The Breach

by Peter Baker

  The Senate then did start voting, although these were not the final votes Craig was seeking. The Senate rejected the subpoena for Lewinsky, 7030. In the end, all forty-five Democrats were joined by twenty-five Republicans, including the aged Strom Thurmond, who called out his answer in such an emphatic tone that laughter echoed through the chamber.

  Noooooo! he cried.

  Senator Patty Murray, the Washington State Democrat who had campaigned so vigorously against a Lewinsky appearance, now tried to prevent the videotape of her deposition from being shown either, but was dismissed even by many of her fellow Democrats. Her motion was defeated, 7327. The countermotion to allow both sides to show excerpts of the videotapes then passed, 6238, with two Republicans voting no and nine Democrats voting yes. But Daschles symbolic attempt to dispense with any more proceedings and move immediately to final votes on the articlesproposed again as another symbolic jabwas rejected by the same 5644 vote that had defeated Robert Byrds original motion to dismiss.

  After a short break to confer with his colleagues, Chuck Ruff took the microphone and asked the Senate to direct the managers to notify the White House what portions of the videotapes they intended to use. Rogan offered a pithy reply, quoting a former California judge: I believe the appropriate legal response to your request is, that it is none of your damn business what the other side is going to put on.

  As the question was put to a vote, the public, weary of the trial, made its voice heard for the first time in the form of a middle-aged man with a graying beard who suddenly jumped up in the corner gallery overlooking the chamber. Good God Almighty! he shouted. Take the vote and get it over with! Capitol Police escorted him out. Ruffs request for notice was turned down, 5446, with Republican senator Jim Jeffords of Vermont the only member to cross party lines.

  In creating the second set of trial rules, Lott and Daschle had prepared for a bolt of lightning. What they had not anticipated was the sting of a smaller spark. While the prosecution and the defense took Friday, February 5, to prepare their video highlightsusing tapes delivered by Capitol Police officers who stood guard over them during the editing until the wee hours of the morninga journalist from another country inserted himself into the proceedings to accuse Sid Blumenthal of lying during his deposition. Susan Bogart, one of the investigators for the House managers, had gotten a tip that she might be able to prove Blumenthal had spread stories about Lewinsky if she contacted his friend Christopher Hitchens, a British expatriate who wrote for Vanity Fair and The Nation. Bogart called him at 4 P.M. and asked a series of leading questions, eliciting from Hitchens a story about a lunch he and his wife, Carol Blue, had had with Blumenthal at Washingtons ritzy Occidental Grill on March 19, 1998, when Blumenthal repeatedly described Lewinsky as a stalker and portrayed Clinton as the victim of a predatory and unstable, sexually demanding young woman.

  Bogart and some of the managers were excited and quickly dispatched a pair of staffers around 8 P.M. to get Hitchens to sign a sworn affidavit to that effect. The British journalists account seemed to contradict Blumenthals testimony from just two days earlier in which he said he had never mentioned his conversation with the president to anyone other than his wife and White House lawyers. Still, Hitchenss affidavit did not assert that Blumenthal cited his talk with Clinton specifically in terming Lewinsky a stalker. And Blumenthal quickly denounced his former friends account, saying he did not remember the conversation in question.

  Monica Lewinsky made her only appearance on the floor of the United States Senate on Saturday, February 6, although only in four images displayed on flat screens at the front of the chamber for senators to watch. After a marathon videotape-editing session, the House team played sixteen different clips of her deposition, narrated by several managers to fill in what they saw as the darker meaning of her testimony. This was the first time Lewinsky had ever appeared before the nation as a speaking player in the drama she had helped set in motion, and the image was striking. She was calm, composed, fully in command, hardly the victimized little girl, but instead the confident witness easily parrying her interrogator.

  The managers also showed Vernon Jordan eleven times and Sid Blumenthal twelve times. For good measure, they reran clips of Clinton denying any sexual relationship with Lewinsky to remind the Senate and the country of how blatant his deceptions had been. Cognizant that they had not turned up any smoking guns, the managers made the best of what they had. You might say, Well, theres nothing explosive here, Asa Hutchinson told the senators. Whenever youre talking about obstruction of justice, it ties together, it fits together. Lindsey Graham threw in some homespun commentary as the video ran: Where I come from, you call somebody at two-thirty in the morning, youre up to no good.

  The White House team made effective use of the videotaped testimony as well. They did not bother to show any of Blumenthal because they considered him a sideshow. They showed Jordan eight times, making clear he did not consider his actions on Lewinskys behalf to be part of a grand conspiracy to win her silence. And they showed fourteen clips of Lewinsky, sometimes choosing the same words shown by the managers but drawing different meanings from them. Most devastating, Clinton lawyer Nicole Seligman played nearly twenty minutes of uninterrupted tape that showed just how clearly Lewinsky dominated her stammering and uncertain questioner. Seligman simply let the tape roll, and the longer it did, the more uncomfortable many senators in the chamber felt for Ed Bryant; some of the Democrats openly laughed at his stumbling.

  The managers, Seligman told the Senate, had snipped here and there in an effort to present their story and in the process created a profoundly erroneous impression of what the testimony showed. Not only did Lewinsky not bolster their case, she argued, the former intern undercut it by saying she did not think she would have to lie in her Jones case affidavit and that she did not consider Clintons mention of their cover stories to be a recommendation of what she should say in that affidavit. The managers, according to Seligman, glossed right over that exculpatory testimony. We must have attended a different deposition, Seligman said pointedly. To borrow a phrase, she said at another point, appropriating the words of Dale Bumpers, they want to win too badly.

  For all of the White House scorn, Senator Rick Santorum thought the House team made smart use of the video excerpts. In fact, the Pennsylvania Republican believed, it was the most effective presentation offered by the prosecution through the whole trial. After it was over, he wandered back into the managers Marble Room headquarters to congratulate themand to offer a little advice for their upcoming closing arguments.

  Do what you did today, Santorum urged. Show us your videos. But whatever you do, dont do what you did at the beginning and have all thirteen get up and preach to us. It would only bore the senators to hear from every manager again as they did during the opening arguments, he argued. Instead, stick with the A-team.

  The managers were outraged. Who was Santorum to tell them how to handle their case? An angry Bob Barr, for once echoing what others on his team felt, complained that Santorum was out of line. After all the senators had done to them, Barr told Santorum, he had a lot of nerve dictating closing arguments to them now.

  Hyde was more polite but equally resistant. Well, these guys have gone through hell with me, he told Santorum. Hyde was loath to deny them their last chance to explain themselves for historys sake. At his staff s suggestion, Hyde let one of the committee lawyers, Paul McNulty, draft a script for only the stars of the team to deliver closing argumentsHutchinson, Rogan, Graham, and Hyde himself. But at a meeting over the weekend to lay out their plans, Hyde told the managers about McNultys plan, politely thanked him for the effort, and then put it aside. All thirteen managers would get their chance to speak, he said.

  By God, Hyde said, youll be able to tell your grandchildren that you gave closing arguments in the impeachment trial of the president.

  Dianne Feinstein thought she was making progress with her censure plan. By her count now, she could rely on perhaps forty of th
e forty-five Democratic senators and she thought she had a good shot at a number of Republicans who had expressed interest, including Susan Collins, Olympia Snowe, Slade Gorton, John Chafee, Jim Jeffords, Gordon Smith, and Mitch McConnell. Along with her partner, Bob Bennett, that would put her over the fifty-one votes she would need for a simple majority. The problem was that Phil Gramm, the scrappy boll weevil Republican senator, had decided to make it his mission to block censure because it might excuse Democratic votes for acquittal. Under the rules, Feinstein would need two-thirds, or sixty-seven votes, to suspend the rules and force a vote on censure, and that was a boundary that might be tough to cross.

  On Sunday, February 7, while Clinton flew to the Middle East to attend the funeral of Jordans King Hussein, Feinstein squared off with Gramm on Meet the Press on NBC. Impeachment is about the Constitution; censure is about getting political cover, Gramm complained. What were really trying to do here, which is not unusual for politicians, people want to be on both sides of the issue. They want to say the president is not guilty, they want to say the presidents guilty. The problem is this covering-your-fanny approach has constitutional costs. Because if we do censure the president, we establish a precedent that when a future Harry Truman fires a future General MacArthur, then Congress is going to come in, and with a lower threshold, censure the president.

  Feinstein was irked. She had made perfectly clear for months that she thought Clinton was a reprobate for his conduct, and all her hard work on censure was an honest response. Sitting next to Gramm at the tiny table in the studio, she challenged his characterizations. Most respectfully, Phil Gramm, I have never said what your motivations are, she said firmly as he looked at her with a tight smile. The motivations for this censure are not political. And I hope you will take me at my word. It is not something to cover ones posterior. It is something that I feel very deeply is the logical outcome of this. Now, you may differ with me, but I dont question your motivations. Please dont question ours.

  When the moment finally arrived the next Monday, February 8, Hyde lived up to his word and disregarded Rick Santorums advice. All thirteen managers were given time as the closing arguments began on the floor, many of them venting their frustration at the process imposed on them and bafflement that the nation did not see the case as they did. They shouted, they whispered. They cited their children and the Constitution. They virtually pleaded with future generations to understand their cause and credit them for waging it nobly.

  In a final tactical surprise for the White House, Hyde had six of his managers give their closing speeches, then reserved two-thirds of his time so that the remaining seven could speak after the defense lawyers. That was a lesson from the opening arguments. This time they would have the last word.

  Unlike the prosecution, Ruff chose to close the presidents defense by himself. He carefully disputed the major points one last time to give comfort to those planning to vote for acquittal, ridiculing the prosecution theory of the case as he went. Nice tryno facts, he said at one point. With victory assured, though, Ruffs more salient mission was to cast the managers as isolated and hard-hearted moralists indifferent to the broader consequences of their lonely crusade. I believe their vision could be too dark, a vision too little attuned to the needs of the people, too little sensitive to the needs of our democracy. I believe it to be a vision more focused on retribution, more designed to achieve partisan ends, more uncaring about the future we face together. Our vision, I think, is quite different, but it is not nave. We know the pain the president has caused our society and his family and his friends. But we know, too, how much the president has done for this country.

  The senators found the oration impressive enough, but by now it had a redundant flavor. Restless after so many weeks of sitting on the floor, something they rarely did in their normal senatorial lives, several members stood and wandered to the back of the chamber during the closing arguments. As Ruffs presentation wore on, more joined them until by 4:10 P.M. there were fifteen senators, eight Republicans and seven Democrats, lined up together across the aisle in the back, almost as if it were some sort of silent bipartisan demonstration in favor of wrapping it up and getting out of town.

  With the advantage of going last, the managers quarreled with a number of Ruffs specific points about the evidence. But it did not really matter. Everyone in the room had long ago made up his or her mind. The real advantage for the managers was that Hyde had saved all of his heavy hitters for the finale.

  After his own factual summation, Hutchinson used his last appearance before the Senate to try to turn one of the Democrats central arguments on its head. The real profile in courage here, Hutchinson suggested, would be to risk political damage by voting to convict, not to acquit, as the hero of John F. Kennedys book did in the Andrew Johnson trial. The question is: Will the senators of this body have the political courage to follow the facts and the law as did Senator Ross, despite enormous political pressure to ignore the facts and the law and the Constitution?

  In the back room as he worked on his final remarks, Jim Rogan caught some of the television commentary about the earlier summations and heard the managers criticized for lacking humanity. Impulsively, Rogan crossed out the first five pages of his remarks and decided to tell the story of how he first met a young Bill Clinton some twenty years earlier. This has been a very difficult proceeding for me and for my colleagues, the House managers, Rogan told the senators off-the-cuff. But our presence here isnt out of personal animosity toward our president. It is because we believe that, after reviewing all the evidence, the president of the United States had committed obstruction of justice and perjury, he had violated his oath of office.

  Once again, the rhetorical punch was delivered by Hyde, who wrapped up the case with characteristic resonance. He quoted Horace Mann, Edward Gibbon, Saul Bellow, Charles de Gaulle, and King Edward VII, who, in response to a plea from a misjudged child, declared, Let right be done. Hyde expressed bewilderment at the Democratic senators willing to censure the president for shameless, reckless, and indefensible behavior but not to remove him for it. This entire saga has been a theater of distraction and misdirection, time-honored defense tactics when the law and the facts get in the way. He chafed at the defense charge that the managers wanted to win too much, saying, This surprised me because none of the managers has committed perjury nor obstructed justice and claimed false privileges. None has hidden evidence under anyones bed nor encouraged false testimony before the grand jury. That is what you do if you want to win too badly.

  As he spoke, Hyde was trying one last time to justify the managers fervor, to explain their cause. They were not the misbegotten partisans painted by the Democrats, but rather the stouthearted soldiers following Shakespeares King Henry V against overwhelming odds at the Battle of Agincourt. To my House managers, your great enterprise was not to speak truth to power, but to shout it. And now let us all take our place in history on the side of honor and, oh, yes: let right be done.

  At 6:30 P.M., Hyde picked up his papers, turned back toward the prosecution table, and closed the case against the president of the United States.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  The most difficult, wrenching,and soul-searching vote

  Susan Collins barely made it home before her dinner guests arrived. It was Tuesday, February 9, and the Senate had just completed its first day of deliberations behind closed doors. Rushing out of the chamber, Collins made a quick stop to grab take-out food from a Japanese restaurant around the corner from her Capitol Hill apartment. An aide got sodas and a bottle of white wine. After five weeks of the impeachment trial, her refrigerator was pretty empty.

  The doorbell rang and there was her unlikely visitorKathleen Willey, the woman who had told the world a year earlier that the president of the United States had groped her in the Oval Office suite. Collins invited Willey and her fianc in, and they sat down around a dinner table in the living room-dining room of the apartment. In any ordinary court case, this would be cle
arly prohibited contact between a juror and a potential witness. But this was an impeachment trial, run by the senators as they saw fit. Nothing barred Collins or anyone else from meeting with principal characters and judging their stories for themselves. After all, every member of this jury knew the defendant, and some had talked with him at length about the case. Besides, this meeting was not Collinss idea. Willey had called the senators office a couple of weeks earlier asking for the chance to talk with her. Originally they were going to meet at a restaurant. However, Collins decided that it might not be a good idea to be seen in public together even if there was nothing inappropriate, so she agreed to play host at home.

  For Collins, the encounter came at the moment of truth. The arguments and testimony at the trial were now over. Within three days her name would be called out by the Senate clerk, and she would have to stand up next to her desk and call out Guilty or Not guilty. She had long ago concluded that Article I, the perjury allegation, was not strong enough and she would vote against it. But she was still struggling with Article II, the obstruction of justice count.

  As they dug into the sushi and teriyaki, Willey and her fianc made small talk with the senator and her chief of staff, Steve Abbott, about moving to Maine. Not until dinner was over did the Richmond woman turn to the purpose of her visit. She wanted to tell Collins about what she had gone through since telling her story on 60 Minutes the previous spring. She wanted people to understand the harassment she had endurednot the crude come-on by the president, but the various incidents that had left her scared in recent months, the dead cat, the slashed tires, the encounter with the jogger, whom she referred to as the visitor. A reporter had shown her a picture of a member of the Clinton circle, and she said she thought he might have been the man who had confronted her outside her Richmond home the previous January before her deposition asking whether she had gotten the message. Willey herself was unclear about how all these events were connected but found the pattern quite disturbing.