Sometimes Perjury Is Just Perjury

When news first circulated in Washington that President Clinton may have had an affair with Monica Lewinsky, Mr. Clinton believed he had not committed a crime, says former White House adviser Dick Morris.

"He said to me, 'I didn't do what they said I did, but I did do some things, and I don't know that I can prove my innocence'," Morris recalls. "His state of mind on that day, which was the morning that the scandal broke, January 21, was not that he was covering up a crime."

While the president acknowledged that he had done something embarrassing, Morris says he felt he had not committed perjury and "didn't feel that he could tell the country about it to make that distinction."

At the time, Morris took a poll and told the president that people would forgive him for adultery. He also told him it would take a while for the public to forgive him for "the rest of it."

President Clinton staunchly denied the affair in a deposition to independent counsel Kenneth Starr on the Paula Jones sexual harassment case against him.

Some eight months later, Mr. Clinton admitted to having an "inappropriate" relationship with former White House intern Lewinsky.

Morris, now a commentator for Fox News, has new, unsolicited advice for the president.

"Shut his lawyers up," Morris says. "He's doing a fine job, it seems to me, of gradually coming to understand the nature of what he did wrong."

"When his lawyers say sex isn't sex or being alone isn't being alone or force is necessary to meet the definition in the [Paula Jones] deposition, that's ridiculous. And the country feels it's in the same category as when he said, 'I didn't inhale'," Morris added.

Morris agrees with the latest urgings of House Democrats and Republicans that the president stop dissecting the perjury charges with legalese and admit that he changed his story.

"He has detectives to besmirch women who talk, he has spinners to make sure nobody thinks ill of him. He has lawyers to parse hairs. He needs to sweep them aside and understand he is not 17 years old, grow out of it, and let the country see the progress."

Greg Garrison

"Is the case strong for perjury? Overall, I would say yes," Garrison says. "In terms of the weight to be given, there are physical evidences to support it, inconsistent statements made by the president that make it appropriate to move ahead."

"All the lies on camera don't count, but the one under oath oes. That makes this an act of perjury, the admission of a legal lie under oath with an attempt to deceive," Garrison says.

Whatever Mr. Clinton's next step is, most political observers agree that there is enough evidence to acquit the president, if Congress decides to move toward impeachment.

"They want him to do what the people want him to do," Morris says. "He has to go over the heads of the lawyers, the Congress, and say to the people, 'Look, I screwed up and I'm trying to fix it. I apologize to the women whose reputations I besmirched. I apologize to you for wasting a year of your time'."