A Kiss-And-Tell Investigation

Whitewater was some obscure Arkansas investigation that held little interest for most Americans when it took a sudden turn into the sensational last January.

The news took official Washington by storm: independent counsel Kenneth Starr and his office had obtained permission to widen his investigation to include accusations that President Clinton had lied under oath about a sexual affair he was having with a former White House intern. Starr also was looking into accusations that the president had encouraged the intern, Monica Lewinsky, to lie about it under oath as well.

Correspondents, in Cuba to cover a historic visit by the Pope, were jetting back to Washington to cover the scandal, and Republican congressmen began talking openly about "impeachable" offenses.

Almost immediately, a string of White House officials were subpoenaed to testify before a Washington grand jury about the president's relationship with Lewinsky. Reporters, photographers and camera crews camped out at the courthouse entrance to catch comments from the latest grand jury witness.

The news breathed new life into TV talk shows. Attorneys, administration officials and Beltway spinmeisters all were eager to expound on their views. The first lady, Hillary Rodham Clinton, suggested in a TV interview that the accusations were part of a "right-wing" conspiracy aimed at undoing the results of the last presidential election.

Except for an initial denial, the president himself remained silent. Everyone speculated he would mention it in his State of the Union address later that week; he didn't. But his silence did not prevent reporters from asking questions. At almost every official event, the president was faced with questions about Lewinsky, even during a joint news conference with British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who was on a state visit to Washington in early February.

Meanwhile, public opinion polls showed Mr. Clinton's popularity rising across the country as people made clear that the president's governance was far more important to them than his private life.

Like a blazing hearth that burns down, only to flare up again with the next gust of wind, the scandal moved off the front pages of the newspapers, returning only with major new revelations.

Early revelations concerned the source of Starr's information - Linda Tripp and her more than 16 hours of taped phone conversations. A Lewinsky coworker, Tripp once worked at the White House and was transferred, as was Lewinsky, to an office at the Pentagon.

Tripp made tapes of phone conversations in which Lewinsky allegedly spoke about her 18-month affair with Mr. Clinton and her intention to cover it up if questioned. Lewisnky also allegedly asked Tripp to keep quiet about the relationship.

An affair in itself, though sensational, isn't criminal. The crime - for both the president and Lewinsky - would be ilying about it under oath (perjury) and asking others to lie about it (suborning perjury).

The president, in an hours-long deposition he gave Jan. 17 in the Paula Jones civil suit against him, denied under oath that he had a sexual relationship with Lewinsky.

At the same time, Lewinsky provided Jones' attorneys with an affidavit in which she, too, denied such an affair.

Citing the Tripp tapes, Starr accused both of perjury. He also said he was looking into whether Mr. Clinton offered Lewinsky a New York job in exchange for her silence.

As with accusations of an affair, both the president and Lewinsky denied there was a coverup. Both did agree that the president's friend, Vernon Jordan, had helped Lewinsky get a job in New York, but they said he did so at the request of the president's secretary, Betty Currie, not the president.

Jordan had obtained interviews for Lewinsky at the U.S. ambassador to the United Nation's office and at Revlon, where Jordan is on the board of directors. Revlon offered her a public-affairs office job, an offer that was quickly rescinded when news of the investigation made international headlines.

Jordan's job-hunting help already had attracted Starr's attention. Jordan had lined up several lucrative contracting jobs for convicted Whitewater figure Webster Hubbell including one job at a Revlon subsidiary.

Starr had long alleged that the jobs were a payoff for Hubbell's failure to cooperate with the Whitewater prosecutor's investigation of President Clinton.

For his part, Jordan has denied doing anything improper. He admitted helping both Hubbell and Lewinsky but said he did so out of kindness and friendship, not as a payoff for silence about the president.

Jordan, himself a prominent Washington lawyer, also admitted he helped Lewinsky find a lawyer when she was called to testify in the Jones case.

The lawyer, Frank Carter, had a very brief run. He was replaced after the scandal broke by headline-hugging William Ginsburg, the Lewinsky family lawyer from California whose speciality until then had been medical malpractice. Ginsburg was replaced in June by Plato Cacheris and Jacob A. Stein, who share a reputation as crackerjack criminal lawyers and have had a hand in every major Washington scandal since Watergate.

Lewinsky, who faced perjury charges, was subpoenaed to testify before the grand jury. Ginsburg tried to obtain immunity from prosecution in exchange for her testimony and even believed they had reached agreement with prosecutors. Starr's team insisted there had been negotiations, but no deal.

While Lewinsky's friends, coworkers and mother testified before the grand jury, her attorney unsuccessfully went to court to enforce the agreement they had with prosecutors. A judge ruled in late spring that any assurances of immunity that Lewinsky had received from prosectors was not binding.

It was one of several court actions stemming from the investigation.

The president claimed executive privilege for two of the White House advisers subpoenaed before the jury, Sidney Blumenthal and Bruce Lindsey, but the court again ruled against him. The White House decided not to appeal the decision but in unsucessfully claimed that Lindsey, who is deputy White House counsel, was protected by attorney-client privilege.

On another front, the Justice Department and the Treasury Department went to court to prevent Secret Service agents from testifying about what they saw and heard while guarding the president. If agents were required to testify, they argued, presidents would distance themselves from their bodyguards and put themselves at peril.

That argument won backing from several former presidents, but not the court. The lower court ruling was appealed all the way to the Supreme Court, where Chief Justice William Rehnquist, in a blow to the Clinton administration, ruled in July that Secret Service agents had no special privilege.

Within hours, several agents, including the head of President Clinton's personal security contingent, were called to testify before grand jurors.

Meanwhile, President Clinton was linked to a long string of women, including Lewinsky and Kathleen Willey, another White House employee, in court papers released in connection with the Paula Jones sexual harrassment suit.

The Jones case, which gave rise to the accusations of perjury and launched the investigation into President Clinton's relationship with Monica Lewinsky, was dismissed by a federal judge in Arkansas in March. Jones is appealing.

Talk of impeachment, widespread in January when the scandal first broke, had been toned down in the face of the president's growing popularity and the public's displeasure with Starr's four-year investigation.

But the battle over executive privilege awakened dormant memories of Richard Nixon and Watergate. In several speeches to private groups, Starr drew comparisons between Watergate and his own investigation of Mr. Clinton.

Meanwhile, the House Judiciary committee, which would handle any impeachment proceedings, began beefing up its staff quietly in anticipation of a report from the Whitewater prosecutor.

No one knows yet when that report will arrive and what it will contain, but the news in late July that prosecutors had granted full immunity to Lewinsky revived flagging talk of impeachment.

Through it all, the president has doggedly gone about the business of governing. He has made trips to Africa, South America and China, held town meetings on race relations and Social Security, and prodded Congress to act on a series of bills including those that would restrict tobacco sales, increase educational funding and a create a patients' Bill of Rights.

If his troubled by the blows the courts have dealt him or the testimony of grand jury witnesses, he shows no signs of it in his public appearances. He also has not wavered in his decision to say as little as possible about Lewinsky and the investigation.