By: Mary Mostert, Analyst, Original Sources
October 6, 1998
On February 6, 1974 the House of Representatives authorized the House Judiciary Committee to investigate whether grounds exist for impeachment of President Nixon. Five months later, the House Judiciary Committee adopted three articles of impeachment: I - obstruction of investigation of Watergate break-in; II misuse of powers and violation of his oath of office and III failure to comply with House subpoenas.
Yesterday, October 5, 1998, the House Judiciary Committee, the House Judiciary Committee voted for an impeachment inquiry that will consider at least fifteen potentially impeachable offenses, as outlined by David Schippers, Chief investigative counsel for the House Judiciary Committee. Schippers said the fifteen counts included:
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Clinton may have conspired with Lewinsky to obstruct justice by providing false and misleading testimony under oath in a civil deposition and before the grand jury.
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Clinton may have ``aided, abetted, counseled and
procured Monica Lewinsky'' to file a false affidavit and to
obstruct justice in the Paula Jones sexual harassment case.
Lewinsky filed an affidavit in the Jones case saying she did not
have sexual relations with Clinton.
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Clinton may have taken affirmative steps to conceal those felonies and failed to disclose them as required, an offense termed ``misprision.''
Schippers added several counts to the Eleven charges Starr outlined, while deleting Starr's counts alleging Clinton abused his office by invoking privilege claims to withhold testimony and refusing to appear voluntarily before the grand jury.
The public's view of Clinton versus Nixon is, of course, largely colored by the differences in the manner in which the networks and leading opinion makers view the two presidents. As Paul Craig Roberts of Creative Syndicate noted in May of this year, in commenting on the Clinton promise back in 1992 to be the "most ethical" administration in American history, "Can an administration that has so much to hide -- and pulls out all stops to hide it -- be ethical? President Bill Clinton has invoked executive privilege, attorney-client privilege or privilege of one kind or another more than any other president -- indeed, perhaps more than all U.S. presidents combined. He has claimed executive privilege in two court cases and in four investigations by committees of Congress. And that was before the affair Lewinsky. He doesn't want his advisers to talk. He doesn't want the Secret Service to talk. He won't talk. His lawyers even claim attorney-client privilege for the notes of a dead man, Vincent Foster."
The Obstruction of Justice accusation against Richard Nixon involved, for example, the tapes of conversations in the Oval Office with his aides - on issues that could certainly have included national security or foreign governments that would be unwise, in the midst of the Cold Are, to divulge. In fact, I thought the Supreme Court, for those reasons, probably would support Nixon. It didn't. Clinton's efforts to block the release of those tapes was the primary basis for the "obstruction of justice" Article of Impeachment.
For the past four years, the Clinton White House has refused to obey subpoenas from Congressional Committees. Remember the subpoena, I believe from Sen. D'Amato's Committee, requesting billing records from Hillary Clinton - that were never produced until they mysteriously showed up in the private residence portion of the White House, in an area generally used by Hillary Clinton?
Stonewalling to avoid complying with subpoenas from Congress or the Independent counsel has occupied the time of a seemingly endless group of people in the White House in the last four years. In 1995, Susan Schmidt wrote in the Washington Post "The White House offered Friday night to drop most of the conditions it set on turning over disputed Whitewater documents to the Senate, including its insistence that the meeting in which the notes were taken was protected by President Clinton's attorney-client privilege.
"The proposal was made hours after the Senate Whitewater Committee voted to ask the full Senate to go to court to enforce a subpoena for the notes taken by a former White House lawyer at a confidential 1993 meeting. The compromise proposed by the White House was an effort to head off what could be a protracted and politically costly court battle. Senate Republicans were trying to portray the records dispute as White House "stonewalling" reminiscent of President Richard M. Nixon's refusal to turn over material under a claim of executive privilege during the Watergate scandal.
"The Clinton White House said in a statement that it will attempt in the next few days to work out its own arrangement with Whitewater independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr to ensure that turning over the notes would not open up to investigative scrutiny all conversations about Whitewater between the Clintons and their personal lawyers. It remained unclear whether Starr, who is investigating how confidential law enforcement information was used by the White House, would agree to the proposal."
"Earlier, the White House insisted that it would not turn over the notes unless the Senate secured such an agreement with the independent counsel, as well as with other congressional committees and federal banking agencies."
Even in California, among the political left, some of Clinton's excuses are getting old. The San Francisco Chronicle reported yesterday the Clinton's support is slipping , which bodes ill for the campaigns of Gray Davis, the Democratic candidate for Governor and for the re-election campaign of Barbara Boxer, who was hand picked and largely financed by retiring Senator Alan Cranston in 1992. As the stock market falls, and job lay-offs, such as the 23,000 lay-offs planned by Boeing Aircraft in Washington, State, the much repeated "As long as the economy is good, Clinton is doing a good job as president" will no longer work even for Clinton supporters.
Democrats, many of whom are already edgy, are very apt to abandon Bill Clinton if there is a third debacle at the polls which strengthens the Republican majority. A recent announcement from the White House that it planned to spent $3 to $5 million on ads to bolster Clinton's poll figures - which are reported as high as 65% approval rating for the job he is doing as president, sparked a mini-revolt in Democratic ranks. Gloria Borger reported in U.S. News and World Report that "Ballistic members (of the House) who want the money for their endangered districts" deluged the White House with angry phone calls.
A quick look at the actual history of Watergate, not the convenient myths being bandied about at the White House, would give the Clintons cause for real concern. Increasingly, the self righteous pronouncements of 1974 by people like Bill Clinton and Hillary Rodham seem to be coming back to haunt them.
mmostert@originalsources.com