Court: Secret Service Must Testify

A federal appeals court panel Tuesday ruled that three Secret Service employees must tell a grand jury in the Monica Lewinsky investigation what they observed while guarding the president.

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CBS News Senior White House Correspondent Scott Pelley reports that CBS News has learned the service has been hit with a sweeping new subpoena for White House records. Tuesday's court decision puts the service an important step closer to testifying before the grand jury.

After the ruling, prosecutor Ken Starr said, "We trust the secret service will now join us in helping the grand jury."

Sources tell CBS News the Secret Service has received a subpoena demanding White House records covering a ten-month period. Starr's office wants all personnel logs and activity reports which include observations that officers made on duty.

Starr also wants presidential confidant and attorney Bruce Lindsey to testify about conversations he had with both the president and Hillary Clinton about Lewinsky. The matter had been tied up on appeal in an ongoing dispute about attorney-client privilege

Tuesday's ruling is a defeat for the Secret Service and for the White House, which had argued that the agents shouldn't be forced to testify in the Lewinsky investigation. They said it could interfere with the agents' ability to do their job in protecting the president.

"The order of the District Court compelling the testimony of Secret Service officers is therefore affirmed, the three judge panel ruled, upholding an earlier ruling by U.S. District Judge Norma Holloway Johnson.

The panel rejected the Clinton administration's arguments that the Secret Service should be exempted from grand jury testimony by creating a new "protective function privilege," saying it was Congress' job to decide whether such a privilege should exist.

"We leave to the Congress the question of whether a protective function is appropriate in order to ensure the safety of the president, and, if so, what the contours of that privilege" should be, the court said.

Starr has been pressing for the testimony of two Secret Service uniformed officers and one agency lawyer even as a grand jury begins winding down its investigation. Key witness Linda Tripp testified for a third day Tuesday.

The administration must nodecide whether to appeal the ruling to the Supreme Court, which returns from summer recess in October, ask the full appeals court to hear the case or abide by the decision.

Tuesday's ruling leaves one legal battle pending in the appeals court whether presidential confidant Bruce Lindsey must testify or whether he can refuse to answer certain questions on grounds of attorney-client privilege.

With no indication of dissent, the appeals panel adopted Starr's argument that it was Congress' job, and not the courts, to create the privilege.

All three of the judges on the panel, Raymond Randolph, Stephen Williams and Douglas Ginsburg, are Republican appointees.

At a hearing last month, the three appeals judges had expressed skepticism about the administration's arguments.

"We do not think, however, that the Secret Service has shown with compelling clarity that failure to recognize the proposed privilege will jeopardize the ability of the Secret Service effectively to protect the president," the ruling said.

The administration had argued that information that Secret Service employees learned in "close proximity" to the president should not be revealed, and that to force service officers to do so would jeopardize the future safety of presidents by encouraging them to push away guardians who might be called to testify.

Starr, a former solicitor general who argued the appeals court case himself, urged the court to reject the appeals, saying prior court rulings required the court to be "cautious and reluctant in recognizing new privileges."

Starr is seeking testimony from uniformed Secret Service officers Gary Byrne and Brian Henderson and agency lawyer John Kelleher about what they or others may have learned while guarding Mr. Clinton.

During lengthy questioning by Starr's office, Byrne and Henderson refused to answer 19 questions and Kelleher refused to answer four.