Facing the most serious charges ever leveled against him, President Clinton denied Wednesday that he had an affair with a 21-year-old White House intern or asked her to lie about it under oath.
“There wasn’t improper relations; I didn’t ask anybody to lie,” Clinton told National Public Radio. He also said he was “furious” with the charges but would fully cooperate with any investigation.
His multimedia defense included interviews with PBS and the Capitol Hill newspaper Roll Call. “The relationship was not sexual,” he told the newspaper.
While the White House reeled under the latest allegations, sources confirmed that independent counsel Kenneth Starr, already investigating Clinton for the Whitewater land transactions, received permission from a three-judge panel to investigate whether Clinton, 51, had an affair with Monica Lewinsky, now 24, when she was an unpaid intern at the White House in 1995.
Starr will concentrate, however, on whether Clinton and his longtime friend Vernon Jordan urged Lewinsky to lie about the relationship to lawyers for Paula Jones, who is suing Clinton for sexual harassment.
Jordan recently helped Lewinsky get a job at the New York firm of MacAndrews & Forbes, which is affiliated with Revlon, where Jordan is on the board. The firm announced Wednesday that, while it had offered her a job after an interview this month, it was suspending that offer.
Jones’ lawyers are seeking to discover if Clinton has exhibited a pattern of behavior over the years of making sexual advances to women, especially those who work for him.
Asked about the allegations after giving a speech in Baltimore, First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton said: “Certainly I believe they’re false. Absolutely.”
While the president has been accused of having had affairs in the past, and admitted in 1992 to having caused “pain” in his marriage, this is the first time Clinton has been accused of an extramarital relationship while president.
More seriously, however, if Clinton is found to have urged Lewinsky to lie, he could face prosecution for suborning perjury and obstruction of justice, which could trigger a constitutional crisis and potentially lead to his impeachment.
Though many legal experts agree a president cannot be indicted without first being impeached and removed from office, the issue never has been settled in court. As the story broke, the drumbeat for impeachment already was being sounded by Republicans on Capitol Hill.
“There will be great pressure to impeach the man,” said Rep. Henry Hyde (R-Ill.), chairman of the House Judiciary Committee. He indicated he would follow the desires of House Republicans. “But I would try to persuade my colleagues that, if you strike . . . you’d better have the elements of a successful impeachment.”
Hyde pointed out that, since conviction on articles of impeachment requires a two-thirds vote of the Senate, Democrats would have to turn against Clinton before that would be possible.
The White House was expected to do its utmost in the days ahead to make sure Democrats remain loyal to the president.
The Washington Post reported Thursday that Linda Tripp, Lewinsky’s friend and a former White House aide, made at least 10 audio tapes of conversations with Lewinsky in which Lewinsky provides graphic details of an 18-month affair with Clinton. Lewinsky also allegedly states that Clinton and Jordan urged her to lie to Jones’ lawyers, the Post reported.
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Newsweek reported late Wednesday that, having listened to one 90-minute tape, there was no clear evidence on that recording that Jordan or Clinton had asked Lewinsky to perjure herself.
Jordan, a prominent Washington attorney and golfing partner of Clinton, first came under Starr’s scrutiny for helping convicted Clinton crony Webster Hubbell get large consulting fees while he was being investigated for fraud.
Starr was trying to determine if the fees to Hubbell constituted “hush” money so that Hubbell would not provide evidence against Clinton in the Whitewater investigation.
Lewinsky signed a sworn statement last week that she had never had a sexual relationship with Clinton. Her attorney, William Ginsburg of Los Angeles, noted to reporters that she signed the statement before he agreed to represent her.
“I can’t tell you what’s true and what’s not true,” he said. “She signed the declaration and stands on it at this time. . . . But I’m smart enough after 30 years as a trial lawyer to know that there’s always a surprise around the corner.”
Lewinsky is scheduled to be questioned by Jones’ lawyers Friday. Lewinsky, who lives in Washington but is no longer working for the government, grew up in California, attending Beverly Hills High School and Bel Air Prep. She attended Lewis & Clark College in Oregon, graduating in 1995 after earning a bachelor of science degree in psychology. Immediately after graduating, she obtained a much-sought-after job as a White House intern.
It was when Lewinsky left the White House in April 1996 for a job in the public affairs department at the Pentagon that she met Tripp, who originally had worked in the Bush White House.
Last year, Newsweek reported that while Tripp had been an executive assistant in the office of Clinton’s White House counsel, she ran into Kathleen Willey, another White House employee, emerging from the Oval Office in a “disheveled” state. Willey said Clinton had kissed and fondled her, according to Tripp.
It was after Clinton attorney Robert Bennett questioned Tripp’s credibility that Tripp began taping her conversations with Lewinsky.
Sources reported Wednesday that Lewinsky was a frequent visitor to the Oval Office after she left her White House job. The White House would not disclose potentially relevant visitor records Wednesday.
“She feels very put upon, ravaged, a victim,” Ginsburg told CNN. “If, in fact, a sexual relationship occurred between her and the president, the president is a misogynist. If they are not true, why is the independent counsel ravaging the life of a 24-year-old girl?”
An atmosphere close to shell shock prevailed among some White House aides. While the president and first lady have dismissed prior allegations against them as being politically motivated, presidential spokesman Mike McCurry admitted he was unable to characterize the new allegations that way.
“We have no information available to suggest what motive may have arisen for these outrageous allegations,” McCurry said.
Aides to Clinton have grown used to the president being accused of impropriety.
In 1992, Gennifer Flowers claimed she had a 12-year affair with Clinton, but because she sold her story to a supermarket tabloid, Clinton supporters generally dismissed it as “cash for trash.”
The Washington Post reported Thursday that Clinton, in a six-hour deposition Saturday in the Jones case, conceded for the first time that he had the affair with Flowers in the 1970s.
In 1994, Jones filed a civil lawsuit accusing Clinton of groping her, exposing himself and asking for a sex act. In 1996, former FBI agent Gary Aldrich wrote a book containing unsubstantiated rumors that Clinton used to sneak out of the White House to have trysts in a nearby hotel.
But this latest round seemed to catch aides by surprise. Even Clinton loyalist and former aide George Stephanopoulos took to the airwaves to bemoan its gravity. “These are probably the most serious allegations leveled against the president,” he said. “If true, they’re not only politically damaging but it could lead to impeachment proceedings.”
One other former aide, however, was unable to restrain his anger over Starr’s new investigation. Chicagoan Abner Mikva, a former White House counsel for Clinton and a former congressman, said: “I know nothing about the facts, but I think Judge Starr is sick. What does this have to do with affairs of state? I think he has really lost it, and I am shocked.”
From one perspective, the allegations could not have come at a better time for a White House intent on deflecting attention from the predicament. Clinton spent Tuesday night negotiating with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and was to welcome Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat Thursday. And he is preparing to deliver his State of the Union address Tuesday and must deal with the ongoing crisis in Iraq.
Not everyone saw only the gloomy side of the story. Asked for comment about the allegations, Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley said Wednesday, “I had nothing to do with it.”