Henry Hyde Has 'No Regrets'

Henry Hyde, the lead House prosecutor, says he has "no regrets" following the Senate's vote Friday to acquit President Clinton on two impeachment charges.

Hyde, R-Ill, the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, says he and his fellow managers fulfilled their oath and their duty.

The lead House prosecutor said his team had nothing to be ashamed of in defeat. He rejected any idea that the impeachment effort, which proceeded despite public opposition, tarnished the House's credibility.

"All Americans can take great comfort," Hyde said. "Congress has strengthened, not weakened the ties that bind our nation together."

While he defended the job he and the managers had done, he refused to analyze the Senate's decision. "The trial is now over with. The president has been acquitted. There will be post-mortems, but not from members of this committee and not from the House managers."

Hyde also told reporters he thought independent prosecutor Kenneth Starr would not seek an indictment against the president.

"I predict that when he (Mr. Clinton) leaves office, he won't be bothered on this," Hyde said.

Asked his own views on that, he said, "I think for the good of the country, probably forget it."

Hyde said House prosecutors "never had high expectations of winning" their case for Mr. Clinton's removal in the trial. "But there was never a choice. We had to proceed," he said, adding that he believes both charges were amply documented.

In an hour-long interview this week in the House Judiciary Committee suite of offices, Hyde said partisanship by Democrats had complicated impeachment proceedings in the House, but a desire for bipartianship by Senate Republicans hampered efforts to prosecute the case.

In the House, he said, he kept hoping some Democrats would "rise above party politics. ... It was naive thinking this could be bipartisan," he said. "This was as hardball as you can get. This is deposing a president in his sixth year and the Democrats are tenacious in refusing to let that happen."

The situation was different in the Senate, where a two-thirds vote was needed to convict. "If I have to criticize the senators, or at least the Republican senators who voted to do that, they do make bipartisanship the ultimate ethic over there. And that oftentimes in practical terms means yielding to the minority," he said.

Hyde, who is 74 and was first elected to Congress in 1974, said he expects to seek a new term in 2000, although he called the impeachment experience "a downer from A to Z."