White House lawyers studied the thousands of pages of grand jury testimony, released yesterday, hoping to find new material that would help President Bill Clinton to avoid impeachment by the US Congress.
But the president left the White House on a further round of fundraising events resigned to the formal opening of an impeachment inquiry by the Judiciary Committee of the House of Representatives early next week. The Republican majority on the committee is expected to approve a wide-ranging inquiry into the claims by the independent counsel Mr Ken Starr that the president can be impeached under 11 headings of perjury, obstruction of justice and abuse of office.
The Democratic members of the committee yesterday proposed a more limited impeachment inquiry, which would end by November 25th and could result in a censure motion against President Clinton if there turns out to be insufficient grounds for impeachment. But this proposal is certain to be rejected by the Republican majority in favour of a Watergate-style impeachment inquiry, which could continue into next year.
The 4,610 pages of documents released yesterday by the committee filled in gaps in the lengthy Starr report submitted last month but do not appear to alter the broad picture which emerged from it of Mr Clinton's affair with former White House intern, Ms Monica Lewinsky.
In a first reaction, the White House press secretary, Mr Joe Lockhart, said: "The disclosure on a now almost daily basis of raw grand jury material is the clearest indication that there is a partisan process designed for partisan gain rather than a sombre constitutional process that the framers of the constitution envisaged."
Mr Lockhart said that the White House counsel would be submitting to the committee within a few days a legal brief on what they think are impeachable offences and the standards for impeachment.
The newly released documents include transcripts of testimony to the grand jury by President Clinton's secretary, Ms Betty Currie; his close friend Mr Vernon Jordan; his media adviser, Mr Sidney Blumenthal, and Secret Service agents. Also included are transcripts of the telephone conversations between Ms Lewinsky and her colleague when working at the Pentagon, Ms Linda Tripp, who taped them.
White House aides were telling the media that they hoped the transcripts would show that Ms Tripp manipulated her younger colleague to try to trick her into making incriminating statements about her relationship with President Clinton.
The president has admitted that he had "an inappropriate" relationship with Ms Lewinsky but has continued to insist that he did not have "sexual relations" with her as defined by lawyers when he was testifying in the Paula Jones sexual harassment case and later in his grand jury testimony.
The independent counsel has accused President Clinton of perjuring himself because Ms Lewinsky has testified that in addition to her performing oral sex on him, the president touched her in ways that were covered by the legal definition of sexual relations.
But in one of her conversations with Ms Tripp, the former intern insists that she did not have sex with the president because intercourse did not occur. She said they "fooled around". This is the same argument used by the president in his testimony to the grand jury on August 17th, when he denied having sexual relations."
In another transcript, the president is described as telling Ms Lewinsky that "I have an empty life apart from my work". He also told her he had "a need for intimacy".
Ms Lewinsky also describes "yelling matches" with the president when he would turn purple with rage.
Mr Blumenthal, Mr Clinton's media adviser, recalled in his testimony a meeting with the First Lady, Mrs Hillary Clinton, in which she was "distressed" because the president was being attacked for political motives for "his ministry to a troubled person", Ms Lewinsky.
Later, when speaking to the president, Mr Blumenthal asked him what he had done wrong and he replied, "Nothing". The president accused Ms Lewinsky of making sexual approaches to him and of stalking him. He told Mr Blumenthal that he felt like the main character in the novel Darkness at Noon.