Panel Approves 3 Impeachment Counts; Clinton Offers Apology

WASHINGTON —  Taking a momentous step toward the possible removal of President Clinton from office, the House Judiciary Committee approved three articles of impeachment Friday accusing the nation’s chief executive of lying under oath and obstructing justice as he sought to conceal his extramarital affair with Monica S. Lewinsky.

The first vote--with all 21 Republicans in favor and all 16 Democrats opposed--came just minutes after a somber Clinton appeared in the White House Rose Garden to offer an eleventh-hour apology aimed at salvaging his scandal-plagued presidency.

On the second perjury charge, one GOP lawmaker broke the partisan divide and voted no. The third article, on obstruction of justice, again divided the panel by party.

“This vote says something about us,” committee Chairman Henry J. Hyde (R-Ill.) declared before the first count.

“It answers the question, just who are we and what do we stand for? Is the president one of us, or is he a sovereign? We vote for our honor, which is the only thing we get to take with us to the grave.”

The vote represents just the third time in history that a presidential impeachment case has gone so far. President Nixon resigned before the House could act on the committee’s impeachment vote in 1974. In 1868, Andrew Johnson was impeached by the House but acquitted in the Senate by a single vote.

Hyde’s committee--which today will consider its fourth impeachment article, this one charging the president with abuse of power--found that Clinton “willfully provided perjurious, false and misleading testimony” both before a grand jury convened by independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr and, earlier, in his deposition in the Paula Corbin Jones sexual harassment lawsuit.

Clinton also, according to the articles, sought to “delay, impede, cover up and conceal” the existence of his relationship with Lewinsky, which at the time was considered legitimate evidence in the Jones case.

The conclusion of the committee’s inquiry marks the most decisive moment so far in a turbulent case--one most Americans are tired of, polls show--that has mushroomed from a furtive sexual affair between the nation’s top elected official and a White House intern into the weightiest of constitutional matters.

The crisis has hovered over official Washington since January when Starr, tipped off about the affair and a possible presidential cover-up, won authorization to broaden his years-long inquiry, which originally had focused on the president’s role in the Whitewater real estate deal before his election to office.

A scandal long known more for its dramatic and titillating elements--secret tape-recordings, an FBI sting, White House appeals to the Supreme Court, months of grand jury testimony and the public release of a sexually explicit investigative report--has now become a matter of historic consequence.

As the first roll was called at 4:25 p.m. EST, Friday, committee members, one by one, declared their votes for and against Clinton’s removal. All argument stopped, and a somber silence filled the ornate hearing room, the very chamber where Watergate was debated a quarter-century earlier.

“I felt, as I was actually voting, more emotion than I’ve ever felt as a member of Congress,” said Rep. Steve Chabot (R-Ohio). “It’s very serious business, and, despite my decision, I felt very sad doing it.”

Said Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Los Angeles): “Let history record that I have fought against the impeachment of the president of the United States in every way I know how.”

Vote on Nixon Brought Tears

All the same, the contrast between Friday’s party-line head count and the dramatic Watergate vote was significant.

In 1974, the vote on the first article of impeachment against Nixon attracted the support of not only all 21 of the committee’s Democrats but six of its 17 Republicans. During that solemn vote, several Democrats, who voted first, diverted their moist eyes from the cameras.

As he cast the decisive 20th vote for impeachment, Democrat Edward Mezvinsky of Iowa blinked away tears.

Today’s committee will consider the final article against Clinton this morning, setting the stage for consideration by the full House during a special session Thursday.

Although public opinion polls show that two-thirds of Americans oppose impeachment, the count in the House will be a nail biter, hinging on a handful of GOP moderates who have yet to declare their intentions. Despite the drama there, it remains unlikely that the Senate will muster the two-thirds majority required to convict Clinton and remove him from office.

Democrats are pushing for the opportunity to vote on a lesser punishment, a censure resolution, which Clinton himself endorsed Friday, that would strongly condemn the president’s behavior but stop short of accusing him of crimes.

Hyde will allow a vote on censure in committee today but the prospects for that alternative, which strategists in both parties believe could lead centrist Republicans away from impeachment, are murkier in the full House.

White House spokesman Joe Lockhart said Friday that the president wanted to personally speak to the concerns of House members who still have open minds before he leaves today for a four-day trip to the Middle East. “We’ve gotten positive feedback from members,” Lockhart said, but refused to specify from whom.

Republican Votes With Democrats

The perjury allegations approved by the committee Friday find that Clinton spread deliberate falsehoods in describing the nature and details of his relationship with Lewinsky and his efforts to keep it under wraps. Article 1 centered on Clinton’s Aug. 17 grand jury appearance. Article 2 concerned his statements to Jones’ lawyers on Jan. 17.

“The president lied before a grand jury. He lied at a deposition when he was under oath. He waved his finger at the American people and lied to them,” Chabot said. “He lied to his staff. He lied to his Cabinet. He lied so many times in so many forums it’s really hard to keep track of it all.”

The obstruction of justice charge accuses Clinton of encouraging Lewinsky to lie about the relationship in a Jones case affidavit, helping to hide his gifts to her, intensifying efforts to get her an out-of-town job and making false statements to potential witnesses in the case.

“The obstruction case is the only one that has a side to it like Watergate,” said Rep. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.), who voted against one of the two perjury charges because he said he chose to give Clinton the benefit of the doubt.

Democrats, attempting to highlight the sexual nature of the case, pressed the GOP majority to include specific examples of Clinton’s false statements in the articles.

“We need the exact words or otherwise we can’t talk intelligently,” argued Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.).

The resulting argument prompted Hyde to begin reading awkwardly from court documents, uttering the words “oral sex,” “breasts” and “genitalia” as he sought to show Clinton’s misstatements about his relationship.

“There’s so much here that I don’t care to read,” Hyde eventually said, cutting himself short in mid-passage.

The sexual nature of the case has complicated the investigation throughout, prompting the committee to go through Starr’s report laying out the case for impeachment line by line to excise some explicit details. Hyde and other Republicans also found their own marital infidelities made public during the process.

“Perjury is not sex,” Hyde said in advance of the vote. “Obstruction is not sex. Abuse of power is not about sex. . . . The president is not accused of marital infidelity.”

But Democrats saw the matter through a very different lens.

“We cannot escape the fact that the president’s misconduct related to his private life,” said Rep. Thomas M. Barrett (D-Wis.), who joined the committee just months ago. “It was not a grave and dangerous offense against the state. It does not threaten our republic and we need not remove him to protect our democracy.”

Decisions Called Difficult to Make

Lawmakers marked the importance of the moment with a series of fiery, pained, contemplative and somber statements that began Thursday afternoon and continued Friday morning.

Although the outcome of the committee vote was widely anticipated, lawmakers portrayed their decision as difficult to reach.

Rep. Howard L. Berman (D-Mission Hills) said that he anguished over whether he would oppose impeachment if the accused president were a Republican and Democrats were running the process. “I pray my decision would be the same, regardless of party, regardless of political position,” he said.

Rep. Edward A. Pease (R-Ind.) said that he prayed before making his final decision for impeachment. Still, he said, he found some problems with his own party’s case.

“Having reviewed and reviewed the material, I do not believe that all of the allegations presented meet the standard of being proven by ‘clear and convincing evidence,’ ” Pease said. “The final assessment of which meet what I believe to be the necessary higher standard of proof will depend in part on the form the articles take after the committee completes the amendment process.”

Rep. Mary Bono (R-Palm Springs), in her first year in Congress, called on Clinton to resign to save the country from the turmoil to come.

“I know that the president is a very likable man . . . but the issue we are facing here is at the very core of our constitutional system,” she said. “Although people may like this president, I hope they love our country more.”

Graham, meanwhile, repeated his call for Clinton to admit criminal wrongdoing, a step that he suggested might be enough to sway him away from impeachment.

“If this is a vote of conscience, and I believe it is, it’s going to come down to a Republican conscience and a Democratic conscience,” Graham concluded. “I would not suggest one is better than the other. . . . Only time will tell who got it right.”

Times on the Web: You can easily let your congressional representatives know your views of the impeachment proceedings through a service provided by The Times’ Web site: http://161.35.110.226/scandal

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* PARTISAN DEBATE: Democrats complain of lack of specifics. A30

* TEXT OF CLINTON STATEMENT: A27