The Breach

by Peter Baker

  History, however, has not rendered its judgment yet and will not for years to come. The historical consensus about the validity of Andrew Johnsons impeachment shifted back and forth dramatically in the century following his trial, and Clinton may face similar swings. The first serious poll of historians after the trial placed Clinton in the mediocre middle of the presidential spectrumranked twenty-first out of forty-one men who have held the office. That may reflect the difficulty inherent in judging contemporary figures; nearly every other modern president was bunched around Clinton in that ranking. One category where the historians were in agreement, though, was moral leadership. Clinton was ranked dead last there, behind even Richard Nixon. Removed from the heat of the moment, much of the public in the months following the Senate trial came to accept Clintons impeachment as an appropriate censure. A USA Today/CNN/Gallup Poll taken a year after the House vote found that 50 percent of the public approved of impeaching Clinton, compared with just 35 percent at the time. Fifty-seven percent of those interviewed still supported the Senate decision to acquit, although that was eleven percentage points lower than a year before. As time passed, the split verdictimpeachment by the House and acquittal by the Senatestruck many as perhaps the right balance. Even Newt Gingrich expressed this view in an interview on C-SPAN: It may have had the right outcome, frankly. We sent the signal [that] presidents, even when popular, cant break the law, but at the same time I think the country didnt want an impeachment, a conviction in the Senate.

  The broader question will be the impact on impeachment itself. Will the Clinton saga make it more likely in the future that a House controlled by one party will impeach a president of the other party? Or did the Senate set a higher bar for what constituted high crimes, essentially declaring that anything less than the offenses of Watergate would not warrant removal? What role should public opinion play in deciding whether to evict a president from office? In meeting privately with Democrats just hours before the Starr report was delivered to Congress, Henry Hyde said that it is a recipe for failure if it is partisan, and he turned out to be right. Yet looking back at the Clinton saga, partisanship clearly hurt both sides in different ways. By refusing to accept the more restricted Democratic inquiry proposal in October 1998, House Republicans launched the impeachment process on a largely party-line vote, thus guaranteeing a partisan process. In hindsight, many GOP leaders, including Hyde, rued their decision not to embrace the Democratic alternative, convinced the outcome was determined at that moment. On the other hand, by aggressively fomenting partisanship for their own purposes, Democrats polarized the situation in the House so deeply that moderate Republicans inclined to vote against impeachment once it reached the floor were turned off by what they saw as shrill politics and opted for party solidarity instead. Only afterward did Democratic strategists recognize that the partisan forces they had helped set in motion could not be throttled back when it came time for the final House vote, which may thus have contributed to Clintons impeachment, even while ensuring eventual acquittal in the Senate.

  The lesson for future presidents threatened with impeachment may be to dare Congress to follow through rather than resign. Clinton showed that a gritty defiance could carry him through the worst of political times. No matter how miserable it got, Clinton plowed forward as if nothing were happening, triumphing through adversity as he had done his entire career. Howard Baker and Fred Thompson, two Republicans who played central roles in investigating Watergate, said in separate interviews last year that had Nixon followed Clintons example and refused to quit, they now believed he may never have been removed. Even there, I wonder if he told Goldwater no whether that would have been enough, Thompson speculated. I seriously doubt whether they would have convicted.

  The confrontation between executive and legislative branches in 199899 will invariably influence the balance of power in the federal government as well, but again it may take years to evaluate just how. The Johnson trial ushered in a period of congressional dominance in Washington that prevailed until Theodore Roosevelt took office more than thirty years later. The Congress that emerged from the Clinton trial was not nearly so strong, having absorbed considerable public opprobrium for its zealous pursuit of the Lewinsky case. Still, the president found himself constrained in the after math of his trial as Clinton fatigue sapped his political authority. His legislative posture was so weakened that he could not even convince the Senate to ratify the Comprehensive Test-Ban Treatythe first time a president had been rebuffed on a major arms control treaty since the Senate rejected the Treaty of Versailles following World War I and refused to allow the United States to join Woodrow Wilsons League of Nations. Clinton did manage to wage war successfully in Europe, leading NATO allies in a bombing campaign that drove Serbian dictator Slobodan Milosevic out of Kosovo. Yet even there, his credibility was called into constant question, and many believed his failure to win strong congressional support for the war stemmed from lingering distrust. Would that end with the Clinton era or disfigure the relationship between president and Congress for a generation? All of the major candidates to succeed him in both parties, including his own vice president, strained every political muscle to emphasize how different they would be from Clinton. In public appearances, Al Gore even took questions that never mentioned the Lewinsky ordeal and used them as opportunities to restate his deep disappointment in his political patron.

  Signs pointed to a collective retreat from the edge of the political abyss, a mutual desire to forget, if not exactly forgive. In the months following the trial, Clinton and congressional leaders often acted as if it had never taken place. Sometimes it was hard to remember that it ever did. The president was still invited to deliver his State of the Union address in the same chamber where he had been impeached, and the assembled lawmakers still stood and applauded at appropriate moments. Some of the same Republicans who had pursued him so vigorously made nice on occasion. Rogan attended the White House Christmas party and had his picture taken with Clinton. DeLay even attended a White House event on adoption, long a pet cause for the foster father of two teenagers from abusive backgrounds. Clinton aides had been petrified to tell the president that the man who had called him a sexual predator intended to participate, and they stared as if eyeing the devil when they spotted DeLay marching down the corridors of the White House. Likewise, DeLay aides thought he was entering the den of the lions by agreeing to go. But when Clinton saw DeLay, the president went out of his way to greet his archnemesis warmly, both in private beforehand and again in front of the audience. Using golf as a metaphor for impeachment, Clinton said he had recently read a profile of the bulldog House whip. He started grinding on my golf game and saying that I didnt count my scores and all this, and I was getting really angry. And then I get to the next part of the story, and it talks all about his experience and his commitment to adoption and to foster children, and the personal experience that he and his wife had. And my heart just melted.

  Surreal as it was, the rapprochement was destined to be short-lived. Clinton left the adoption event that morning to head over to the Washington Hilton Hotel, where he addressed a meeting of the Democratic National Committee to get his party revved up for the November 2000 elections. By then, his heart had hardened and it was time for battle again. A warm-up video played for the audience ridiculed Republican leaders to the tune of Crazy, with none other than Tom DeLay in the role of favorite villain. Clinton played to the same theme from his lectern. The other party was wrong about virtually everything, he informed the crowd of activists, about gun control, about health care, about the economy, about the debt. They were wrong and we were right, the president declared.

  Back into the breach.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Any book is the collective work of untold people who have contributed ideas, knowledge, insight, and recollections. This one is no exception. Many of the key players in the drama that led to the impeachment and trial of President Clinton generously gave their time and their candor t
o try to make this the most complete account it could be, including quite a few who rarely spoke publicly at the time. I wish I could name them all, but I am extremely grateful for their cooperation.

  My literary agent, Raphael Sagalyn, deserves special credit. He figured out what this book should be long before I did and sent me back to the drawing board repeatedly until I got it right. With infectious enthusiasm, Lisa Drew at Scribner embraced the goal of an authoritative and straightforward history of these events. No one ever had a more inspiring editor. Jake Klisivitch, Laura Wise, Elisa Rivlin, Steve Boldt, John Fontana, Kim Hilario, Jennifer Swihart, and others at Scribner helped guide me with patience, good humor, and friendship through a bewildering process. Khiota Therrien somehow managed to find time in addition to her regular job to help me with research. Ever reliable and resourceful, she came through for me time and again. Bruce Sanford introduced me to the publishing world and provided sage advice along the way.

  For twelve years, I have been fortunate to work at one of the last bastions of serious journalism in the country, created and sustained by the commitment of Katharine Graham and Donald E. Graham. Our executive editor, Leonard Downie Jr., and managing editor, Steve Coll (along with his predecessor Robert G. Kaiser), have created a newsroom singularly dedicated to getting the story first and getting it right. I will always be grateful to Karen DeYoung, then assistant managing editor for national news, and her deputy, Bill Hamilton, for taking a chance with a young reporter at the White House. Thanks too to editor Maralee Schwartz for her encouragement over the years.

  Several established authors at the Washington Post offered invaluable advice as I embarked on this project, including Bob Woodward, Rick Atkinson, David Maraniss, and Howard Kurtz. Few first-time authors are lucky enough to have such a reservoir of talent and experience so nearby.

  I especially want to thank John F. Harris, my partner on the White House beat and by far the nations smartest and most insightful correspondent covering the presidency. Susan Schmidt, one of Washingtons most dogged investigative reporters, persevered through adversity to break the biggest story of the decade and let me come along for the ride. Juliet Eilperin, who knows all the corners and crawl spaces of Capitol Hill better than its elected inhabitants, shared her energy and expertise. I also benefited during the impeachment saga from the generosity of a number of other immensely talented colleagues at the Post, including Lorraine Adams, Dan Balz, Ceci Connolly, Helen Dewar, Jeff Glasser, Amy Goldstein, Michael Grunwald, Guy Gugliotta, Al Kamen, Toni Locy, Ruth Marcus, Eric Pianin, Lois Romano, Lena Sun, and David Von Drehle. Appreciation is due as well to Alice Crites and the incomparable Post library staff, who tracked down the impossible, plus Vince Rinehart and his keen-eyed crew of copy editors, who saved me from myself too many times to count. With the blessing of Joe Elbert, the Posts assistant managing editor for photography, Marylou Foy and Todd Cross helped pick out the images of impeachment for this book from the collected work of the best team of photographers in the country.

  Surviving this process would not have been possible without the forbearance of my family, Ted and Martha Baker, Linda and Keith Sinrod, Karin Baker, Cindy Wallace, Mal and Inge Gross, Martha Gross, and Dan and Sylvia Baker, as well as my new family, Stephen, Lynn, Laura, Jeff, and Jennifer Glasser. The same holds true for friends John Smith, Tony Garro, Mike Allen, Tim Webster, Valerie Mann, Maria Koklanaris, Jennifer Frey, Nicole Rabner, Rajiv Chandrasekaran, Michael and Caitlin Shear, and Al and Staci Bailey.

  Most of all, I am indebted to Susan Glasser, the best editor, best partner, and best friend anyone could ever have. If nothing else beneficial came out of this chapter in history, for me, at least, meeting and marrying Susan made it all worthwhile. She was the inspiration for the book and its title, not to mention the source of unwavering support through the most difficult moments. She devoted long nights and many weekends to reviewing chapters, catching mistakes, and offering numerous ways to improve the manuscript. She has made both this book and my life enormously better.

  NOTES

  In addition to the reporting during the events themselves, this account is based on extensive original research, including nearly 350 interviews after the end of the Senate trial as well as thousands of pages of documents never made public, such as internal memos, diaries, letters, calendars, E-mail, tape recordings, notes, speech drafts, and transcripts. In a number of cases, key players gave me free access to their confidential files. Almost 200 people took the time to sit for interviews, including more than sixty members of Congress from both parties as well as numerous senior White House officials, cabinet secretaries, and presidential lawyers. Many graciously spoke with me on several occasions, some a half dozen times or more.

  Most of these subjects and sources agreed to be interviewed on condition that they not be identified, an unfortunate reality of life in modern Washington. To verify information, I tried to confirm details and recollections with multiple sources. The direct quotations that appear in this book came from transcripts, news accounts, contemporaneous notes, or the recollection of at least one person in the room at the time and often more than one. No such reconstruction of past events can be perfect, but I have labored to be as accurate as possible. Nonetheless, responsibility for any errors of fact or interpretation rests solely with me.

  This book also relies on the work of other journalists, most particularly that appearing in the Washington Post, the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, Newsweek, and Time. The impeachment Web site still maintained on washingtonpost.com (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/special/clinton/clinton.htm) provided an exhaustive archive of documents, while a similar site by MSNBC (http://archive.msnbc.com/modules/ clintonunderfire/CLINTONUNDERFIRE_Front.asp) contained a useful video record of key moments. Primary source materials included the White House archives and the Congressional Record.

  Several books contained important material as well, especially Shadow: Five Presidents and the Legacy of Watergate by Bob Woodward (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1999), Truth at Any Cost: Ken Starr and the Unmaking of Bill Clin ton by Susan Schmidt and Michael Weisskopf (New York: HarperCollins, 2000), Monicas Story by Andrew Morton (New York: St. Martins Press, 1999), The Corruption of American Politics by Elizabeth Drew (Secaucus, N.J.: Birch Lane Press, 1999), Hillarys Choice by Gail Sheehy (New York: Random House, 1999), and A Vast Conspiracy: The Real Story of the Sex Scandal That Nearly Brought Down a President by Jeffrey Toobin (New York: Random House, 2000).

  Because of confidentiality agreements, neither footnotes nor even extensive chapter notes are possible; however a few points should be highlighted:

  Prologue: This chapter is based largely on interviews with Bob Livingston, his former aide Mark Corallo, and a number of Livingston friends and advisers. Corallo recalled the scene in the House cloakroom in vivid detail. That was the exact exchange, word for word. Ill remember it until I die, Corallo said in one of several interviews with the author. Livingston did not recall the anecdote but did not challenge Corallos memory. I cant say that it happened or didnt happen. I dont remember, Livingston said. Could it have happened? Yes. Almost a year to the day after the fact, Livingston stressed that either way, he did not regret his eventual decision. Did I have second thoughts? Im sure I had second thoughts. But I feel I did what I had to do. I dont regret a thing. The only thing in this whole thing I would have done differently is I would have treated my wife a little better. Let me rephrase that for the record: I would have treated my wife a lot better.

  Chapter 1: Bob Shrums proposed draft of President Clintons speech was published in a collection of great speeches edited by Senator Bob Torricelli and Andrew Carroll called In Our Own Words (Kodansha International, 1999). Paul Begala turned over his draft to the White House Counsels Office to prevent it from becoming public. The transcript of Clintons grand jury session was released by the House Judiciary Committee in an appendix to the Starr report. E-mail from Tom DeLays office was obtained by the author.

  Chapter
2: Martin Frost denied suggesting to Dick Gephardt that he consider going to the White House to urge Clintons resignation. However, several people close to Gephardt recalled the conversation.

  Chapter 3: Much of the history of impeachment can be found in a paper prepared by the Congressional Research Service in 1974 as well as in William H. Rehnquists Grand Inquests (New York: William Morrow, 1992). A copy of Bob Bauers March 30, 1998, memo was obtained by the author. Through an aide, Aida Alvarez denied telling the president that women were disappointed with him. However, the quote was reported contemporaneously by the Associated Press, which based the account on a source in the room, in a story that ran on the day of the cabinet meeting.

  Chapter 5: A copy of Dick Gephardts secret censure plan was obtained by the author. The meeting between the presidents lawyers and Judiciary Committee officials was reconstructed based on interviews as well as notes, including a confidential memo to the file written by David Kendall and obtained by the author. Copies of confidential reports by Republican and Democratic investigators about evidence kept at Ken Starrs office were obtained by the author.