by Peter Baker
Schippers also outraged Democrats on the paneland distressed at least a few Republicansby asserting that he had found other evidence of wrong-doing by the president that he had not pursued, either because of time or concerns by Starr or the Justice Department that it would interfere with ongoing investigations. Denied permission by Hyde to introduce some of this in his presentation, Schippers said only that he had found very promising leads, including incidents involving probable direct and deliberate obstruction of justice, witness tampering, perjury, and abuse of power without describing what he was talking about, prompting complaints of McCarthy-like tactics.
Still, for Republicans on the committee, the accumulation of evidence he did present on the Lewinsky matter and the way he pieced it together helped ratify their conviction that the president was guilty of the charges against him. If you dont impeach, as a consequence of the conduct that I have just portrayed, then no House of Representatives will ever be able to impeach again. The bar will be so high that only a convicted felon or a traitor will need to be concerned. . . . If this isnt enough, what is? How far can the standard be lowered without completely compromising the credibility of the office for all time?
That night, while the committee members began reading opening statements on Capitol Hill, Clintons advisers gathered in the Yellow Oval Room in the second-floor living quarters of the White House for one of his weekly political strategy sessions. These meetings had started during the 1996 reelection campaign, usually on Wednesday evenings, and continued even after the campaign was over to deal with all sorts of political planning. Aside from the political staff at the White House, they included outside advisers such as pollster Mark Penn and sometimes Washington-savvy administration officials such as Energy Secretary Bill Richardson. Through much of the fall, the meetings had an unreal feel to them because the president and his advisers talked about everything related to politics with the exception of the one issue that dominated the nations political arenaClintons own survival.
On this night, however, some of the presidents aides felt they had no choice but to force him to confront it directly. They were a day away from a committee vote on the articles of impeachment, a vote they knew they would lose. After that, they were headed to the House floor and time would be short. The final vote would probably take place within a week or so and Clinton was scheduled to be out of the country for four days in the Middle East. All the signs were pointing to a serious erosion of the presidents position among House Republican moderates. They had been relying on Congressman Pete Kings advice that the moderates would come around, but it did not seem to be happening. The undecided Republicans were looking for something to grab on to, some rationale to vote no, and the White House had to give it to them. To do that, Clinton would have to make another speech, show again that he was genuinely contrite, and offer a concession that they could accept.
Paul Begala had been working on the speech intended to walk this delicate line. In a draft he wrote, Clinton would adopt Ruffs formulation and say, My conduct was terribly wrong. Not a day goes by that I do not think about my failures of character and spirit. Not a day goes by that I do not feel profoundly sorry for what I did and what I said. And I understand today how reasonable people could read from my testimony in the Jones case and conclude I crossed the line. I tried not to, but that is no excuse. In this rendering, the president would go on to implicitly invite censure as a reasonable punishment. I expect to be held accountable for my conduct. I am living through the painful private consequences of my actions, but I know there should be public consequences as well. I am ready to accept those consequences.
The aides decided not to bring up the matter at the meeting itselftoo large a groupbut pulled the president aside afterward to discuss their proposal. Asking Chuck Ruff to join them, John Podesta, Doug Sosnik, Joe Lockhart, and Begala walked over to the presidents study with Clinton. They had steeled themselves for emotional resistance from the president.
Look, theres an incredible feeding frenzy out there, Podesta told the president. We think you should do this if you feel like you can.
To the aides amazement, Clinton nodded and agreed, No, thats fine. I think youre right.
Clinton was so agreeable, the meeting broke up after just a few minutes. The president wanted a night to sleep on it, so his aides did not show him the draft but decided to go over it with him in the morning. Someone joked that it would probably show up in the morning paper. Clinton headed off to help Chelsea with a college assignment on the Jesuits, while the aides headed back over to the West Wing. From their perspective, it was a major advance. Clinton had come to the same conclusion without a wrenching battle. Maybe this could burst the bubble and release the pressure the same way Joe Liebermans speech ultimately did back in September.
They had little time to revel in their internal victory, however. A short time later, while Lockhart was back in his office talking on the phone with Podesta, his pager went off. It was NBC. Let me call you right back, Lockhart told Podesta, then added as a joke, Ill probably tell you they have it.
It was no joke. They did have it. Somehow the network had obtained a draft of Begalas speech and was going to post it on its MSNBC Web site and air it on Rivera Live, one of the evening talk shows on its cable channel CNBC.
Lockhart called Podesta back and said, Somebody fucked us.
Podesta was infuriated. How could this happen? It had to be somebody who disagreed that Clinton should make another speech and was trying to undermine the idea by leaking it. Either way, Podesta was determined to hunt down the violator and hang him by his toenails. Aides who had seen a copy of the draft were called at home or summoned back to the White HouseCome, dont call, to Podestas office right away, said the message on one aides pager. One by one that night, Podesta interrogated them about what they had done with their copies of the draft. By the end of the evening, though, the identity of the culprit was not entirely clear. While there was plenty of speculation, the theories boiled down to twoeither hard-line Clinton defender Sidney Blumenthal had leaked it deliberately or someone at pollster Mark Penns office had by accident. Nobody was admitting to it.
Begala felt miserable. What weve done, he moaned that night, is fucked ourselves.
As Podesta searched for a leak, Clinton was back at the residence calling Congressman Jack Quinn at home, as Pete King had recommended. If any Republican was to be on Clintons side, it would be Quinn, a liberal, pro-labor third-termer from Buffalo described by some as the presidents best friend in the House GOP. Quinn was a regular in the small stable of Republicans relied on by the White House for critical votes. He had supported the presidents crime bill and family leave legislation, helped rescue his Americorps program, and pushed through a minimum-wage hike. As a practical matter, Quinn was playing politics the only way he could in one of the two most Democratic districts in the nation represented by a Republican, a district where Clinton beat Bob Dole by nearly two to one in 1996. Quinn had grown personally close to the president as well; Quinn had once watched a Super Bowl with him and the two had a running joke about the congressman switching parties. After the election, Quinn had signaled that he would back Clinton in the coming impeachment battle, telling a reporter, If I had to vote today, I would vote no.
So when Clinton found Quinn at home in Buffalo that night around eleven oclock, the president did not bother to ask for his vote and instead solicited his assessment of where things stood. Had Quinn seen Chuck Ruff at the committee the day before? We felt it went pretty well, Clinton said. Did you see it?
I saw parts of the hearing, Quinn answered. Mr. Ruff looked okay. He made some good points. Quinn was noncommittal but gave Clinton no reason to think he was contemplating a defection. After a few minutes, the president got off the phone, apparently thinking Quinn was still with him.
The next morning, Friday, December 11, a grim-faced John Podesta attended the impeachment strategy session at the White House. He did not always come, but he intended to make a point t
oday. The general buzz of conversation came to an abrupt halt when he spoke.
Somebody in this room rat-fucked the president last night, Podesta said angrily.
The leak of the speech draft had destroyed the whole purpose of the statement. It was all over television, it was in the newspapers. If the president went forward with it as written, it would look manufactured, another production of a slick White House spin machine, sending him out there for a cynical attempt to escape impeachment. Whoever had let this out of the building had no business hurting the president this way, Podesta told the assembled aides. From now on, information was going to be much more restricted. These meetings were going to be smaller. Fewer aides would be allowed to attend.
The larger question was what to do about the speech. Clinton was as furious as Podesta about the leak and uncertain whether he would go ahead with a statement. He promised to let his aides know later in the day.
In the Rayburn Building on Capitol Hill that morning, the Judiciary Committee was finishing up opening statements. An air of disbelief hung over the room. Wake up, America! Democratic congressman Robert Wexler of Florida shouted. They are about to impeach our president!
The initial statements by all thirty-seven members made clear that the vote was locked in stonethe remaining suspense lay only in the details and the positioning for the later showdown on the floor. You know this may be as far as we get, Henry Hyde told David Schippers as they walked into the hearing room that morning, but at least well get them out of committee.
At a lunchtime meeting in their conference room, the committee Democrats were still bickering among themselves. The same dissidents who thought their caucus had not pushed hard enough for witnesses during the hearings were now pushing to propose amendments to the articles during the markup. They wanted to strike certain sections or insist on more specifics in the list of charges. Bobby Scott wanted to amend the articles to describe a constitutional standard for impeachment. Mel Watt and Maxine Waters wanted to know why they were not putting up more of a fight. Julian Epstein, the committee counsel, explained that he had had to agree not to have a messy fight over amendments in order to ensure a vote on censure. Watt got in his face. Next time you make an agreement, let the rest of us know, he snapped.
The senior Democratic committee members endorsed Epsteins no-amendments strategy. They could not improve the articles, so it was best simply to point out their flaws. Maxine, what do you want to do? Barney Frank challenged Waters at one point. Just because somethings out there, you dont have to shoot at it. How could we make this better?
The meeting ended with members grumbling as they headed back out to the dais to do battle. And feisty they were. Hyde had barely opened the debate on Article I, the grand jury perjury count, before Democrats began pelting him with requests that the resolution lay out specifically what Clinton said that was perjurious.
What are those words? demanded Congressman Jerrold Nadler of New York. What words specifically?
Hyde brushed him off. I can only refer you to Mr. Schipperss report yesterday discussing this, and Ill try to get a copy of it and reread it to you.
But Nadler would not be dismissed. The Schippers presentation, he complained, contained many multiple allegations and did not clarify the matter.
Hyde tried again. The words were set out in detail in the presentation yesterday
Then you ought to be able to tell me what they are, Nadler shot back.
Well, Im looking for a copy. My copyI didnt commit them to memory. Im not quite that acute and Im waiting for somebody
Hyde had blown it. The Republican staff had anticipated the Democrats would try this tactic and prepared one paragraph for each member to read outlining the specific false statements they were alleging. Tom Mooney, the staff director, had warned the GOP committee members that the minority would demand specifics because that was exactly what they had done to the Democratic majority when he had worked as a junior aide on the Judiciary Committee during the Watergate hearings twenty-four years earlier. But the members did not bother to study the heavy briefing books they had been given.
With Nadler hammering away and Hyde stumbling, his aides tried to regain control. Mr. Chairman, hes out of order, Mooney kept whispering to Hyde, urging him to cut off Nadler. Mitch Glazier, the GOP lawyer who had done much of the drafting of the articles, whispered that each of the members would address the issue in a synchronized way.
But Hyde was not listening. Give me the lies, he kept telling his staff.
Finally, they found one of the briefing papers and shoved it in front of him. It was exactly the wrong one to hand himit dealt entirely with the discussion about whether oral sex counted as sexual relations and whether the president had lied when he testified he did not kiss or touch Lewinskys breasts or genitalia.
Embarrassed, Hyde stopped reading. Theres so much here that I really dont care to read, but its available and you
A couple of Republican members, Charles Canady and Bob Goodlatte of Virginia, cut in and tried to prod Hyde into reestablishing regular order, but it was too late. The damage had been done. Once again, the Republicans had played right into the Democrats hands. In fact, the Republicans were correct that the impeachment articles they had drafted against Clinton were no less specific than the ones against Nixon. More important, as a matter of political strategy, the Republicans had deliberately left out graphic details to emphasize the lies, not the sex. Yet when pressed by the Democrats, Hyde found himself reading aloud the very sex-based questions he had hoped to avoid. The Democrats smiled at their successful ambush.
Where the president touched her, after he acknowledged having sex, whether it started in November or Februarythose are not issues on which people think you undo two democratic elections and throw an elected official out of office, Barney Frank declared triumphantly.
For the next several hours, the debate played out in the committee room and on television screens across the country. For all of the anger and recriminations that had suffused the process until this point, the discussion proved to be surprisingly civil. At one point, Maxine Waters even praised Hyde, telling him, I think youre the fairest chairman Ive ever met. But the substance of the debate centered almost entirely on whether the articles should be more specific rather than on the merits of the charges or the constitutional questions. In effect, the battle was being fought on Democratic terms.
Congressman Jim Rogan, the California Republican, understood that and expressed his frustration: Once again, we are treated to the spectacle of a debate solely over procedure and never about disputing the facts of the case.
As the day wore on, the telephone rang back in the Democratic cloakroom to let the presidents allies know that he had decided to go ahead and make a short statement from the Rose Garden. Around 3:30 P.M., Congressman Howard Berman, the California Democrat, went to find Lindsey Graham, who had been so vocal in expressing his wish for Clinton to come clean. I want you to write down what the president has to say to be a fulsome and complete apology, Berman challenged him in a back room.
Graham found a couple sheets of Judiciary Committee stationery and began scribbling with a pencil:
Admit giving intentional false testimony under oath at deposition & GJ about relationship with Ms. Lewinsky & its particulars.
President wrongfully sought to influence prospective witnesses by suggesting false stories and improperly sought to influence their future participation in pending legal action.
Berman took a look at it but decided not to pass it along to anyone at the White HouseGraham was asking the president to confess to a crime and Berman knew that would never happen. Some fellow Republicans were no happier with Grahams eleventh-hour flirtation with the White House. Bob Barr, the fervent Clinton critic from Georgia, flew into a rage when he over heard Graham telling staff director Tom Mooney about the conversation with Berman.
Jesus Christ, Lindsey, why are you playing into their hands? he demanded. Youre abandoning ship!
This was where he had been all along and Barr knew that, Graham snapped back. You do what you need to do and Ill do what I need to do. Besides, Graham added, Hes not going to do it. He will not meet the conditions of these words.
The two went back and forth for several minutes. Barr was in Grahams face, and for a moment the two appeared on the verge of fisticuffs. Mooney, worried that the confrontation might turn physical, hovered nearby in case he had to break it up.
Barr need not have worried. Clinton was not about to take Grahams advice. A few minutes later, shortly after 4 P.M., he emerged from the Oval Office and walked alone to a lectern with the presidential seal set up in the Rose Garden. In the Judiciary Committee chambers, Hyde was asked to recess the meeting to hear what Clinton had to say, but he declined, reasoning that they should not let the president dictate how they ran their proceeding. Nonetheless, all but seven of the committee members got up from their seats and wandered into the back rooms to watch on television.
Clinton spoke slowly and soberly. What I want the American people to know, what I want the Congress to know, is that I am profoundly sorry for all I have done wrong in words and deeds. I never should have misled the country, the Congress, my friends, or my family. Quite simply, I gave in to my shame. He paused as he let that sink in. I have been condemned by my accusers with harsh words. And while its hard to hear yourself called deceitful and manipulative, I remember Ben Franklins admonition that our critics are our friends, for they do show us our faults. Mere words cannot fully express the profound remorse I feel for what our country is going through and for what members of both parties in Congress are now forced to deal with. These past months have been a torturous process of coming to terms with what I did. I understand that accountability demands consequences and Im prepared to accept them. Painful as the condemnation of the Congress would be, it would pale in comparison to the consequences of the pain I have caused my family. Again, he paused for emphasis and stressed each of the next five words. There is no greater agony.