New evidence depicts Clinton, Tripp maneuvers

By John Solomon, Associated Press writer

WASHINGTON -- In a final salvo before a vote on impeachment hearings, the House yesterday released 4,600 pages of evidence that meticulously detail President Clinton's efforts to contain the Monica Lewinsky scandal as it erupted.

"It was not good," Oval Office secretary Betty Currie told the grand jury, recounting a midnight phone call she received from the president in which he warned that a news story about his relationship with Ms. Lewinsky was about to emerge.

The evidence also lays bare Pentagon worker Linda Tripp's efforts to coach Ms. Lewinsky about her relationship with Clinton -- all the while secretly recording their conversations on tapes that would be turned over to Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr.

"You have got to get out of town, big time," Mrs. Tripp is quoted as telling Ms. Lewinsky just before the former intern seeks White House help in finding a job in New York. Another time Mrs. Tripp bristles, "I hate what he (Clinton) has done to you."

The evidence depicts Clinton sending Mrs. Currie on a mad-dash effort to page and call Ms. Lewinsky late at night as the story was breaking. "Do you think you can reach Monica, see what's happening?" the president asked. He also awakened his closest confidant Bruce Lindsey, who refused to tell the grand jury what he and the president discussed that night.

Mrs. Currie eventually reached Ms. Lewinsky -- by then already approached by Starr's FBI agents -- but the former intern hung up on her. When Mrs. Currie told that to the president, Clinton said, "she probably was told by her lawyers not to talk to you."

Transcripts of the 20 hours of taped conversations depict Mrs. Tripp instructing Ms. Lewinsky on what to tell the president, intimately discussing sexual encounters, suggesting she hold out for a higher paying job and describing the former intern as a "Marilyn Monroe vixen."

The tapes show that Mrs. Tripp at first told Ms. Lewinsky to seek the help of presidential friend Vernon Jordan in her job search, then warned about his motives. "Vernon Jordan does not have your best interests at heart and you know it. ... He has his buddy's best interest at heart," Mrs. Tripp warned. Frequently, though, Ms. Tripp warns Ms. Lewinsky against lying.

The documents cast Mrs. Tripp as Starr's eager informant. In all, she was interviewed at his offices 23 times between February and June, and testified before the grand jury nine times.

In one interview with Starr's investigators, she delivered up names of dozens of people -- some that she could identify only phonetically -- who knew something about the Clinton-Lewinsky relationship. These included White House steward Bayani Nelvis, who would later tell the grand jury of his own friendship with Ms. Lewinsky.

The evidence, three bound volumes of grand jury transcripts and FBI interviews, discloses the exact words of dozens of grand jury witnesses summoned during Starr's seven-month investigation. Drawing on their testimony and other evidence, the independent counsel reported to Congress that there were 11 possible grounds for impeachment of the president.

White House adviser Gregory Craig immediately decried Starr's "failure to include or discuss evidence favorable to the president" in his summary report to Congress and accused the prosecutor of "evidentiary manipulation and misdirection."

Starr fired back, calling Craig's statement "disingenuous" and pointing out instances where exclupatory information was included in his report. Starr added that he found it significant that the White House had not challenged the "credibility, or the factual underpinnings of nine of the eleven grounds for impeachment, including the president's perjury in his deposition and before the grand jury."

The conversations with Mrs. Currie were among a series of contacts by Clinton that portray the president's worry upon learning in January that Starr had begun investigating his relationship with Ms. Lewinsky and the possibility he lied under oath and obstructed justice.

The transcripts suggest that Mrs. Currie was precise in her recall of key events when she first was interviewed by FBI agents Jan. 24, but in later grand jury testimony became more uncertain. At one point in a grand jury appearance, Mrs. Currie was repeatedly pressed by prosecutors to confirm that Ms. Lewinsky had told her, "As long as no one saw us -- and no one did -- then nothing happened."

Without answering, Mrs. Currie asked if she could step outside for a moment and the jury's foreperson told her, "You are reminded you are under oath."

When Mrs. Currie returned, she said, "My memory is a little better -- but not much." She continued, "If that was said, I would have said 'Stop, stop I don't want to hear anymore.' " As the questioning continued, Mrs. Currie said flatly, "I believe Ms. Lewinsky said that."

Clinton is quoted as telling onetime political adviser Dick Morris in the first 24 hours of the controversy: "I may have done enough so that I don't know if I can prove my innocence."

Chief of Staff Erskine Bowles, himself enlisted by the president in an effort to find Ms. Lewinsky a job, told grand jurors that when he learned a Lewinsky story was about to be published he lamented to himself, "Oh, God ... here we go again."

Jordan testified that he talked to Clinton several times about Ms. Lewinsky, apprising the president of progress on finding her a job and alerting him when she signed an affidavit in the Paula Jones lawsuit denying she had a sexual relationship with the president.

He said Ms. Lewinsky usually came up as a passing topic. "I felt some responsibility to tell him what was going on. So I did that," Jordan testified.

Democrats pointed to testimony by Mrs. Currie that it was Ms. Lewinsky – and not the president – who caused subpoenaed gifts to be retrieved and hidden under Mrs. Currie's bed and that it was Mrs. Currie, not the president, who first asked Jordan to help find a job for Ms. Lewinsky.