Clinton impeachment hearing - 11 December 1998

I took a vow, I now see it was so long as three months ago, not to talk about the President and Miss Monica Lewinsky, what I called Topic A, until it was resolved

Well, it has not been resolved, but with the meeting of the House Judiciary Committee to adopt or reject articles of impeachment, it has reached a crucial stage where the path ahead points clearly to the end of the journey and we have a pretty good idea what that will be.

Meanwhile, Topic A, as you guessed, is the one that excited the country, then obsessed it, then bored it, then stupefied it, for seven months, ever since one fleeting moment which was in fact so vivid that it never did flee, but remained, branded on our memory. It was that moment in January when President Clinton appeared on television, sombre and red-eyed and wagged a rigid finger at us and said "I did not have sexual relations with Monica Lewinsky".

We've been saying ever since, if only he'd said then that, "Yes, I did and I'm deeply penitent", many people believe that the whole stately but turtle-paced march towards an impeachment of the president would have been arrested and abandoned. But he did deny and what was worse, when he came to testify before a Grand Jury, he many times denied that he'd had sexual relations. In the plain face of Miss Lewinsky's detailed relation of at least eight instances, of, shall we say, sexual relations, and in the White House.

It was his denial about lying before the Grand Jury that has caused Mr Clinton all his, and our, woe and loss of Eden. It is the first count of the special prosecutor's report and it is the first of four articles of impeachment that the Republican majority on the House Judiciary Committee drafted and published last Wednesday evening. It is the crime of perjury. That first article calls for his impeachment for "providing perjurious, false and misleading testimony to the Grand Jury". Now the denials of sex with Miss Lewinsky are by no means the only lies Mr Clinton is charged with.

Most glaringly, and a puzzle to most onlookers, sympathetic or not, is his saying that he'd never been in a room alone with Miss Lewinsky. The committee's Republican lawyer names 50-odd times. Much else "not remembering", he claimed: the many presents he'd given her while his secretary had been sent to Miss Lewinsky to collect them, to get them back. So, first of all, he lied under oath, many times and he had committed perjury. That was the first article of impeachment that ousted Richard Nixon. It is the first article of the four filed last Wednesday, as a ground for impeachment, and let's get to the big obstacle that has been examined and argued over but never yet hurdled in over 200 years. What are the grounds?

The Constitution says that a president may be subject to impeachment for bribery, treason or other high crimes and misdemeanours. When that phrase was first written, by the men debating and making the Constitution, even then, they argued for days about what should constitute high crimes and misdemeanours. James Madison, whose genius most conspicuously over all the founders, was the genius of common sense, warned them then, 1787, that they must be very sure to know and define high crimes and misdemeanours and it must be a high standard of crime and a very serious lesser crime.

Otherwise, he said, (I've not heard anybody quote him throughout this whole brouhaha), otherwise a president might be impeached for an unpopular policy or a political grievance. In fact, he said, if any simple misdemeanour at hand could be used, or just strong dislike of the president, then "the president would sit merely at the pleasure of the Senate". Of course, as you might guess, quite a few of the Democrats on the Judiciary Committee are implying, without quite saying it out loud, that some Republicans on the committee are motivated by simple hatred of the president, or malicious intent. This is a dubious tactic to play at this late day.

So, today, as in 1787, no body of politicians has ever agreed on what constitute high crimes and misdemeanours. But then consider the Supreme Court, the nine members, they very rarely reach a unanimous ruling on the one question that's always before them – what is constitutional? In fact, what is the Constitution? A famous justice, 70 years ago, said rightly, "The Constitution is what the court says it is", and only the other month, former President Gerald Ford rightly said, "High crimes and misdemeanours are what the House Judiciary Committee say they are".

And when, as now, the majority, 23 to 17, of the committee are Republicans, then high crimes and misdemeanours are going to be what the Republican majority says they are, and that majority today says that lying about sexual relations, about claiming to be alone, about presents, about tampering with witnesses, about covering up a felony, are sufficiently grave to justify articles of impeachment.

Before, however, the committee majority filed and published those four articles, the president's chief lawyer managed, for the first time, to suggest a thinly plausible reason why Mr Clinton denied sexual relations. When Mr Clinton was asked to define the phrase before the Grand Jury, again when he was asked 81 related questions in writing by the chairman of this committee, he still played his legal hair-splitting game, semantically weaving and dodging around the English language.

Mr Charles Ruff, his chief lawyer, who was very impressive in the president's defence on Tuesday, yet came up against the awkward, unscalable hurdle which common sense leapt over months ago. He said what the president might have said in the beginning: Miss Lewinsky made a sexual approach which he willingly accepted, but they never had sexual intercourse.

Mr Ruff had the tough job before 20-odd sitting and wide-awake Republicans, of saying that the president truly believes that sexual relations means, at all times, nothing but actual intercourse. It was news to him that it could cover anything else. Well, as a young Southern Congressman said, to believe that the president wasn't consciously lying about the sexual goings-on, you have to check common sense and human experience at the door before you come in. Many seconding nods. Mr Ruff could but sigh and shrug.

At the end of the second day of the Judiciary Committee's debate, several trustworthy reporters tapped their sources and came up with the word that, among the Republicans on the committee, there were about a dozen who were wobbling, possibly ready to vote against impeachment. But they were now saying they were wretchedly disappointed with the president's continuing legal acrobatics in his 81 answers, but if only he could come once more before the people of the United States and say, "Yes, yes, I did lie, I beg everybody's forgiveness for that perjury", they believe they would forgive him and be ready to vote against impeachment and accept instead a resolution of censure, which the Democrats on the committee have hopefully offered as an alternative punishment.

However this is, as I speak, the way things seem to be going. If the majority, the Republicans, prevail and vote even one article of impeachment, then it will go to the floor of the House next week for a majority vote. The Republicans have a comfortable enough majority to pass it, which would then mean it goes over to the Senate, which would sit as a trial court, 100 members as a jury, with the Chief Justice of the United States presiding.

Now, the other day an eminent scholar, who testified before the committee introduced a monkey wrench, a spanner, into the works, He says that when a Congress dies, as this one will before the end of the month, all pending business, bills, resolutions, die with it and that this whole business would have to reinvented by the new, incoming Congress, which meets on 6 January. Start all over again. Another scholar, in fact several other scholars, warmly deny this theory and some people, Democrats especially, are breathless to know if it's true.

The committee seemed not greatly moved by this fire bell and it's not hard to figure out why. Mr Ruff, the president's lawyer, painted a gruesome picture of the Senate trial. The Senate paralysed as a jury there, unable to work, to do any government business, the Chief Justice having also to suspend the court, the governance of the country coming to a halt, maybe through most of 1999.

This, too, did not terrify the Republicans and later, in private, the Senate majority leader of the Republicans was asked how long the Senate trial could last. He said, three days or three weeks. That was not a glib answer. It was made in the knowledge that if the House votes the articles, if they are passed over to the Senate, the Republicans could see to it that the trial was extremely brief. They could accept all the previous work of the previous Congress by a resolution.

Now, guilt or acquittal is decided by a two-thirds majority. There are 55 Republicans and 45 Democrats. All the Democrats need for acquittal is 34 votes, so they have 11 more party members who are extremely unlikely to defect.

In other words, if there's one thing certain in this huge history of uncertainties, it is that if there is an impeachment trial, the president will be acquitted and many of those hot debating Republicans today will be well satisfied. They believe the fact of the trial, the filed articles, the appalling historical record, will be punishment enough.

THIS TRANSCRIPT WAS TYPED FROM A RECORDING OF THE ORIGINAL BBC BROADCAST (© BBC) AND NOT COPIED FROM AN ORIGINAL SCRIPT. BECAUSE OF THE RISK OF MISHEARING, THE BBC CANNOT VOUCH FOR ITS COMPLETE ACCURACY.

Letter from America audio recordings of broadcasts ©BBC. Letter from America scripts © Cooke Americas, RLLP. All rights reserved.