|
| House impeachment manager Lindsey Graham with Mary Bono |
The House Judiciary Committee yesterday ended two days of partisan skirmishing behind closed doors with majority approval of the release of President Clinton's videotaped grand jury testimony in the Monica S. Lewinsky case, along with 2,800 pages of documents containing substantial amounts of sexually explicit material.
All of the material is scheduled to be made available at 9 a.m. Monday, when copies of the documents, printed by the Government Printing Office, are to be handed to the committee and other lawmakers, after which the information will be posted on the Internet. Sources said the documents -- appendices to the report on the Lewinsky investigation presented to the House last week by independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr -- include graphic, and as yet unpublished, portions of Lewinsky's testimony about her Oval Office trysts with Clinton.
The House radio and television gallery will feed television networks the four-hour videotape of Clinton's Aug. 17 grand jury testimony, during which he was questioned by Starr and aides.
[...]
Before convening the committee Thursday, Hyde and ranking Democrat John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.) had agreed to 155 deletions in the printed material, under guidelines aimed at protecting the privacy of innocent third parties, removing redundant or irrelevant sexual references and striking material being used in ongoing criminal cases, and anything relating to official duties of the Secret Service.
But GOP members, who outnumber Democrats on the committee 21 to 16, rejected an attempt by the minority to delete 25 additional references, according to committee records. Among these were more explicit material relating to sexual interaction between Clinton and Lewinsky, the manner in which Clinton undressed her, and details about their telephone sex, according to sources in both parties.
Other Democratic motions were repeatedly defeated on straight party-line votes, and in a final rebuff, GOP members rejected a Democratic move to allow the transcript of the committee hearings to be made public.
Republicans on the committee approved, 20 to 16, a motion by Rep. Bob Barr (R-Ga.) to restore three deleted references to a cigar in Lewinsky's sworn testimony to the grand jury, according to information provided by the committee and other sources. One Republican, Rep. Asa Hutchinson (R-Ark.) joined the Democrats in opposing the Barr motions.
Rep. Bill McCollum (R-Fla.) said the release of sexually explicit material was necessary because of the president's insistence that he did not commit perjury when he denied in a sworn deposition that he had sex with Lewinsky. Barr agreed, telling reporters: "It's extremely relevant. We were forced to do this by the president's own words."
Republican sources said that material related, for example, to Lewinsky's orgasms, was left in specifically to address the question of whether Clinton aimed to arouse Lewinsky -- a key component of the definition of sexual relations at testimony by Clinton in the sexual harassment suit brought against him by Paula Jones.
In his report to Congress, Starr contended that Clinton's perjury on that point was one ground for impeachment.
Nonetheless, Republicans acknowledged there were risks in continuing to disgorge more lurid details of the Clinton-Lewinsky affair, beyond the vivid descriptions already made public as part of Starr's Sept. 9 report to the House. "Nobody can ever predict how the public will react to a decision," said Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Tex.), a Judiciary Committee member.
One sign of GOP nervousness came after Judiciary Committee Republican Bob Inglis (S.C.) proposed that the generic description of one deleted item -- which was not included in Starr's published report -- be changed to indicate more specifically the form of sexual contact that it dealt with. Only five other Republican members, Barr, Ed Bryant (Tenn.), Edward A. Pease (Ind.), James E. Rogan (Calif.) and Lindsey O. Graham (S.C.) joined Inglis in pushing for the disclosure. The tally defeating the motion was 28 to 6, according to the committee.
"My view is that full disclosure is the best approach," said Inglis, who is battling to unseat Democrat Ernest F. Hollings in his state's Senate race this fall. "In a democracy, people have a right to know that government and its operations are open."