WASHINGTON -- The White House will call 14 witnesses and use two lawyers to mount a defense that removing President Clinton from office is too severe a penalty. The presentation will challenge the impeachment evidence without attacking the prosecutor who gathered it, officials said.
The White House sent a letter informing the House Judiciary Committee that presidential lawyer Greg Craig will open the presentation Tuesday and "describe -- briefly and generally -- the president's legal and factual defense" followed by three panels of witnesses.White House counsel Charles F.C. Ruff will make closing arguments Wednesday afternoon.
Among the witnesses are three former members of the House Judiciary Committee that voted to impeach President Nixon a quarter-century ago: the Rev. Robert Drinan, a Roman Catholic priest and former Massachusetts Democrat; Elizabeth Holtzman, D-N.Y.; and Wayne Owens, D-Utah.
The panel was carefully chosen by presidential aides hoping to use former lawmakers to lobby current committee members that impeachment is too severe a penalty for Clinton's transgressions in the Monica Lewinsky affair and that there isn't evidence that Clinton abused his presidential powers.
The three will comprise the second panel called to testify Tuesday afternoon. They will be preceded by four legal experts who will discuss the "historical precedents and constitutional standards" for impeachment.
Reached for comment Monday, Owens said, "I don't know yet what I will be saying tomorrow. Obviously, I don't see any abuse of presidential powers in any sense that rise to the level of impeachability." Owens said he has been counseling with the White House at its invitation over the past month because of his experience in the 1974 impeachment hearings.
"It's pretty clear what the facts are in this case. But as offensive and reprehensible as they are, the fact the president did not abuse his power as president" but engaged in personal misconduct, "means in my view that these are not the high crimes and misdemeanors intended for impeachment."
A third panel of witnesses Tuesday will discuss evaluating the evidence gathered by Starr, contrasting it to the process used in Watergate. Former Watergate prosecutor Richard Ben-Veniste will join Washington attorney James Hamilton on that panel. Hamilton represented White House lawyer Vincent Foster before his 1993 suicide.
The last witnesses called Wednesday will be five former federal prosecutors, including former Treasury Department chief of enforcement Ronald Noble, to discuss prosecutorial standards for obstruction of justice and perjury. Another former Watergate prosecutor, Richard Davis, will answer questions on that panel.
The Judiciary Committee has prepared two rough drafts of a resolution listing three articles of impeachment against Clinton --perjury, obstruction of justice and abuse of power -- and each charge is accompanied by a list of dates and accusations against Clinton, a Republican official said Sunday.
Republicans were meeting Monday to begin finalizing their early drafts -- there are at least two competing versions -- and to weigh the benefits of splitting the perjury charge into two articles, one related to Clinton's statements in the Paula Jones case and the other related to his Aug. 17 grand jury testimony in the Lewinsky matter. If that happens, there could be as many as four articles of impeachment.
The official, insisting on anonymity, cautioned that these were early drafts that could change over the next few days.
The first article in the drafts charges Clinton with perjury, the official said. It accuses him of signing an affidavit swearing to tell the truth, and then lying about whether he had had a sexual relationship with a federal employee. The first article also accuses the president of making false statements under oath on Jan. 17, in his deposition in the Jones sexual misconduct case, and of giving false testimony before the grand jury on Aug. 17.
In the second article of impeachment, which accuses Clinton of obstructing justice, the committee staff has laid out eight examples that they believe bolster the accusation, according to two preliminary versions of the resolution. On Dec. 17, the article charges, Clinton encouraged Lewinsky, who was not named in the draft, to lie in a sworn affidavit and to give false testimony in an affidavit, the official said.
Clinton is also accused of seeking to influence the testimony of another witness one month later by "relating a false account of events" and then repeating the story to several subordinates, knowing that they were witnesses in the case, according to the draft.
The articles also charge that Clinton tried to help Lewinsky get a job and that he engaged in a plan to hide evidence. Clinton has been accused in the past of trying to conceal several gifts he had given Lewinsky. The articles also state that Clinton authorized his lawyers to "make a false representation" to a federal judge.
The third article of impeachment accuses Clinton of "misusing and abusing" his power as president and lists at least five examples, the official said. Among them, Clinton is charged with making false or misleading statements to "deceive the American public" about his relationship with Lewinsky; filing "false or insincere assertions of privilege" with the court, though he knew he was not being truthful; using his lawyers to make those assertions and "purposely jeopardizing" Paula Jones' ability to pursue justice in a court of law. The last example accuses Clinton of disregard for the office of the independent counsel, an agency of the government, the official said.
Lee Davidson, the Deseret News' Washington correspondent, contributed to this report.