeks, House Republican leaders had suggested on television and in the newspapers that they wanted Starr to send some sort of executive summary wrapping up the case, with the idea that it could be released to the public while the rest of the evidence could remain sealed, and they hoped the independent counsel would get the message. But the decision on what to release and when was trickier than that. After a $40 million investigation, many lawmakers believed the public had a right to see whatever Starr sent, particularly given that it dealt with the conduct of the nations highest elected official. Yet it could be inflammatory and unfair to put it out without some prior review, not only for the president but also for all the other people caught up in the case, including Monica Lewinsky.
On a political level, Gingrich clearly believed that disclosure of the damning details of Clintons infidelities and deceptions less than two months before an election could only help Republicans at the polls. Gephardt feared that as well, but he worried that keeping it from the public would only result in the most sensational elements of the report seeping out in the newspapers bit by bit over the next eight weeks. Better to get it all out at once and give Democrats a chance to recover, he calculated, rather than have his members subjected to death by a thousand leaks. Whats more, some senior Democrats, including Congressman John Dingell, last of the Old Bulls in his party, were pressing for immediate release lest they be accused of covering up for the president. My personal view is to get it all out, Gephardt told Gingrich and the rest of the group.
Hyde wanted a more restrained approach. He had instructed his staff of lawyers over the summer to draft proposed rules that would allow him to maintain tight control over any evidence submitted by Starr or developed by the committees own investigators. In a series of draft resolutions prepared as early as June 9, only the committee would be allowed access to Starrs report and accompanying material until a majority of the panel voted to release it. Moreover, Hyde as chairman and Conyers as ranking Democrat could have the first look at the evidence, and Hyde would have the power to place under seal anything he deemed especially sensitive, keeping it secret even from the rest of the committee.
Just as Gingrich and Hyde split on this question, so too did Gephardt and Conyers. A staunch defender of the president and relentless critic of Starr, Conyers was far more skeptical of any release and wanted prior review of everything before making it public. His view was closer to Hydes than his own leaders. Where Conyers and Gephardt agreed, though, was in pushing for a twenty-four-hour advance look by Clintons legal team, embracing the argument advanced by David Kendall in his Labor Day letter to Starr. It was good strategyeither the presidents lawyers would be better equipped to defend him or the Democrats could use a refusal to show how unfairly GOP leaders were treating Clinton. That point united Gingrich and Hyde on the other side as well. They were certain that if the White House had prior review, it would use the extra time to inoculate Clinton by leaking the most damaging facts in the most favorable light before the public had a chance to evaluate Starrs report.
Gingrich rebuffed Gephardts request. Kendall would have the right to publicly refute the charges once they were public, Gingrich said. Besides, the Speaker added, they could trust Hyde. Henry is conservative about these things and doesnt want this to be Jerry Springer.
Lowell, the Democratic investigator just hired by Gephardt, interjected that all the talk was somewhat premature anyway, since they had no idea in what form Starr would send any material. There might be a summary and there might not. It could just be boxes of grand jury transcripts. Gingrich agreed and said they should authorize the staff to contact Starr and find out what they could about what was coming their way.
Then Gingrich bitterly recalled the ethics investigation into his handling of a college course he had taught. Clearly, he was still bruised from the experience, which nearly cost him his Speakership the year before. I turned over a million pages in my ethics investigation and I had to pay a three-hundred-thousand-dollar fine, he fumed. Im willing to give you more than the Democrats gave me in my investigation. This will be an issue of congressional legacy.
This will validate the Founders belief that democracy can work, Hyde added. If this fails, we will all pay a big price.
Gephardt replied with equally high-minded words, promising to act in good faith. This should not be a political process but a legal one, he said. If the president enjoyed a 90 percent approval rating but had committed impeachable offenses, he should be impeached despite his popularity, Gephardt said. At the same time, if Clinton were at 10 percent yet had not committed high crimes and misdemeanors, then he should not be. This was not about polls, Gephardt said. If we give in to that, were doomed.
Around 3:45 P.M., the phone rang in Hydes committee offices and his top aide, Thomas E. Mooney Sr., took the call. It was Jackie M. Bennett Jr., Starrs deputy independent counsel. Bennett had been noncommittal when Mooney and the other House aides had called him following the meeting in the Dinosaur Room, but now just a few hours later he was more specific about when the report might be on the way. The answer: now.
I got two vans rolling, the Starr deputy reported.
Oh? Mooney asked. Whats in the vans?
I got eighteen boxes in each van.
They went back and forth for a moment over whether it was eighteen boxes or thirty-six total. Bennett said it was two identical sets of evidence, one for the Republicans and one for the Democrats, eighteen boxes each, for a combined total of thirty-six. Finally, Mooney asked, Where are they rolling to?
Theyre rolling to the Capitol.
Jesus Christ! Just like that? The report was on its way? Mooney could not believe it. What kind of warning was this? They had just been on the phone and given no cl
ue. Mooney asked Bennett if Gingrichs office had been contacted. No, came the answer. How about the sergeant at arms? No again. What entrance were the vans coming to? They had not thought about that.
How far away are you?
About ten minutes.
Phones started jangling all around the Capitol as Mooney and the other staff members scrambled to get ready to receive the evidence. It was not as if they could just cart it up to any old office. These were perhaps the most sensitive and important documents to arrive at the Capitol in years, and they had to be kept under the tightest security. The sergeant at arms, Wilson Livingood, had set aside a locked room in the Ford House Office Building to hold the evidence complete with file cabinets and plans for round-the-clock security; he had had the locks changed just the night before. After talking with Mooney, Bennett called Livingood to notify him and Capitol Police officers were immediately dispatched to the Capitol steps. It did not take long for everyone else to find out what was happening. Shocked congressmen in every corner of the Capitol, senior officials at the White House, and everyday citizens across the nation were suddenly watching it live on television as cameras trailed the bizarre caravan of two vans, one blue, the other white, down Pennsylvania Avenue until they arrived at 4 P.M., a surreal show that presidential aides angrily assumed was political theater staged by Starr. By the time Bennett got off the line with Mooney and Livingood to call Abbe Lowell, it was too late.
