The Breach

by Peter Baker

  Conyers, by contrast, came out swinging. The real villain, he insisted, was Starr, not Clinton. Even worse than an extramarital relationship is the use of federal prosecutors and federal agents to expose an extramarital relationship, Conyers declared. Yes, there is a threat to society here, but it is from the tactics of a win-at-all-costs prosecutor determined to sink a president of the opposition party. The only remaining member left from the committee that had voted to impeach Nixon, Conyers added that there was no comparison between the two scandals. This is not Watergate, he said. It is an extramarital affair.

  As the rest of the members made their opening statements, it quickly became evident that most saw things through a purely political lens, with rare exceptions. Congressman Charles E. Schumer, a sharp-tongued New York Democrat who was running for the Senate, was one of the few Democrats to acknowledge that Clinton was guilty of more than adultery, even if Schumer did not think it rose to the level of impeachment. To me, its clear that the president lied when he testified before the grand jurynot to cover a crime, but to cover embarrassing personal behavior. On the Republican side, the junior members seemed to struggle. Asa Hutchinson said he agreed that this was no Watergate. But are not the important questions the same? he asked. Is the rule of law less significant today than twenty-five years ago? Is unchecked perjury, if proven, less of a threat to our judicial system today than when Watergate was the example? Lindsey Graham appeared the most torn. The truth is, I have no clue what I am going to do yet, he said, offering a folksy homily in what amounted to his public debut. Now, I can tell you that and look you in the eye and honestly mean it. I dont know if censure is appropriate, we should just drop it, or we should throw him out of office. He offered a pithy summation of the issue: Is this Watergate or Peyton Place? I dont know.

  After lunch came time for the opening presentations by the two chief investigators, each fully aware that skeptics on his own side were waiting for him to stumble. Perhaps more than the opening statements by the committee members, the presentations by David Schippers and Abbe Lowell made clear how quickly the issue was becoming polarized along party lines. In 1974, the Democratic chief counsel, John Doar, worked hand in hand with his Republican counterpart, Albert Jenner, dispassionately sifting through evidence for months to figure out where it all led before finally joining together to recommend Nixons impeachment. That would never happen with Schippers and Lowell, given that each had already drawn hard-and-fast conclusions from the Starr report. They spent their time at the witness table on this afternoon acting as advocates rather than conveyors of facts. Schippers essentially adopted Starrs view of the case, while Lowell generally embraced Clintons.

  Although stemming from sexual misconduct, Schippers told the committee, the case was built on allegations of an ongoing series of deliberate and direct assaults by Mr. Clinton upon the justice system of the United States. Schippers repackaged Starrs eleven potentially impeachable offenses into fifteen, counting more examples of lies separately while dropping Starrs assertion that the president committed high crimes by invoking executive privilege improperly and refusing for months to appear before the grand jury. With his grandfatherly appearance, Schippers made an impressive public introduction. But unfamiliar with the etiquette of Capitol Hill, the mobbusting Chicago attorney strayed beyond his role as a staff person at the end by offering his personal thoughts as a citizen of the United States who happens to be a father and a grandfather:

  To paraphrase Sir Thomas More in Robert Bolts excellent play A Man for All Seasons, the laws of this country are the great barriers that protect the citizens from the winds of evil and tyranny. If we permit one of those laws to fall, who will be able to stand in the winds that follow? Members of the committee, youre not being watched only by the individuals in this room or even by the immense television audience throughout the world. Fifteen generations of Americans, our fellow Americans, many of whom are reposing in military cemeteries throughout the world, are looking down on and judging what you do today.

  That set off the Democrats. It was not Schipperss job to lecture the committee. He was staff, hired to carry out their instructions, not to offer personal opinions. Conyers insisted that Schipperss final statement be stricken from the record. Hyde agreed it crossed the line and ordered it expunged.

  Younger and more familiar with Washington ways, if not necessarily Capitol Hill, Lowell made less of an impression on the committee members with a presentation that had been drafted to suit sixteen would-be authors. But he laid the groundwork for the central theme of the Democratic argumentthat for all the renaming or relisting or further subdividing the grounds by Republicans, the case came down to lying about sex. Lowell pointedly attacked Starrs handling of the investigation, saying the committee should review the independent counsels reliance on Linda Tripp, his treatment of Lewinsky, and the torrent of leaks that had appeared in the newspapers.

  This preliminary review indicates that the charges are often overstated; based on strained definitions of what is an offense under the law; are often not supported by the actual evidence in the boxes; and are sometimes . . . the product of zeal to make the case rather than to state the law, Lowell declared.

  The committee then moved to the inquiry resolution itself and the Democratic alternative. Rick Bouchers substitute called for opening the inquiry on October 12 by developing a standard for impeachment and deciding by October 23 whether Starrs allegations reached that level even if they were true. If they did, hearings into the facts of the case would begin October 26. The committee would have until November 17 to make a recommendation on whether to impeach the president, dismiss the charges, or impose some other form of sanction, and the full House would have to act by November 23.

  Although they did not say so aloud, the Democratic strategy was the same used in 1974 by the minority Republicans, who also sought time limits and insisted that standards for impeachment be set first, only to be rebuffed by the majority. For weeks, committee Democrats had been demanding that the House follow the Rodino model, but now they were adopting the opposite approach. While Hyde hoped to finish by the end of the year, he was quick to reject the idea of establishing a formal schedule, mindful of warnings from Senator Fred D. Thompson, a Tennessee Republican who believed the White House simply ran out the clock on his campaign finance investigation in 1997 after an end-of-the-year deadline had been set. Furthermore, Hyde knew the committee was unlikely ever to settle on a consensus definition of high crimes and misdemeanors. Its like pornography, he said. You know it when you see it, but you have trouble defining it.

  The vote on the Boucher proposal fell along strict party lines, 2116 against. Congressman Howard Berman, the California Democrat who had declined to formally join the White House whip team to preserve his independence, then offered his own compromise version, this one also requiring the committee to decide whether Starrs report met the threshold for a full impeachment inquiry but imposing no time limits. Congressman Barney Frank, the sharp-tongued liberal from Massachusetts, spoke out immediately for the planboth because he thought it was a smart counterproposal and because he knew if he embraced it from the start, that would keep Republicans from accepting it. It did not matter, however. The Republicans had already resolved not to agree to any limits. The committee rejected Bermans motion and then approved Hydes plan on the same 2116 roll call.

  Having unified the largely liberal Democrats on the Judiciary Committee, Dick Gephardt and his group now turned to trying to sell their alternative to the broader and ideologically more divergent full caucus. Boucher was the emissary. At 8 A.M. on Tuesday, October 6, the morning after the committee vote, Boucher showed up for doughnuts and coffee at the office of Congressman Gary Condit, a conservative Democrat from California. Laying in wait for him there were about twenty members of the Blue Dogs, and despite their political kinship with Boucher, the reception was hostile. Condit, Pat Danner of Missouri, and Ralph Hall and Charles W. Stenholm of Texas all spoke out forcefully. People in their
districts were upset at the presidents conduct, they said, and Congress had to investigate thoroughly. They did not want some fig-leaf, half-assed inquiry.

  Boucher left the meeting and reported back to Gephardt. Their alternative plan may have worked in committee, but it clearly would not fly on the floor. If they could not do something to swing some votes, they could lose fifty Democrats or more on the final vote, which would imbue the Hyde inquiry with bipartisan legitimacy and put the burden on those Democrats who voted no to explain themselves back home. Gephardt sent Boucher back to the drawing board with instructions: come up with a new plan to sell to their caucus.

  That night, Asa Hutchinson went to a party thrown by Fox News at the Capital Grille restaurant on Pennsylvania Avenue, where he ran into an old acquaintance from ArkansasDick Morris, who helped mastermind Clintons political comeback after the 1994 midterm debacle, only to be forced out when he was caught with a prostitute. Morris, as flamboyant with his politics as with his toe-sucking sexual adventures, did not fail to entertain.

  Are you still on good terms with the president? Hutchinson asked, mildly curious.

  Well, he fired me, Asa, Morris said bitterly. He canned me and then he got his people leaking dirt on me, following me around.

  In fact, Morris had become so disaffected from the White House that he had been publicly throwing around allegations of a secret police and suggesting in one interview that Clinton might have cheated on the first lady because she did not like men. White House aides had been waging a private campaign to discredit Morris with his onetime friend, the president. Clinton confidant Bruce Lindsey had taken to circling Morriss more outrageous statements in the newspapers and leaving them on the presidents desk. Clinton would shake his head when he read the clips. Hes lost his mind, Clinton told aides. Hes a lunatic.

  His break with the president complete, Morris began offering Hutchinson freelance strategic advice on how Republicans should run the impeachment effort. Forget about simply building a case that Clinton lied, Morris said. The public had already accepted that he did that but did not want to impeach him for it. Americans did not want to have their private lives investigated and to have a scarlet A stitched to their coats. The Republicans could win in a courtroom but not in the public arena, and that was where this was being fought. Instead, Morris suggested calling attention to the damage done to the system of law as well as the more sinister elements of the case, the secret police employed by the president against women who might make allegations of sexual misconduct.

  You know, I told Clinton he needed to be looking out for this months ago, but he didnt take my advice, Morris went on. He didnt want to cash in on it. So now Im selling it to you guys.

  That was Morrisstill a political mercenary. Never mind that he helped keep Clinton in the White House for a second term; now he was going around offering strategic tips to those trying to remove him from office. Morris never learned one of the first rules of politics, Hutchinson observed to his aide Chris Battle in the car as they left the party. If youre going to challenge the king, you had better kill him, you had better take off his head.

  It was a lesson, Hutchinson knew, that he should remember himself.

  At the White House, Clinton was deeply unhappy with the idea of his own party offering an inquiry proposal, even a truncated one designed for tactical positioning. It was simply outrageous. Democrats, he told aides, should hold the line against any inquiry and take their case to the American public. The polls showed that voters were on his side on this, and he made sure to point that out to nearly every House Democrat he talked with.

  At 8 A.M. on Wednesday, October 7, the day before the full House was scheduled to vote, Clinton called Rick Boucher at home for advice on what he ought to tell Democratic members.

  Tell them to vote their conscience, Boucher suggested.

  A couple of hours later, Clinton invited reporters into the Oval Office. I think everybody should cast a vote on principle and conscience, he said. Its up to others to decide what happens to me, and ultimately its going to be up to the American people to make a clear statement there. At a separate, closed meeting with twenty-five freshman House Democrats at the White House, the first lady made a similar point, telling the members that the Clintons would support them no matter how they voted. But Hillary Clinton brought more edge to the discussion, attacking the Republican inquiry proposal as a poor copy of the process used during Watergate and advancing the case for the Democratic alternative. She had been making similar points with her husbands lawyers, pushing them to make constitutional standards for impeachment more of an issue.

  By the time the House Democratic caucus met, Boucher had redrafted the alternative plan in an effort to woo the Blue Dogs, moving it closer to Howard Bermans model. He had taken out the internal deadlines and stretched the final target date from November to the end of December. The committee would only have to make a preliminary determination that Starrs allegations, if true, would constitute high crimes and misdemeanors before proceeding with a formal inquiry. That was about as much give as Boucher could offer the conservatives in his party, and, in fact, it was so much latitude that a variety of Clinton advisers and congressional Democrats frantically worried that Gephardt and Boucher had gone too far. Surely, they thought, the Republicans would call their bluff and simply accept the plan.

  James Carville, the presidents most vocal public defender, called Rahm Emanuel at the White House to complain vigorously that they were making a mistake of epic proportions. If the Republicans agreed to the Democratic plan, it would destroy Carvilles whole line of attackand by extension the presidents defense. His entire argument was that the impeachment drive was a partisan witch-hunt; a bipartisan agreement would remove all the arrows from his quiver.

  How can you be so goddamn stupid? Carville asked.

  Emanuel reassured him. Dont worry, they wont take it. Their stupidity will never allow them, he said.

  Gephardt and Boucher were applauded by the caucus when they presented the plan. But many of the Blue Dogs and some moderates, while mollified by Bouchers revisions, still wanted more running room to vote as they pleased and felt pressure because Clinton seemed to be making it a test of loyalty. Congressman Jim Moran of Virginia said at the caucus meeting that opposing the Republican inquiry plan would be the death of the Democratic Party in the coming election, just as the Republicans had been demolished by Watergate in 1974. They had to get the president to back off.

  Congressman Vic Fazio arrived at the White House several hours later on a missionto convince the president to drop his opposition to the impeachment inquiry. The chairman of the House Democratic caucus, Fazio had concluded that turning the vote into a showdown would tear the party apart and force scores of vulnerable congressmen into making a hazardous choice just four weeks before an election. The moderates thought the president would listen to Fazio since earlier in the year Clinton had sounded out the California Democrat about becoming his chief of staff and had more recently considered him to lead his impeachment defense. By now, though, Fazio realized it was probably hopeless. He had been trying to get an appointment to see the president since Monday but kept being put off and now was being granted an audience less than twenty-four hours before the floor vote. The White House probably knew why he was coming, and Fazio suspected the two-day delay was no accident.

  When Fazio arrived at the Oval Office, Clinton was having lunch. As they began to talk, the president sat in a chair opposite his desk sipping his soup. Fazio told Clinton that he was there to strongly recommend that the president not make this an important vote and instead give House Democrats a pass to support the Hyde inquiry. This was the last vote before the election, Fazio noted. Not only would backing off be helpful to Clintons allies in the caucus, it would also focus more attention on the vote everyone knew would eventually comethe question of impeachment itself. After the election, Fazio noted, Clinton might have to go to some of these same wavering members and ask them to make a far more courageo
us vote. Fazio suggested the president say something like, I know the process is proceeding and I intend to protect my interests and fight against the unfair impeachment. But this is not the vote that matters. Im going to ask my friends and supporters to support me on the ultimate vote and not impede this procedural step.

  Clinton shook his head. He did not want to confuse the issue, and he certainly did not want to give any ground, he said. Polls showing that the public supported him and opposed impeachment should be reason enough for Democrats to stick with himit was in their own interest to do so. The president was so intense that Fazio found it hard to get a word in. Whenever Clinton dipped his spoon in the soup, the congressman would seize the opportunity to interject. But Clinton would not budge.

  Neither would Hyde. Just like the president, the Judiciary chairman came under considerable pressure not to make the inquiry vote a test of partisan loyalties. Several committee Republicans, including Asa Hutchinson, Lindsey Graham, and Charles T. Canady of Florida tried separately to convince Hyde to do what James Carville feared they wouldcall the Democrats bluff and accept their inquiry plan. Henry, cant we limit this? Canady asked him. What are we going to lose?

  But Hyde was convinced that Starr still planned to send evidence related to other possibly impeachable offenses. Over the years, the independent counsel had investigated everything from the Whitewater land deal to the improper collection of FBI files at the White House. In his report to the House the month before, Starr had written that he was still looking into whether anyone connected with Clinton had tried to intimidate another woman linked to the president, Kathleen E. Willey, a former White House volunteer who had accused him of kissing and groping her in the Oval Office in 1993. Hes got more, I know he has more, Hyde kept saying.