A simple, reasonable declaration of fact. But not much had been straightforward or rational about the Lewinsky scandal. Stunned by the vote to impeach in the House, the White House, said a top Clinton aide, viewed the Senate as a ““barn full of hay’’–ready to catch fire. Right-wing Republicans were demanding a show trial to expose Bill Clinton and, by extension, the moral relativism of the Democratic Party. Several of the House ““managers’’ chosen to prosecute the president were feverishly scheming to dish new dirt into the record. The rules were archaic or unclear: the Senate had not tried a president for high crimes since 1868. The pundits were saying that anything could happen and network executives were hoping it would.
Like most climactic battles, however, this one was determined by careful groundwork. When the scandal broke last year, Clinton chose to go to war rather than sue for peace. ““Well, we’ll just have to win, then,’’ he told his old adviser Dick Morris a year ago. The president’s team cleverly demonized the prosecutor and played to public opinion, successfully arguing that this was about sex, not constitutional substance. And, as always, Clinton was unusually lucky–especially in his enemies.
Still, it all could have spun out of Clinton’s control. In the end the president was spared, a NEWSWEEK reconstruction shows, by a mix of high-mindedness, backroom dealing and senatorial vanity. For some years now, Senate old-timers have been quietly muttering about a loss of civility and collegiality in their chamber. They blamed TV cameras and an influx of bomb throwers from the House. To the traditionalists, the impeachment vote in the House was a spectacle not to be repeated. The dignity of the upper house was at stake. The senators had read the polls and weren’t interested in rummaging through Clinton’s sex life. The best strategy: preserve institutional pride and get it over with fast.
AT FIRST, THE PRESIDENT’S worst nightmare was a Senate united–against him. The White House plan–really, more a hope–was to keep the trial as partisan as possible. A vote split along party lines would fall short of the two thirds necessary to convict. It would make the trial look like pure politics, with the Republicans in the role of witch hunters. The president was downcast, then, when the Senate took its first vote on Jan. 8–deciding, 100-0, to set some ground rules. The vote put off the hard decisions, like whether to call witnesses, but to Clinton it demonstrated dangerous senatorial solidarity. ““It was his lowest moment,’’ said an aide who worked closely with him.
The 13 House managers were just as unhappy about the 100-0 vote. ““A group hug,’’ scoffed Congressman Chris Cannon of Utah, ““a collective pant-wetting.’’ The day before the vote, Lott had announced that he wanted to pay a visit to the managers. ““This ain’t good, guys,’’ Rep. Lindsey Graham told his colleagues. Senators almost never deign to visit the House. Lott was already suspect to the House managers–a little too slick, too willing to make deals. He must be bringing bad news, warned Graham. Sure enough, Lott told the managers that the Senate would never permit a normal trial, though he blamed the Democrats. After Lott left, three of the managers–Cannon, Graham and Jim Rogan–were so angry they talked openly about quitting in protest. ““I won’t participate in any sham trial,’’ Rogan declared.
In late December a few of the House managers had realized they would need to resort to guerrilla warfare. Graham, a third-term congressman from South Carolina, jokingly remarked to a NEWSWEEK reporter that he had begun to like Congress when he realized it was a ““street fight.’’ Now, in order to shake up the prissy senators, he wanted to portray Clinton as rough sex fiend and cover-up artist. During the House impeachment proceedings, the Judiciary Committee had paraded members into a secret evidence room. They were shown a report from Ken Starr about a witness in the Paula Jones sexual-harassment case called Jane Doe Five. About 20 years ago, Clinton had allegedly forced himself upon Jane Doe Five. The evidence was murky: Jane Doe had broken down in tears when questioned by Starr’s investigators, who failed to ask follow-up questions. Jane Doe Five was not part of the impeachment case sent over to the Senate. Graham and others hoped, however, to get the press interested. They were glad when NBC’s Lisa Myers interviewed Jane Doe, and looked forward to an exposE on ““Dateline.’’ Graham, who calls himself ““the Jane Doe guy,’’ also went digging for other women. He says he called a NEWSWEEK reporter at home because he had heard that the magazine was working on a story about Clinton and a former Miss America. Told no, he asked, ““Got anything else coming?''
Clinton’s legal team feared the House’s fishing expedition. ““We didn’t know what was out there,’’ said one of the president’s lawyers. ““That’s when we started talking about putting on a real defense.’’ Such a trial, this lawyer estimated, would last ““a year and a half.’’ He added, ““We weren’t bluffing.’’ Some of the president’s political advisers cringed at a long trial, but the president wanted an all-out defense ““on the law and the facts,’’ said the lawyer. ““He believed he had done nothing wrong.’’ Closely questioning his lawyers, Clinton was deeply involved in his own defense. So was the First Lady, though she never attended staff meetings; instead she communicated through aides and the president himself. Hillary’s focus was entirely on the constitutional issues. It had been her idea to parade scholars before the House Judiciary Committee, and in the Senate trial she continued to offer arguments on the proper definition of ““high crimes.’’ She didn’t want to get into the facts.
The White House was frustrated and a little rattled when the House managers put on their opening arguments in the second week of January. The Sunday TV shows credited the House team with making a strong case, especially on obstruction of justice. ““It was full of sloppy lawyering,’’ groused a member of the Clinton team. The White House set up a war room full of computers in the ceremonial office of the vice president in the Capitol. Searching through Monica’s testimony on CD-ROM, the president’s lawyers picked over the managers’ case, finding holes and mistakes. Off in a corner sat a desk that had belonged to Richard Nixon, with holes carved out for his secret taping system. No one used the desk.
The president talked on the phone to a few Democratic senators most nights during the trial, but he was powerless to do anything about the senator he feared most: Robert Byrd of West Virginia. Any White House lobbying would be ““jury tampering,’’ Byrd warned before the trial began. Pompous and shrewd, Byrd declared that his loyalty was to the Bible and the Constitution, not the Democratic Party. He hinted broadly to senators that he might vote to convict. As ranking member of the Appropriations Committee, Byrd was a danger to the White House: he could use Senate pork to swing votes.
Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle knew that he had to handle Byrd with extreme care. Daschle played to Byrd’s ego, calling him every day and inviting him to address his colleagues on Senate history and custom. The Republicans, meanwhile, were courting Byrd, showering him with praise as ““the conscience of the Senate.’’ But House Manager Bob Barr had already offended Byrd’s sense of institutional propriety: the hard-right Georgia congressman had publicly suggested that the Senate lacked ““the attention span’’ to hold an impeachment trial. Going over to the Senate floor at the trial’s outset, Barr tried to apologize to Byrd, and claims that Byrd forgave him. A Democratic senator who witnessed the exchange has a different recollection. Through thin lips, with eyes narrowed, Byrd told Barr, ““I assure you I listened. I assure you I have a long memory.''
On Jan. 22, as the trial ended its second week, Byrd happily surprised the Democrats and stunned the Republicans. He moved to dismiss the entire case. Though the motion failed along party lines, it showed that the Democrats were sticking together, and that Byrd, for the time being at least, was not a renegade. Byrd’s motion was the turning point: the president was relieved; the House managers were crushed. ““We had a huge head of momentum, but Byrd killed it,’’ said a House manager. ““He used his status as the patriarch in a baldly partisan fashion.’’ Republican senators, meanwhile, were queasy about the managers’ plan to introduce a host of witnesses. Sen. Slade Gorton of Washington approached a House manager on the Senate floor. ““Oh, my God,’’ Gorton exclaimed, ““you can’t possibly have more than three witnesses.’’ Gorton was ““all atwitter,’’ gesticulating like the Mad Hatter in ““Alice in Wonderland,’’ said the disgruntled House manager. The encounter did not bode well; Gorton was seen as a stalking horse for Lott.
On Jan. 27, the Senate held the key vote on witnesses. Three was all the House got–not even live witnesses, but videotaped depositions. The vote broke along party lines, and the talking heads immediately proclaimed partisan warfare. They were wrong. Behind the scenes Daschle and Lott were forging an alliance of convenience. Lott and Daschle are opposites: Lott is a former Ole Miss cheerleader, Daschle cerebral and introverted. Neither man really likes the other. They had squabbled so openly last year that Democrat Patrick Leahy of Vermont had pleaded with both men to make peace for the sake of the institution. But Lott and Daschle had a shared interest in a short, dignified impeachment trial: Daschle to save his president, Lott to try to rescue his party from deeper disaster. During the trial, they talked so often that Lott put a direct- dial button on his phone.
Lott had to tread carefully with the 20-odd right-wing senators who kept talking about the party’s ““base’’–the conservative true believers who turn out at election time. The ““base,’’ these senators argued, wanted to see a full-scale trial. Lott smiled and listened to the right-wingers, but he quietly did business with Daschle. He gave the Democratic leader a veto over calling more witnesses or expanding the scope of the trial. That meant no Jane Does. Over in the House, the managers privately grumbled that they had been sold out. Every day, as he met with his team, Judiciary chairman Henry Hyde staged an elaborate ritual of cutting the tip off his long, fat cigar. One day he mused aloud that he would like to do the same to the male organ of a certain senator. The press was also letting down the House diehards. NBC News had held the story by reporter Lisa Myers about Jane Doe Five. Congressman Cannon began brandishing a button that read FREE LISA MYERS.
Clinton’s team was beginning to breathe easier. They knew the Republicans were divided. One GOPer was even secretly offering to help the White House, using Democratic trial lawyers in his home state as cutouts. As it turned out, the White House didn’t really need a spy: the senators were running to TV cameras to openly announce their stratagems. Indeed, Democrats and Republicans were spending so much time together in ““green rooms’’ waiting to go on TV talk shows that they were beginning to bond across party lines. As Leahy was getting made up for one show, a Republican in the next chair teased him about using up all the makeup to cover his bald head. The two solons began discussing a deal to limit witnesses. After mingling for days in the Senate chamber, Republicans and Democrats began visiting each other’s sanctums, the cloak rooms; the Democrats were not surprised to find that the Republicans had better food.
THE LAST HOPE OF THE HOUSE managers was to make Monica Lewinsky turn on Bill Clinton, or at least seem pitiable. But the questioning by Rep. Ed Bryant of Tennessee was hapless. At their first, informal meeting on Jan. 24, Bryant had clumsily asked Lewinsky if she had voted for Clinton. Her lawyer stopped her from answering, while other lawyers in the room rolled their eyes. Bryant did no better in the formal deposition on Feb. 1. Few senators even bothered to view the whole deposition the next day when it was made available on videotape in a secure room on the fourth floor of the Capitol. One who did came out shaking his head. ““Seems to me,’’ drawled Fritz Hollings of South Carolina, ““that she was deposing him.''
Things were going so well for the White House that spokesman Joe Lockhart felt compelled to declare a ““gloat-free zone.’’ That day Thurmond had voted against bringing in Lewinsky as a live witness with a loud ““No!’’ The 96-year-old senator, an old ladies’ man, had been flirting with White House lawyer Cheryl Mills, bringing her candy and fruit as she sat waiting for the trial to begin on the Senate floor. As the legal team met the next morning, one of the lawyers cracked, ““Cheryl finally delivered Strom.’’ The lawyers burst out laughing–and abruptly stopped. They remembered the injunction against gloating.
The last real threat to Clinton was the move by some Senate moderates to fashion a ““finding of fact’’ that would condemn Clinton’s behavior without removing him from office. The idea was touted by a pair of Maine Republicans, Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe. It had some common-sense appeal as a compromise. The White House hated the idea: Snowe and Collins, both moderates, couldn’t be written off as right-wing nuts. They offered the dangerous temptation of bipartisanship. An impassioned speech by Snowe had persuaded wary Republicans to join with Democrats to start off the trial with a unanimous agreement. But this resolution wouldn’t fly without at least some Democratic support. By now the Democrats were a united front in opposition to any Republican initiative.
All except Bob Byrd, that is. Byrd’s fellow senators were having trouble figuring out the aging patriarch. Having moved to dismiss the case, he was now vaguely threatening to vote to convict. ““Never underestimate Byrd’s desire to be at the center of attention,’’ said one Senate watcher in the White House. Last Friday, on the final day of the trial, Byrd was dead center. With five Republicans (all Northeastern moderates) voting to acquit, the Democrats had a shot at blocking even a simple majority to convict on both perjury and obstruction of justice. Byrd was the swing vote. In three days of closed-door deliberations, he waited until the very end to give his speech. Rambling on for 22 minutes, he accused the president of lying and committing high crimes–but didn’t say how he was going to vote. Not until a few minutes before the vote did anxious White House lawyers learn Byrd’s intentions. He would vote to acquit.
In the family quarters of the White House where he was pointedly not watching the vote, Clinton was ““hugely relieved,’’ said one of his lawyers. After five weeks and seemingly interminable speechifying, the impeachment trial was finally over. In the Senate chamber, the sergeant-of-arms escorted the House managers out the door, down the marble corridor and to the exact midpoint between the House and the Senate under the Capitol dome. As the embarrassed congressmen stepped across the border, the sergeant-of-arms gravely shook their hands. ““Thank you for coming,’’ he said. The House managers, for once, were speechless.
