The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer

JIM LEHRER: Good evening. I'm Jim Lehrer. On the NewsHour tonight full coverage of the House Judiciary Committee's opening round on impeachment, with analysis by Paul Gigot, Tom Oliphant, Elizabeth Drew, and Norman Ornstein, plus an interview with Former President George Bush and his National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft. We'll have the other news of this Monday at the end of the program tonight. FOCUS - IMPEACHMENT INQUIRY?

JIM LEHRER: The House Judiciary Committee today debated whether to launch an impeachment inquiry against President Clinton. A list of 15 possible impeachable offenses was offered by the committee's chief Republican investigator. The committee's Democratic investigator countered that none rose to the level of impeachable offense. The committee then debated a resolution authorizing a formal inquiry. Kwame Holman has our report.

KWAME HOLMAN: 37 members sit on the House Judiciary Committee, 21 Republicans and 16 Democrats. But when they spoke today, most began by invoking a non-partisan tone, using words such as historic, monumental, and humility. Many referred to their constitutional duty, and a number of members said pursuing possible impeachment of the president was the most important responsibility of their elected careers but not one they at all relished. Some members repeated statements they had made over the last four weeks. For others, it was the first major public statement on impeachment. Almost all read prepared remarks, choosing their words carefully, beginning with committee chairman Henry Hyde.

REP. HENRY HYDE, Chairman, Judiciary Committee: We are constantly reminded how weary America is of this whole situation. And I dare say, most of us share that weariness. But we members of Congress took an oath that we would perform all of our constitutional duties, not just the pleasant ones. As chairman Peter Rodino stated in 1974, "We cannot turn away out of partisanship or convenience from problems that are now our responsibility, our inescapable responsibility, to consider. It would be a violation of our own public trust if we, as the people's representatives, chose not to inquire, not to consult, not even to deliberate, and then pretend that we had not by default made choices." This will be an emotional process, a strenuous process, because feelings are high on all sides of this question, but the difficulties ahead can be surmounted with goodwill and an honest effort to do what is best for the country.

KWAME HOLMAN: Chairman Hyde chose not to speak of evidence of possible impeachable offenses committed by the president; however, John Conyers, the committee's top Democrat, approached the issue head on.

REP. JOHN CONYERS, [D] Michigan: Now there's no question that the president's actions were wrong. I submit to all of you that he may be suffering more than any of us will ever know. But I suggest to you, my colleagues across the aisle, in every ounce of friendship that I can muster, that even worse than an extramarital relationship is the use of federal prosecutors and federal agents to expose an extramarital relationship. Yes, there is a threat to society here, but it is from the tactics of a win-it-all-costs prosecutor determined to sink a president of the opposition party. Our review of the evidence, sent with the referral, convinces many of us of one thing: There is no support for any suggestion that the president obstructed justice, or that he tampered with witnesses or abused the power of his office. By alleging abuses of power by the president, the independent counsel has simply repackaged his basic allegation of lying about sex in a quite transparent effort to conjure the ghost of Watergate.

KWAME HOLMAN: Each member was allotted five minutes for an opening statement. Most used the time to stress a specific point, and for many of the Republicans, the point was that the president committed perjury.

REP. F. JAMES SENSENBRENNER, [R] Wisconsin: It is important at the outset to note that this debate is not about the fact that President Clinton had an affair with Monica Lewinsky and then lied about it to his family, his staff, his cabinet, and to the American public. It is about Judge Starr's finding that the president violated his oath to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth in a successful attempt to defeat Paula Jones's civil rights suit against him.

REP. BILL McCOLLUM, [R] Florida: When people believe that the President of the United States can lie, commit perjury, and get away with it, what are they going to say the next time they have to go to court -- and thousands of them do every day in this country - and they're expected to tell the truth when they get on the witness stand or face the crime of perjury? I would suggest to you that it should be noted that today in our federal system there are 115 people serving time in federal prison at this present moment for perjury before a grand jury or a federal court, 115 people. I don't know if the president committed these crimes of perjury, but if he did, they alone, it seems to me, would merit impeachment and removal from office.

KWAME HOLMAN: One point stressed by Democrats was to criticize the Republicans' desire to make the impeachment inquiry open-ended, unlimited both in time and scope.

REP. BARNEY FRANK, [D] Massachusetts: There is a fear on the part of many who want to destroy Bill Clinton, who didn't like the '92 election and didn't like the '96 election, and would like to undo it -- there is a fear that the matters in the Starr referral do not carry enough weight to justify an impeachment. The chairman himself in a very fair way yesterday, apparently on television, said that he did not think there were now votes in the Senate for impeachment, and that wouldn't be the case unless public opinion moved. What we have to resist - and I do not impute this to the chairman - but there are other people who I think have this motive - what we have to resist is an effort to keep going to try and move public opinion.

REP. CHARLES SCHUMER, [D] New York: I'd support a motion of censure, a motion to rebuke, as President Ford suggested yesterday, not because it is politically expedient to do, but because the president's actions cry out for punishment, and because censure or rebuke, not impeachment, is the right punishment. It is time to move forward, and not have the Congress and the American people endure a specter of what could be a long - a year-long focus on a tawdry but not impeachable affair.

KWAME HOLMAN: While some members indicated they had made up their minds as to whether the president had committed impeachable offenses, others said they would wait until they heard more evidence.

REP. HOWARD BERMAN, [D] California: This is not just about sex. But it is colored by sex. That coloration could be viewed by some as irrelevant. That coloration could be viewed by some as mitigating criminal wrongdoing. It is up to this committee to decide in this uniquely political and legal and democratic forum the significance of the context and how, if at all, it affects our determination of whether impeachable offenses have been committed.

REP. LINDSEY GRAHAM, [R] South Carolina: Nobody can tell me yet whether this is part of a criminal enterprise or a bunch of lies that build upon themselves based on not wanting to embarrass your family. If that's what it is about an extramarital affair with an intern, and that's it, I will not vote to impeach this president, no matter if 82 percent of the people at home want me to, because it will destroy this country. If it is about a criminal enterprise, where the operatives of the president at every turn confront witnesses against him in illegal ways, threaten people, extort them, if there's a secret police unit in this White House that goes after women or anybody else that gets in the way of this president, that is Richard Nixon times ten and I will vote to impeach him.

KWAME HOLMAN: Opening statements alone took up all of three hours. Following a short break for lunch, the committee heard from its two chief investigators, who have analyzed the information sent to the House by independent counsel Kenneth Starr. The Republican's lead counsel, David Schippers, presented his findings first.

DAVID SCHIPPERS, Republican Counsel: It has been the considered judgment of my staff and myself that our main focus should be on those alleged acts and omissions by the president which affect the rule of law and the structure and integrity of our court system. Deplorable as the numerous sexual encounters related in the evidence may be, we chose to emphasize the consequences of those acts as they affect the administration of justice and the unique role the president occupies in carrying out his oath faithfully to execute the laws of the nation. The prurient aspect of the referral is, at best, merely peripheral to the central issues. The assertions of presidential misconduct cited in the referral, though arising initially out of sexual indiscretions, are completely distinct and involve allegations of an ongoing series of deliberate and direct assaults by Mr. Clinton upon the justice system of the United States and upon the judicial branch of our government which holds a place in the constitutional framework of checks and balances equal to that of the executive and the legislative branches. As a result of our research and review of the referral and supporting documentation, we respectfully submit that there exists substantial and credible evidence of 15 separate events directly involving President William Jefferson Clinton that could, could constitute felonies which in turn may constitute grounds to proceed with an impeachment inquiry.

KWAME HOLMAN: For an hour, Schippers methodically went through the allegations against the president and the evidence supporting them. For instance, he produced a series of charts showing a flurry of phone calls that followed the president's deposition in the Paula Jones sexual harassment case last January.

DAVID SCHIPPERS: At approximately 1 p.m., the president calls both Vernon Jordan and Betty Currie at their homes. Between 2:15 and 2:55, the records show that Vernon Jordan placed one call to the White House and one call to the president, himself. And at 5 o'clock the president meets with Betty Currie. In that meeting, the president informs Ms. Currie that he had been questioned at his deposition about Monica Lewinsky. During the next three hours and sixteen minutes Betty Currie places four pages to Monica Lewinsky's pager requesting that Monica call Kay, a previously agreed upon code name that was being used by Ms. Currie and Ms. Lewinsky. At 10:09 p.m., Monica Lewinsky finally telephoned Betty Currie at home. She told Betty Currie that she was not in a position to be able to talk but that she would call back later.

KWAME HOLMAN: Schippers' briefing was carefully constructed, broken down into sections and subsections so that members could follow easily. This was Schippers' explanation of the allegation that the president may have obstructed justice.

DAVID SCHIPPERS: First, there is substantial and credible evidence that the president may have been part of a conspiracy with Monica Lewinsky and others to obstruct justice and the due administration of justice by [a] providing false and misleading test under oath in a civil deposition and before the grand jury; [b] withholding evidence and causing evidence to be withheld and concealed; and [c] tampering with prospective witnesses in a civil lawsuit and before a federal grand jury. The president and Ms. Lewinsky had developed a cover story to conceal their activities. On December 6, 1997, the president learned that Ms. Lewinsky's name had appeared on the Jones Vs. Clinton witness list. He informed Ms. Lewinsky of that fact on December 17, 1997, and the two agreed that they would employ the same cover story in the Jones case. The president at that time suggested that an affidavit might be enough to prevent Ms. Lewinsky from testifying. On December 19, 1997, Ms. Lewinsky was subpoenaed to give a deposition in the Jones case. Thereafter, the record tends to establish that the following events took place. One, in the second week of December, 1997, Ms. Lewinsky told Ms. Tripp that she would lie if called to testify and tried to convince Ms. Tripp to do the same; Two, Ms. Lewinsky attempted on several occasions to get Ms. Tripp to contact the White House before giving testimony in the Jones case; Three, Ms. Lewinsky participated in preparing a false and intentionally misleading affidavit to be filed in the Jones case; Four, Ms. Lewinsky provided a copy of the draft affidavit to a third party for approval and discussed changes calculated to mislead. Five, Ms. Lewinsky and the president talked by phone on January 6, 1998, and agreed that she would give false and misleading answers to question about her job at the Pentagon. Six, on January 7, 1998, Ms Lewinsky signed the false and misleading affidavit. The conspirators intended to use the affidavit to avoid Ms. Lewinsky's giving testimony. Seven, after Ms. Lewinsky's named surfaced, the conspirators began to employ code names in their contacts. Eight, on December 28, 1997, Ms. Lewinsky and the president met at the White House and discussed the subpoena she had received. Ms. Lewinsky suggested that she conceal the gifts that she'd received from the president. Shortly thereafter, the president's personal secretary, Betty Currie, picked up a box of the gifts from Ms. Lewinsky. Ten, Betty Currie hid that box of gifts under her bed at home. Eleven, the president gave false and evasive answers to questions contained in interrogatories in the Jones case. Twelve, on December 31, 1997, Ms Lewinsky, at the suggestion of a third party, deleted 50 draft notes that she had made up to the president. She had already been subpoenaed to testify in the Jones case. Thirteen, on January 17, 1998, the president's attorney produced Ms. Lewinsky's false affidavit at the president's deposition and the president adopted it as true. Fourteen, on January 17, 1998, in his deposition, the president gave false and misleading testimony under oath concerning his relationship with Ms. Lewinsky about the gifts she had given him and several other matters. Fifteen, the president on January 18, 1998, and thereafter, coached his personal secretary, Betty Currie, to give a false and misleading account of the Lewinsky relationship if called to testify. Sixteen, the president narrated elaborate, detailed false accounts of his relationship with Monica Lewinsky to prospective witnesses with the intention that those false accounts would be repeated in testimony. Seventeen, on August 17, 1998, the president gave false and misleading testimony under oath to a federal grand jury on the following points: his relationship with Ms. Lewinsky, his testimony in the January 17, 1998 deposition, his conversations with various individuals; and his knowledge of Ms. Lewinsky's affidavit and its falsity.

KWAME HOLMAN: After detailing the evidence supporting all 15 of his charges against the president, Schippers concluded with a brief personal statement. He said it was delivered not as counsel to the committee but as a father, grandfather, and citizen.

DAVID SCHIPPERS: To paraphrase St. Thomas Moore in Robert Boalt's and excellent play, "A Man for All Seasons," - The laws of this country are the great barriers that protect the citizens from the winds of evil and tyranny. If we permit one of those laws to fall, who will be able to stand in the winds that follow? Fifteen generations of Americans, our fellow Americans, many of whom are reposing in military cemeteries throughout the world, are looking down on and judging what you do today. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

KWAME HOLMAN: Several Democrats quietly took exception to Schippers' personal statement, as did the Republican chairman, Henry Hyde.

REP. HENRY HYDE: The chair, in response to some questions and complaints by the Democrats -- and I must say I find them with some substance to them - object to Mr. Schippers' remarks as a citizen. He was here testifying as special counsel to the majority and not as a citizen. So those remarks he made at the end, which do not refer to the record, to refer to the Starr referral, will be stricken from the record.

KWAME HOLMAN: Abbe Lowell, the chief counsel for the committee's Democrats, then presented his analysis of the Starr Report.

ABBE LOWELL: The independent counsel can take the same conduct by the president and with all the laws that exist on the books call them one offense, ten offenses, or a hundred offenses, that is what prosecutors do. But no matter how many different grounds were sent by the independent counsel, and no matter how many majority counsel may further divide them up or rename them to be in order to pile on additional charges, they fit into three distinct claims: First, that the president lied under oath about the nature of a sexual relationship with Monica Lewinsky; second, that he committed obstruction when he sought others to help him conceal that inappropriate relationship; and third, that he abused the office of the presidency by taking steps to hide that relationship. So no matter how majority staff may hope to strengthen their recommendation by finding new offenses to tag on, one basic allegation, - that is, that the president was engaged in an improper relationship which he did not want disclosed - is the core charge that Mr. Starr and the majority staff suggest triggers this constitutional crisis. As to the allegations that the president lied under oath, whether you call them lying or perjury or false statements, or whatever, half the alleged rounds in the independent counsel's referral and now seven of the grounds renamed by the majority staff are that the president lied about his relationship with Monica Lewinsky. It is not the actual lie about the relationship that rises to an impeachable offense. I suppose the independent counsel agrees that people lie about their improper relationships. But it is the fact that the lie occurred during a civil lawsuit, or before the independent counsel's own grand jury that, according to the charges, constitutes the offense. Majority staff's approach, taking up where Ken Starr left off, would have the committee continue to delve into even more details concerning the physical relationship between the president and Ms. Lewinsky, so that I suppose the committee could determine who was telling the truth about who touched who where and when. However, this unseemly process does not have to occur. The better approach would be to take the independent counsel at his charge. If it was the fact that the president lied at his Paula Jones deposition that creates the possibly impeachable offense, then the inquiry required would be to determine the importance or impact of that statement in that specific case. And this is what the evidence shows: These were misstatements about a consensual relationship made during a case alleging non-consensual harassment. When Judge Weber Wright of Arkansas ruled on January 29th that the evidence about Ms. Lewinsky was "not essential to the court issues of the case," and when she then ruled on April 1st that no matter what the president did with any other woman, Ms. Jones, herself, had not proven that she had been harmed by what she alleged, the judge was giving this committee the ability to determine that the president's statements, whether truthful or not, were not of the legal importance suggested by Mr. Starr, let alone the grave constitutional significance to support impeachment. And a prolonged inquiry is not required to see that proper context.

KWAME HOLMAN: At the end of the day the committee debated the length and breadth of the impeachment process.

REP. HENRY HYDE: The clerk will call the roll.

KWAME HOLMAN: The main Democratic proposal to set a standard for impeachment and conclude any inquiry by Thanksgiving was voted down along party lines. Republicans' five-member committee majority was expected to ensure passage of the open-ended inquiry Republicans favor.

JIM LEHRER: And Margaret Warner takes it from there.

MARGARET WARNER: Now, four perspectives on today's Judiciary Committee proceedings. We hear from NewsHour regular Wall Street Journal columnist Paul Gigot; and joining him tonight are Boston Globe columnist Tom Oliphant, author Elizabeth Drew and Congress watcher Norman Ornstein of the American Enterprise Institute. Paul, what did you make of today's proceedings?

PAUL GIGOT: I thought it went pretty much as expected. The Republicans posed as the defenders of the law, took a judicious, we're just looking at the facts position, the Democrats positioned themselves as defenders of the president and defenders of fairness in the process. But the most important political fact is that both Republicans and Democrats are voting for the inquiry of impeachment. The differences are not over the fact of an inquiry but over the time and the scope.

TOM OLIPHANT: Sadly, however, I think that what's really happened today is that the Clinton-Ken Starr confrontation has now been formally transferred to the Congress. And if positions have been hardening in the country and in this city for the last month and a half what happened today will pour concrete into those positions.

MARGARET WARNER: Did you see that positions hardening or obviously very hard?

NORMAN ORNSTEIN: Positions were hardening on the committee. This is a committee, as we've learned now over the last several weeks, that is the most sharply polarized perhaps in the entire Congress. I've watched this committee for a long time. I've never seen them on better behavior than we had today. Well, but on every significant vote where they might bring some kind of bipartisan agreement to try and fudge the differences. It was a party line vote. When they get to the House floor, we will see some Democrats voting with the Republicans. The question is whether it's twenty or a hundred, but on this committee strict party line.

MARGARET WARNER: Elizabeth, there was much mention made of the Watergate precedent. You covered the Watergate proceedings. How did this compare to the Judiciary Committee of then, of 25 years ago?

ELIZABETH DREW: I think, Margaret, in two very striking ways, there is no center to this committee, as Norm and the others have been saying, whereas in the committee headed by Mr. Rodino, there were four to five uncommitted southern Democrats, moderate Republicans. You really didn't know where they were going to go. You listened for their speeches, you know, with bated breath, to see what they were going to say, what clues they would give. And there was a process of finding a consensus, which Mr. Rodino worked on very hard, and of avoiding things that drew lines. The second one is the subject matter was of a totally different magnitude and order than what they're talking about now.

MARGARET WARNER: Tom, what was the thinking for the Democrats behind presenting this alternative, which is really what occupied most of the afternoon, after the two counsels that presented their arguments?

TOM OLIPHANT: As near as I was able to figure it out, I think it went beyond just the one alternative, that was the first one that came up and it went on --

MARGARET WARNER: Yes. They had two already.

TOM OLIPHANT: And possibly there will be others. It was to maximize to the greatest extent possible within the time frame of one day, a bunch of votes that would end up being partisan, so that it wasn't just one alternative that failed. It was something they dressed up from Howard Berman of California as a compromise and even a couple later on. And the idea was at the end of the day to have four, five, or six recorded votes in the committee where all the Republicans voted one way, all the Democrats voted the other way.

PAUL GIGOT: I also think they were trying to give some cover to Democrats on the floor, because what they want to do is make sure - they want -- the White House wants as few Democrats as possible to vote for this Hyde resolution on the floor. If they can point to votes in the committee, which said, look, we tried to offer a limited scope, they can say, therefore, I can't vote for the Hyde resolution, which may be the only one they get to vote for on the floor.

NORMAN ORNSTEIN: There were some substantive issues hereas well. This wasn't just political posturing. Democrats want to obviously narrow the focus, but they want to get very quickly to the question of what is an impeachable offense. And the Republicans don't want to define an impeachable offense at this point. And there was some maneuvering around that that was not just designed to get party line votes. So I think they're trying to see if they can nail that focus at least a bit.

MARGARET WARNER: Well, certainly, Elizabeth, the Berman alternative - his second compromise - that was the thing he tried to preserve. Let's decide the standards for impeachment and then look at the facts. Why is that one so important to the Democrats?

ELIZABETH DREW: Well, I think they're trying to show - first of all, they know they're not going to carry any of these. And they hope to get a chance to offer an alternative on the floor, so that Democrats can vote for something, instead of against everything. And they've designed this alternative very much with where they think public opinion is. Pardon the double negative, but they think the people don't want nothing to happen. They want some sort of statement that what went on was wrong, but they don't want the president impeached. And so this resolution goes along those lines.

MARGARET WARNER: And why, Paul, are the Republicans so opposed to doing it in this reverse order that the Democrats wanted?

PAUL GIGOT: I think they feel that the Watergate precedent did not set standards of impeachment right at the start. They were evolved. They evolved with the facts, and that they'd like that to happen this time as well. We had everybody up there quoting Alexander Hamilton. I mean, he means something to everybody because the founders deliberately designed impeachment to be a political process, which was determined, given the mores and the facts of a particular circumstance.

TOM OLIPHANT: Interesting, however, though at the same time how Chairman Hyde, himself, at least acknowledged the thrust of some of the Democrats' points by trying to pre-empt them over the weekend. For example, on time limit, while he opposed it in the committee, they made it very clear he wants this over by the end of the year. On scope, he opposed any effort to restrict scope, but he has gone out of his way to say it's Lewinsky only. And finally, he has acknowledged that there are not the votes in the Senate to convict this president and throw him out of office and that that cannot happen without a change in public opinion.

NORMAN ORNSTEIN: But it's an interesting dynamic, getting back to the question of what makes this different from 1974. In 1974, and there was a lot of discussion of this today, they did not set a time limit. But Peter Rodino said, trust me, we're going to expedite this and Republicans were saying, what's the matter, you don't trust Chairman Hyde? Now, no Democrat was going to say we don't trust Henry Hyde. And, indeed, everybody has great respect for Henry Hyde. But frankly, throughout all of this, there is an atmosphere that's very different from 1974. Neither side trusts the other side at all. They don't believe that if the leaders set a bargain, which they can do and they could in 1974, that they can keep it, and there's a very poisonous atmosphere that was disguised with the nice talk today but which will come out more as time passes, especially on the committee.

MARGARET WARNER: You were trying to get in earlier.

ELIZABETH DREW: Well, to answer the question you asked me earlier about why the Democrats are focusing so on let's define impeachable offense, asidefrom the fact they know it's not going to go their way, I think they feel that the longer the discussion goes on, the more they will be able to make the point, their point, that what is being talked about in the Clinton-Lewinsky case does not rise to an impeachable offense. They just want to spend a lot of time. Now, again, as Tom said, Hyde kind of pulled the sting out of that too by saying, oh, we're going to have a discussion, we're going to have all the scholars in. And Paul is right. In '74, they didn't say, you know, if you did this, it's an impeachable offense, or if you did that. They put out a study of history and what people had said and sort of guidelines. But they took the case then and said, do these things rise to an impeachable offense?

MARGARET WARNER: Let's turn to the case that the Republican counsel laid out, and this was the first time we had seen David Schippers, the Republican counsel. First, just give us a sense, Paul, of who he is, where he came from.

PAUL GIGOT: He's very much a Henry Hyde choice. He's, like Henry Hyde, a Catholic, Chicago - Henry Hyde was not a prosecutor, but David Schippers is a former mob prosecutor. He worked, he told me, in the Justice Department when Bobby Kennedy was the attorney general. He is a Democrat. He has assembled a team of prosecutors. And you could tell - and in many respects was quoted in a lot of places in the 70's in the Watergate case, becoming something of an expert on the Watergate experience. So I think for all those reasons Hyde wanted somebody who shared his values and had some experience.

TOM OLIPHANT: Yes. But I think by reputation the word that comes most often from Chicago about Schippers is prosecutor, as opposed to Democrat, and I think that was reflected in the way he changed at least the wrapping paper off the basic structure of Starr's case. You know, if you do it as an Algebra equation, I think, 11 minus 2 plus 6 is the Schippers' version of this case. It is very much an argument, as opposed to evidence. It requires inferences to be drawn in order to reach it. If you read his presentation, it is really a rewrite of the Starr evidence.

MARGARET WARNER: Can we take this as - is this committee going to proceed on this redrafted 15 counts, or are they going to go forward on Starr's?

NORMAN ORNSTEIN: They didn't make a determination of that. But it seems clear that they're going to be guided - the Republicans will be guided very much by the direction that David Schippers has taken. And it's going to be interesting, if you go back even to 1974, one of the things that many Democrats raised today, in that report, they made a very clear distinction - Richard Nixon was charged, and they said they had substantial evidence that he had back-dated tax dates information that would have been a criminal offense but because it was a personal offense, they weren't going to make that a count of impeachment. So we're going to get a lot of discussion that brings us back to those. And, of course, even though he's got a somewhat different package of things that Schippers brought forward, different from what Ken Starr had, the basic focus here, the basic thesis that he has is very much the thesis that Ken Starr has, a conspiracy to withhold and mislead.

MARGARET WARNER: And on Abbe Lowell, the Democratic counsel, what outlines could you see, one of the points that Norm mentioned, was something he brought up?

ELIZABETH DREW: Well, I think both counsels were making political-legal statements. One was talking from one political point of view, I'm going to build a case that there is a criminal conspiracy that rises to impeachable offense. And the other counsel was going to say this is a whole set of things that grew out of a private consensual, sexual relationship, and it's not - the things that grew out of it are not worthy of an impeachable offense. I thought it was kind of interesting when Abbe Lowell said, these weren't lies about Vietnam; these weren't lies about arms to Iran for - to send money to the Contras, that was Reagan, that was a constitutional issue, and wiser heads in both parties said, you know, we're not going to make this into an impeachable question. And they let it go. So it was really saying, sorry, folks, presidents lie. Now you measure these lies against the ones that he was argued - implying were larger.

PAUL GIGOT: Implicitly, it was conceding that the president lied under oath. He was almost conceding that point and say - at one point he said, whether or not these are lies -- but ignore them because they really don't rise to the level of impeachable offenses.

TOM OLIPHANT: And that's the big difference. In other words, in his presentation on the one end he says we're happy to defend on the facts, but they're also happy to defend, assuming all the facts are true.

ELIZABETH DREW: Are true -- there's one key change. Excuse me. I'm sorry.

MARGARET WARNER: Actually, we're just about out of time here. Bottom line here, can we assume that whenever they get to the Republican proposal, Norm, whether it's tonight or tomorrow, that it's going to be a party-line vote like the other one?

NORMAN ORNSTEIN: It will pass on a party line vote. It will go to the House floor, and then the question is how many Democrats, other than the Judiciary Committee members will support it, along with almost all the Republicans?

MARGARET WARNER: All right. I'm sorry. All the time we have. Thank you all. NEWSMAKERS

JIM LEHRER: Now, to an interview with former President George Bush and his national security adviser, Brent Scowcroft. They're the co-authors of a new book on major foreign policy decisions of the Bush administration. I talked with them earlier today.

JIM LEHRER: Mr. President, General, welcome. Mr. President, first, on matters of today, the House Judiciary Committee is moving toward a vote on whether to conduct an impeachment inquiry of President Clinton. Do you think there should be such an inquiry?

PRESIDENT GEORGE BUSH: Jim, I forgot to tell you this, I have tried to stay out of all this procedure and commenting on what I really feel in my heart about it, so with all respect, I just don't want to get into that.

JIM LEHRER: I understand. Your friend, also a fellow former president, Gerald Ford, wrote a piece yesterday in the New York Times where he suggested something short of removal of President Clinton. He called it a rebuke, where the president would go -- What do you think of that idea?

PRESIDENT GEORGE BUSH: Well, I have great respect for Gerry Ford. I mean, he's a man of - you know, I'm sure he gave a great deal of thought to it. But, again, that gets me into a subject that I have assiduously tried to stay out of it. And I just don't want to get into it. Please understand. There are a couple of reasons. I mentioned one yesterday, and that is everything I say now that relates to policy or the White House even or domestic or foreign policy, people rush down and then try to juxtapose it against the views of my sons, both of whom are engaged in politics, one in Florida, one in Texas, and I just don't want to complicate their lives. The main reason, though, is I vowed when I leftthe presidency that I would try to avoid being critical of my successor, and I haven't gone to Capitol Hill and lobbied, and I'd just rather not get into that.

JIM LEHRER: What about the - it's been suggested that you or Bob Dole or a group of people be used to kind of at a certain time - whenever that happens -- to try to broker a way out of this? Would you be interested? Would you consider such a proposal, here again not about judging the thing, but be involved in something like that?

PRESIDENT GEORGE BUSH: Well, I wouldn't -- I don't want to be involved in that, to be very honest with you. You've got a system, and the system is rather orderly. And let the system work. That's my view.

JIM LEHRER: Speaking of a system, General, you worked for Henry Kissinger during the impeachment process that was underway against Richard Nixon.

GENERAL BRENT SCOWCROFT: Yes, I did.

JIM LEHRER: How difficult was it to function in foreign policy and all of those areas during that kind of environment?

GENERAL BRENT SCOWCROFT: It always makes it more difficult because the foreign countries, people that you deal with, are always wondering what kind of authority is behind what it is you do and say. And while I think we managed to convey reasonably that things were going on as usual, there was no change, and, indeed, when President Ford came in, we went out of our way to say, look, don't try to take advantage of it; we're here, we're operating, and so on. But it is greatly complicating, there's no question about that.

JIM LEHRER: Much has been said, General, in the last - in this current context about the moral authority of the President of the United States, whether it's Bill Clinton or George Bush or Gerald Ford, or Richard Nixon. You've worked for several presidents. You've observed many others. Do you think that's part of the job description?

GENERAL BRENT SCOWCROFT: Yes. I think it's definitely a part of the job description, and especially again with respect to foreign policy. The United States for most of the world is the wind to which other countries set their sails. If that wind is inconstant, unreliable, they're confused. They don't know what to do. They can't set a policy if our policy keeps changing back and forth, or if you cannot believe in the course we say we're going to follow. So, that's very important.

JIM LEHRER: Mr. President, did you see yourself as the moral leader of this country, in addition to being the commander-in-chief, et cetera, when you were president?

PRESIDENT GEORGE BUSH: I don't think I ever put it in that lofty context -- I mean, I am the moral leader of the United States of America. I don't think - I mean, my mother would have killed me. But, no, I think there's a certain responsibility to respect the office that you're privileged to hold.

JIM LEHRER: That is part of your job description you thought?

PRESIDENT GEORGE BUSH: Well, I hadn't - I didn't define it like that. It just - just comes naturally, I think.

JIM LEHRER: Well, what do you make of this - here, again, I'm not trying to play games with you, Mr. President. I promise you. I respect what you said. But it has been on the table and people are talking. You're one of the few people who can talk about this issue in a real way - you know, one of the few people - who have been the President of the United States.

PRESIDENT GEORGE BUSH: I could. And my heart is full, and I feel very emotionally passionately about these things, and I do not want to discuss it for the reasons I gave you. Maybe I'm not fulfilling the other responsibilities a former president has. But I just don't want to get into it.

JIM LEHRER: Your son, you mentioned your son, George W. Bush.

PRESIDENT GEORGE BUSH: Yes.

JIM LEHRER: He said something the other day. And he said he was thinking, having some second thoughts about running for president. He said, "This is a result of the problems that President Clinton and others are having." And let me read you what he said. "It's a troubling period. I think running for president is a commitment to the bubble of public scrutiny, and I've got to make up my mind at the right time that that's what I want to do. Is this something I want to put my family through?" Do you understand his concerns?

PRESIDENT GEORGE BUSH: Sure. I think I understand the concern of every person in politics these days, because there is an intrusiveness. There is a relatively new intrusiveness, where nothing is off bounds. I'm satisfied that my son could pass muster on any standards - 1998 standards, 1960 standards. But -- I'm sure of it, certain of it. But he's got two teenage grandkids - we've got two teenage grandkids. He's got twin daughters. And I think everybody - he's running for governor of Texas - I think it enters his mind in that high office. Is this whole new intrusive, anything-goes climate what I want my family to live with? Having said that, I know that he hasn't made up his mind as to what he is going to do, and I know that he's doing what he ought to do, and that is focus on being re-elected governor of our state.

JIM LEHRER: Having a career in politics, being President of the United States, is it worth going through all of that?

PRESIDENT GEORGE BUSH: It is. It is.

JIM LEHRER: It's a noble calling.

PRESIDENT GEORGE BUSH: It's a noble calling. We have a little school in Texas, the George Bush School of Government and Public Service - only 19 kids -- masters program. Now it's going to double, and it'll double again. And I -- if we can just inculcate into a handful of those kids public service is a noble calling, we will be doing something good. And I think we can. And I think there's a reservoir of goodwill out there, though people are understandably concerned about intrusiveness, unaccountability, and these things that can - where you can level a charge, no matter how vituperative or how personal, against someone in public office.

JIM LEHRER: Let's talk about your book. A lot of these issues that we've been talking about are all wrapped up in your book. For instance, the issue of Saddam Hussein and moral authority, Saddam Hussein, General, is still there.

GENERAL BRENT SCOWCROFT: Yes.

JIM LEHRER: And you and particularly the president, you portrayed this man as an evil man. And do you believe that Iraq, for instance, would ever have invaded Kuwait if Saddam Hussein had not been there?

GENERAL BRENT SCOWCROFT: That's a stretch. But I believe that Iraqi policy is inordinately Saddam Hussein, and I think, you know -- it's not clear what his overall goal is - whether it's to dominate the Gulf, whether it's to be the champion of Arabs, whether it's to control oil, but I think it's a single-minded obsession with him, and I - I don't know what would happened absent Saddam Hussein.

JIM LEHRER: But on the moral part of this, a lot of people have suggested, wait a minute, we went to war, thousands of people died, most of them Iraqis, died in Desert Storm because of one man. Why not take that one man out and maybe have prevented the deaths of so many others?

PRESIDENT GEORGE BUSH: Well, one reason, you'd have added a lot of deaths of innocent Americans too. We had international law on our side - not to kill Saddam Hussein but to end the aggression. And we ended the aggression. And as a result of that, you saw the Middle East peace process begin at Madrid. That wouldn't have happened if we unilaterally had marched into Baghdad. And what gets me, Jim, is you got a lot of revisionists now that take a look ex post facto and say you should have gone in and killed Saddam Hussein. Would you want your son there in an urban, a guerrilla war, where we couldn't even find a two-bit warlord in Mogadishu - warehouses and then they're saying to me now late - hey, you should have gone in and killed him, alone , occupying power in an Arab land - the United States of America -- no way. Now am I happy he's there? No. But we had a mission; we defined it, and thanks to the heroism of a lot of young Americans we fulfilled that mission. And I don't believe in mission creep, incidentally. Am I happy he's there? No. But there are a lot of bad guys out there, a lot of terrorists out there - maybe none quite as brutal to his own people as Saddam. But you can click off a few, I'm sure, and some of these despots around the world.

JIM LEHRER: Another thing where morality has been raised has been this Tiannanmen Square -- China. You wrote about this in your book. Did you see that as a moral issue, General, that these students demonstrated - and many of them were killed, et cetera -- in the name of democracy, in the name of the United States?

GENERAL BRENT SCOWCROFT: Yes, I think it was in considerable part a moral issue, but there was also a strategic issue. And I think what our attempt was, what the president's attempt was, was to balance off these two and to react sharply to the moral deprivations, if you will, that were perpetrated there, but at the same time not blind ourselves to the strategic importance of a relationship with the world's most populace and growing, powerful nation.

JIM LEHRER: You took some heat over that, Mr. President, to put it mildly.

PRESIDENT GEORGE BUSH: Understatement of the evening.

JIM LEHRER: All right. How do you feel about the way you played that?

PRESIDENT GEORGE BUSH: I think we did it just right. And you look at China today, and I don't think anyone can argue that there's not more human rights, more individual liberties in China today, more people lifted out of poverty today than happened at Tiananmen Square, happened when Nixon - years before he signed the Shanghai communiqu . I mean, it isn't even debatable. And so, I think we did it about right, and what got me at the time was the criticism that I didn't care about human rights, I didn't care about the loss of life in the square. We led the world in putting sanctions on China. And yet I was determined for the reasons Brent articulated to keep some channel of communication open and then to gradually keep going forward. You have new leaders in China. You have a changed view in China about the market economy, ever changing view on that, more freedom, and I think we did it right.

JIM LEHRER: Another thing you wrote about extensively that happened on your watch, of course, the major thing, one of the major things, was the fall of communism, et cetera. Did you see that, General, as a battle between good and evil. President Reagan said that - said the Soviet Union was an evil empire. In your book you say maybe not.

GENERAL BRENT SCOWCROFT: I think it was an evil empire -- in one sense it certainly was. It certainly was. They banned, if you will, a dignity of the individual. There was no kind of security from arbitrary actions and so on.But by the time we came into office - first of all, Gorbachev ended much of that -- when he removed terror as an element by which to drive the system, that was changed. Was it a corrupt, a bad system? No question about it.

JIM LEHRER: How do you feel about that?

PRESIDENT GEORGE BUSH: Same way.

JIM LEHRER: Same way?

PRESIDENT GEORGE BUSH: Yes.

JIM LEHRER: Much of your book, Mr. President, much of your part of the book is your diaries that you wrote at the time. Did you - when you wrote those things down at the time, did you think that some day they would be printed?

PRESIDENT GEORGE BUSH: No. I thought I was dictating so that I could go back and look over my notes and reconstruct events more accurately. I wish I had done a better job of it. In fact, having seen some of it in print, I wish I'd been a little more articulate in it. No, it wasn't designed to be someday the Bush diaries will be released - I mean, good heavens. But they're helpful-they helped us. And there are some little vignettes in our book that I think bring alive the subject of the moment.

JIM LEHRER: You've been working on this book now for how long, since --

GENERAL BRENT SCOWCROFT: Five years.

JIM LEHRER: Five years. How do you feel about the way it's been received?

GENERAL BRENT SCOWCROFT: Well, you know, I wondered whether it would be received at all. So --

JIM LEHRER: The reviews have been - the reviews I have read have been -- were you nervous about this book?

PRESIDENT GEORGE BUSH: Yes. I was nervous. I wasn't sure that - having stressed the Bush view about wanting to stay out of politics, out of the way, you know, live in Texas, and go up to Maine, and revel in the grandchildren, that I wanted to get back into the - you know -- critiquing or having to answer something in the review. I've been very pleased. I think the reviews have been good. It took a long time to write this book. We're indebted to a lot of people that helped. But I'll tell you what I do think, Jim. I think that we got a lot of this right, and I think historians and scholars are going to be able to use this to tee off from, to do further research. I really believe that, because in this book we've got letters to Deng Xiaoping that no one's seen before, you know, conversations with Helmut Kohl or Prime Minister Thatcher or Francois Mitterrand that are kind of being revealed here and give an insight into the decision-making process.

JIM LEHRER: I got the feeling from reading your book, Mr. President, that you're very comfortable with what history is going to write about you. Am I right about that?

PRESIDENT GEORGE BUSH: Well, I think so. Not much I can do about it anyway. And I'm not going to write a memoir trying to fine tune that - say here's exactly what I was thinking.

JIM LEHRER: This is it?

PRESIDENT GEORGE BUSH: Yes. This is it. Well, we got one other book - but that's later.

JIM LEHRER: Are you going to take five more years, General?

GENERAL BRENT SCOWCROFT: Well, I'm not working -

JIM LEHRER: Oh, you're not working on it.

PRESIDENT GEORGE BUSH: And that was just a book of letters - like Truman did. I'm not -- Jean Becker is doing the work on that. But, no, this book I think has done at least what I hoped it would do, and I hope Brent feels that way.

GENERAL BRENT SCOWCROFT: Absolutely. It is. This was one of the world's great transformations, if you will, from an era of confrontation which suddenly vanishes, and it would be so easy to just say, well, it was all inevitable and so on, but it wasn't. And if you think back 20 years, you know, nobody could have imagined the end. And I thought it was important for us to tell how we saw it, what we were thinking, why we did what we did, what we did right, what we did wrong.

JIM LEHRER: All right. Well, General, Mr. President, thank you both very much.

PRESIDENT GEORGE BUSH: Nice to see you, Jim.

GENERAL BRENT SCOWCROFT: Thank you, Jim. NEWS SUMMARY

JIM LEHRER: In the other news today the U.S. Supreme Court began a new term this first Monday in October. As it did, more than 1,000 demonstrators protested the court's lack of minority and women law clerks. Nineteen people were arrested; they included NAACP President Kweisi Mfume. The justices issued orders in more than 1600 cases granting full review to only six of them. Among its actions, the court let stand an Indiana school district's random drug testing of students participating in extracurricular activities, and it agreed teachers cannot claim free speech protection when they're disciplined for using controversial or offensive teaching materials. A Kentucky teenager pleaded guilty today for killing three students praying in a high school lobby. Five others were injured in the December 1st shooting in West Paducah. Fifteen-year-old Michael Carneal will be sentenced in December. He accepted a plea agreement that calls for life in prison without the possibility of parole for 25 years. Wall Street was off again today. The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed down 58 points at 7726.24. The losses in U.S. markets were blamed on declining values overseas. The Tokyo Exchange led the way. It lost 2 percent, its worst close in 12 years. Hong Kong's was off 4 percent. Stock markets in London and Paris were also down slightly. In Washington today President Clinton met with 26 finance ministers and central bankers. They represented the seven major industrialized nations plus major emerging countries. They discussed ways to head off the spreading economic crisis. Mr. Clinton is pushing a plan to create a new structure for international lending agencies. It would provide emergency loans to troubled nations and require stricter banking regulations, among other things. On the Kosovo story today the leaders of NATO and the United Nations said Yugoslav President Milosevic had not done enough to end violence in the southern Serbian province. They said there would be NATO air strikes unless the Serbs pull troops and police forces out of the ethnic Albanian region and begin serious negotiations with the Kosovo independence movement. But Milosevic rebuffed the threats in a meeting late today with U.S. mediator Richard Holbrooke.

RECAP

JIM LEHRER: We'll see you on-line and again here tomorrow evening with more coverage and analysis of the House debate on a presidential impeachment inquiry. I'm Jim Lehrer. Thank you and good night.