CLINTON'S ACCOUNT SAID LESS CREDIBLE.

Byline: R.W. Apple Jr. The New York Times

House prosecutors said Friday that Monica Lewinsky's grand jury testimony was far more credible than President Clinton's, and one of them told senators sitting in judgment in the impeachment trial that ``it's the president who is not telling the truth.''

``If you believe the testimony of Monica Lewinsky, you cannot believe the president or accept the argument of his lawyers,'' said Rep. Bill McCollum, R-Fla., opening the second of three days of arguments by House managers. The Senate must decide which to believe, he said, adding, ``If you have any significant doubt about Monica Lewinsky's credibility or testimony, you should have us bring her in here and let us examine her face to face.''

As it did Thursday, the question of calling witnesses, with most Republicans in favor and most Democrats opposed, wound its way through the day's proceedings. The issue will not be decided until the week after next, but several Republican senators who said they had doubted the wisdom of witnesses said they were changing their minds.

McCollum, the main speaker Friday, delved into sexually explicit material to support his contentions, something no one had done previously during the trial. He cited sworn testimony by Clinton to the effect that he had never kissed or fondled Lewinsky's breasts or touched her genitalia, and sworn testimony by her that he had done so repeatedly, as well as corroboration by friends who said she told them at the time.

Referring to Lewinsky, Clinton adviser Vernon Jordan and others, McCollum said, ``Time and again, the president says one thing and they say something entirely different.''

The Florida lawmaker's approach dramatized one of the dilemmas that Republicans face. Some of their strongest evidence in support of the perjury article involves precisely the sort of material that caused much of the public to sour on the presentation of Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr and the proceedings of the House Judiciary Committee.

Without going into it, and questioning witnesses whose testimony conflicts, their case is weakened. But going into it with live witnesses runs the risk of alienating voters further with a spectacle reminiscent of the Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings.

Rep. Bob Barr, R-Ga., who filed the first impeachment resolution in the House in November, concluded for the Republicans with typically vivid language that produced a chilling moment of television. As he urged the Senate to ``strike down these insidious cancers that eat at the heart of our system of government,'' CNN showed Clinton, returning from a trip to New York, stepping from his helicopter and calling to his dog, Buddy.

Barr also prompted the first brief clash of the trial. Several times, he referred to the senators as ``jurors,'' which prompted Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, to rise to his feet and insist that the Senate is sitting as a court, not as a jury. Until then, the senators had sat mute, except for Majority Leader Trent Lott, who spoke exclusively about housekeeping details.

Chief Justice William Rehnquist, issuing his first ruling from the chair, said that Harkin's ``objection is well-taken.''

The seemingly petty intervention had a large political point, Democratic senators said. Harkin, who has backed Clinton as fiercely as Barr has attacked him, told colleagues he was worried that the word ``jurors'' would lead the public to conclude that the Senate's job was merely to find Clinton guilty or not guilty, whereas in his view they also needed to decide whether the president's crimes, in any, constituted impeachable offenses, and whether removing Clinton from office would serve the national interest.

McCollum, a mild-looking man who wears aviator glasses, is known in the House as a detail man of unflagging persistence. Those qualities were on display Friday as he extensively examined Lewinsky's Aug. 6, 1998, grand jury testimony, now one of the most familiar items in the case. It was then that she said, as the White House never tires of pointing out, ``No one asked or encouraged me to lie.''

She was testifying about a late-night telephone conversation with Clinton on Dec. 17, 1997. McCollum made two points: one, that the entire sentence at issue was, ``No one asked or encouraged me to lie, but no one discouraged me, either,'' and two, that Lewinsky later said, ``I knew what he meant.'' Pressed, she added that she knew that as ``we had on every other occasion and every other instance of this relationship, we would deny it.''

McCollum then asked, ``Can there be any doubt that the president was suggesting that she file an affidavit that contains lies and falsehoods?''

Much of what the Republicans presented ended with rhetorical questions like that. Much else involved phrases like ``not plausible,'' ``not reasonable,'' ``logical common sense says no,'' ``you may infer'' and so on.

Barr, a former CIA analyst and former prosecutor, was at pains to insist, perhaps because of this, that circumstantial evidence was not to be denigrated, no matter what commentators or Clinton's lawyers might say.

``It is a principle of long and consistent standing in every federal court in our land, and I suspect in every state court in our land,'' he said, ``that circumstantial evidence is not to be and shall not be afforded any less weight than direct evidence.''

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PHOTO (Color) Sen. Harkin raises trial's first objection. Page 9