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Monday, Nov 23, 2009
Throughout the Christmas vacation, while the Congress was adjourned, we worked on the State of the Union address. The day after the impeachment the president had held a meeting in the Cabinet Room to discuss how to frame the Social Security debate. Republicans were already pushing a new exorbitant tax cut that would swallow the surplus. In his 1998 State of the Union address, Clinton had declared, "Save Social Security first." Rather than siphoning the surplus to a regressive tax cut, he wanted to make Social Security solvent for decades to come, and he had held public forums across the country on the subject. Now we debated whether to recommend investing a portion of Social Security in the stock market, then in its most bullish phase. Privatizing Social Security by transforming the system into one of private accounts invested in the stock market was a pet Republican scheme. How could it be countered? "Our mission," Gore said, "must be to defeat individual accounts. They would undermine Social Security."
Gene Sperling, director of the National Economic Council, laid out various options. Working with the Treasury Department he had devised an ingenious plan for individual accounts that was the diametric opposite of the Republican one: in addition to Social Security, which would remain sacrosanct, every worker would be vested with a private pension, subsidized by tax credits and matching government funds on a highly progressive basis based on income; this plan obviously especially benefited the working poor. On January 6, at another meeting, the president agreed to this plan, "conceptually," he said. He demanded more work on the specifics.
On January 7, 1999, the trial opened with the entrance onto the Senate floor of the House Managers (having first prayed together). Chief Justice Rehnquist was escorted to the podium by an honor guard of senators. He took an oath and swore in the senators in turn, and the House Managers read aloud the articles of impeachment. Watching the ceremonies on television in my office, I talked on the phone with Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. "The whole thing lacks legitimacy," he said. "Two-thirds of the people are against it. The comparative strength of the parties has driven the whole thing." That evening, Clinton's political staff and key cabinet secretaries met with him for a political strategy session. The president concentrated solely on the issues he would talk about in the State of the Union, conducting a long discussion of Social Security.
During these very difficult months, I saw President Clinton in numerous briefings, speech preparations, and meetings. Almost every day we exchanged newspaper and magazine articles we'd marked up about politics, various policy proposals, the political state of play in important foreign countries, and the impeachment -- he did this with a number of us on the senior staff. His comments were practical and precise, though sometimes, when he encountered the bizarre charges made by the Clinton-haters, even he could be astonished. On one article, reporting a particularly fantastic claim, he simply wrote, "Amazing."
Two mutually exclusive theories about him gained currency with the media at this time. Either Bill Clinton was too distracted by his impeachment to focus on governing, or he was able to compartmentalize these subjects and live in eerily separate mental worlds. Both were untrue, and there was no actual evidence to support either. If anything, his formidable powers of concentration were sharper than ever. Above all, he understood that the war against him was really a war against his ability to govern. Clinton knew that his strength depended upon his doing his job for the public, and he neglected no area of policy. But he also devoted his attention to the impeachment and the Senate trial, occasionally expressing anger and wonder but always handling the situation as a political crisis, which it was. He didn't make public remarks about how he felt about Starr or DeLay and kept his views private. Throughout the days of the trial, his focus on his public agenda was unwavering and his discipline unvarying.
Senators, being members of the upper body of the legislative branch, consider themselves far above the rabble of the House of Representatives. While there are 435 members of the House, there are only 100 senators, elected for six-year terms, with only one-third standing in any given election. The Senate is far more intimate, clublike, and devoted to its arcane protocol. A month earlier, on December 8, the full Senate had convened purposefully in the Old Senate Chamber for the first time since 1859. Enveloped by their tradition and setting themselves off from the riffraff banging at the door, they discussed how the trial would proceed.
Senator Robert Byrd, Democrat of West Virginia, the second oldest member, who filled his floor speeches with references to Roman history and Shakespeare, denounced the House of Representatives as "the black pit of partisan self-indulgence" trading in "salacious muck which has already soiled the gowns of too many." His sentiment that the senators' togas should remain unsoiled was widely shared. A proposal by Senator Slade Gorton, Republican of Washington state, and Senator Joseph Lieberman, Democrat of Connecticut, well expressed that view. They suggested that the senators simply hear opening statements and vote. If the articles of impeachment failed to receive a two-thirds vote in favor, there would be no trial. But the House Managers had become folk heroes to the Republican minions in the country, and Senate majority leader Trent Lott could not dismiss them so easily.
Many Republican senators regarded the Republican House members as asylum seekers: if the senators could have deported them without anyone noticing, they would have. Tom DeLay, meanwhile, attempted to intimidate senators into removing the president on the same basis that the House had impeached him: the loose material in the House "the evidence room," the raw FBI reports and witness interviews that constituted the leftovers from numerous dead-end investigations into the president's private life. DeLay was unabashed in using this tactic. "The reason the House adopted articles of impeachment was due to the overwhelming evidence against the president," he said. "Before people look to cut a deal with the White House or their surrogates who will seek to influence the process, it is my hope that one would spend plenty of time in the evidence room. If this were to happen, you may realize that 67 votes may appear out of thin air. If you don't, you may wish you had before rushing to judgment." His remark was a thinly disguised threat: You may wish you had.
Half a dozen Republican senators agreed to have the House Managers present "the evidence" to them. But the offer was not made to the Democrats, nor was Chief Justice Rehnquist aware of this egregious irregularity. "We had a nine-page presentation," Rogan told me. "It mutated into a private show for senators. I just wanted them to sit down, shut the door, and listen to the evidence." But more than anything else, these shows frightened the senators about the spectacle that the House Managers might make in the Senate. "The senators wanted us to go away and not be there," said Rogan.
The Managers had a frantic, far-fetched strategy: call live witnesses onto the Senate floor before a national television audience, especially Monica Lewinsky; have this show turn public opinion against the president; force him to defend himself by coming onto the Senate floor; and somehow have the roof collapse on him. "The only threat to the Clinton presidency," Rogan told me, "was if we could try the case in a way that changed public opinion. If public opinion changed, I don't think Clinton could have avoided going to the Senate." The strategy had several flaws, not least that every time Clinton appeared in public his poll ratings improved. Rogan, in the event, was charged with being the president's interrogator: "I'd sit up all night preparing to cross-examine President Clinton. But did I think we were going to get witnesses? No."
Hyde, too, demanded live witnesses from the start, having importuned Senator Lott in a December 30 letter claiming that the House of Representatives had such a "constitutional duty" as "the accusatory body." The Managers drew up a plan for calling 16 witnesses, including Judge Susan Webber Wright in the Jones case, FBI Director Louis Freeh, Dick Morris, Revlon CEO Ronald Perelman, and Kathleen Willey and her lawyer. ("Lindsey Graham was hot on Willey," said Rogan.) On January 6, 1999, Hyde and his committee counsel and old Chicago crony, David Schippers, had met with Senator Lott, who refused to commit to their elaborate presentation. When Hyde told him the Managers wanted the loose cannon, Schippers, to address the Senate, Lott said, "We can't do that."
When they learned on January 7 that they would not get their way, the Managers almost decided to walk out. "I took the position we should not proceed in the trial," Rogan told me. "It's a sham trial. It wouldn't be a trial. They were making it impossible for me to make my case. What I wanted us to do was to announce that we were not able to present on behalf of the House. Without live witnesses, they'd vote overwhelmingly not to convict and we'd look like a bunch of assholes. But most of us felt if we walked out we'd look like crybaby schoolboys. It ended up being just three of us -- me, [Chris] Cannon, and [Bob] Barr. But I think if we'd done it, they would have had to reverse themselves. I don't think Lott would have withstood the demands of Republicans. Lott's base would have burned him down."
The Senate Democrats, for their part, were hostile to the very idea of witnesses. During the impeachment in the House, the Republicans had claimed they needed none. Why did they need witnesses now? Paul Sarbanes, Democrat of Maryland, reflected Democratic sentiment about the Senate as a forum for sexual storytelling: "They didn't call witnesses in the House because they didn't want to be embarrassed with that kind of testimony. But now they say that we have to call witnesses? That's outrageous."
On January 8, Republican senators met in Lott's conference room with Hyde, Schippers, and the House Managers. Hyde pressed them to review "the evidence." When Senator Ted Stevens, Republican of Alaska, told them, "We'll look goofy," the Managers exploded in anger. Rogan told them they had to do exactly as the House Republicans had in coming to impeachment. "We did -- why don't you?" said Rogan. "How else can you reach a rational decision on guilt or innocence?" Hyde kept referring to "the evidence." The senators repeatedly said they would not allow "sex" into the Senate. "Henry," said Stevens, "I don't care if you prove he raped a woman and then stood up and shot her dead -- you are not going to get 67 votes." "The system doesn't work," Schippers muttered loudly.
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On January 26, as the Senate trial got underway, I was watching the proceedings on television with White House deputy chief of staff Steve Richetti in his office when the names of the witnesses were flashed on the screen: Monica Lewinsky, Vernon Jordan, and Sidney Blumenthal. Betty Currie boogied down the hall from the Oval Office with a wide smile on her face. "Free at last! Free at last!" She pointed at me. "Congratulations," I said. "Congratulations," she replied. She gave me a big kiss. On a split screen suddenly appeared pictures of the three witnesses to be called alongside a shot of the Pope, landing that day in St. Louis, Missouri. Hillary, who was on her way to see the Pope, called me to say, "It's an honorable feat [being subpoenaed]. I'm seeing the Pope. He has a different agenda."
I telephoned a Republican friend of mine who was well connected to the House Managers and who, from time to time, discreetly gave me information. He underscored the Managers' strategy: "They want to shove it onto the Senate floor. They think they can do it with you. That's all they've got." The plan was to force Lewinsky into the well of the Senate, using my grand-jury testimony as the foil to upset her, and hoping against hope that then they could get her to cry over her treatment at the hands of the president, which would arouse hatred toward Clinton.
That morning, the Wall Street Journal had run a lead editorial headlined "The 'Stalker,'" demanding that I be called as a witness. It laid out what my Republican friend had confirmed:
"For a jobless 25-year-old, Monica Lewinsky sure is terrifying. She's so scary she has managed to unite President Clinton and some Senate Republicans in trying to short-circuit their trial to keep her off the impeachment stage ... The value of her testimony has nothing to do with sex ... They [House Republicans] want to talk about obstruction of justice, among other things what she thought when she learned that the president she loved had told aide Sidney Blumenthal she was a 'stalker' who had 'threatened him.'
"This line, we now know, was vital to the Clinton cover-up ... And we know that not long after the President's "stalker" remarks to Mr. Blumenthal on Jan. 21, 1998, media reports began to appear that attacked Ms. Lewinsky ... This is ugly stuff, turning consensual sex into a predatory cover-up. Monica is lucky she saved that dress; without Bill Clinton's DNA this would be the White House line today ...
"All of this is directly relevant to the obstruction case, and is why witnesses including Mr. Blumenthal should be called. Monica's testimony in particular would be an O.J. verdict moment, the one time when just about everyone in America would be watching TV. It is the one event that could change public opinion. Democrats -- especially Senate women who make an issue of sex harassment -- want these facts swept away before that happens."
The Managers of course had to have Lewinsky and Jordan as witnesses. Betty Currie would have been the natural third witness, if three were all they were to be allowed. But, Jim Rogan told me later, "The senators told us that it'd look like you're beating up on black people." So they named me as the third and final witness. To the House Managers, I was the devil at Satan's right hand. Just as they believed in their fantasy identity as warriors, they believed in their fantasy of the evil Bill Clinton in his evil White House. They had lost the midterm elections, watched two Speakers resign in ignominy, and listened to an immensely popular president deliver an acclaimed State of the Union address. But they still wanted Americans to believe that Clinton was a merciless godfather who preyed upon women and then ordered his consigliere to do the dirty work of shutting the women up -- or else.
Excerpted from "The Clinton Wars," by Sidney Blumenthal, to be published on May 20 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux LLC. Copyright 2003 by Sidney Blumenthal. All rights reserved.
