CLINTON OKS QUESTIONING BY STARR.

Byline: John M. Broder and Don Van Natta Jr. The New York Times

President Clinton agreed Wednesday to submit to questioning at the White House by federal prosecutors in the Monica Lewinsky investigation after Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr withdrew an unprecedented subpoena to compel his testimony.

The Aug. 17 session will be broadcast via closed-circuit television to a grand jury room to allow jurors to question the president.

The president's attorney, David Kendall, sought to delay the testimony until late September, but the federal judge supervising the case, Norma Holloway Johnson, admonished both sides to schedule it sooner.

Clinton will be permitted the unusual courtesy of having his lawyers at his side, unlike other grand jury witnesses. Starr was willing to agree to many of Clinton's conditions in exchange for the president's decision not to challenge the subpoena on constitutional grounds and further delay the lengthy investigation, lawyers said.

As the arrangement to secure Clinton's testimony was announced, new details emerged of the testimony and evidence that Lewinsky is prepared to provide to grand jurors under the broad immunity deal she reached with prosecutors on Tuesday.

Dress as evidence

As evidence, Lewinsky turned over a dress and several taped phone messages from Clinton on Wednesday to the office of the independent counsel, according to lawyers familiar with Lewinsky's case. They said the dress had been sought under subpoena since late last year, and that Lewinsky had shipped it to her mother for safekeeping. The dress became a bargaining chip used by prosecutors to wield pressure against her mother, Marcia Lewis, and ultimately was part of the reason Lewis was granted immunity along with her daughter.

Lawyers familiar with Lewinsky's account said that the 25-year-old former White House intern told prosecutors on Monday that she had expressed concern to Clinton in December about a number of gifts he had given her, including a T-shirt, a brooch and a hat pin, that had been subpoenaed by lawyers for Paula Jones in connection with her sexual misconduct suit against the president.

Lewinsky said that the president had made the hypothetical suggestion to her that ``If you don't have them you can't turn them over'' to Jones' lawyers. Clinton's personal secretary, Betty Currie, retrieved the gifts and gave them to investigators last winter, lawyers said.

That account closely tracks with Lewinsky's original proposed testimony, or ``proffer,'' given to investigators last winter.

Avoiding a spectacle

Clinton's agreement to testify via closed-circuit television allows him to avoid the humiliating spectacle of being led under subpoena into a federal courthouse to appear personally before the 23-member grand jury that has heard scores of witnesses, from high government officials to uniformed Secret Service officers, over the past seven months. But it gives Starr something important as well - the chance to confront the president in person and question him extensively on matters ranging from his relationship to Lewinsky to alleged efforts to buy her silence.

Starr has now secured the testimony of the two central and final witnesses in the Lewinsky inquiry, after Lewinsky accepted an immunity agreement that requires her to provide ``full and truthful'' testimony about what she says was an 18-month relationship with the president.

With Clinton and Lewinsky scheduled to tell their stories in the next few weeks, the independent counsel will soon have the final pieces of a complex mosaic that may or may not constitute crimes or impeachable offenses. Starr is expected to quickly conclude the Lewinsky investigation and prepare a report for Congress on his findings.

The prosecutor has said he is investigating allegations of perjury, witness tampering and obstruction of justice arising from charges that Clinton carried on a sexual relationship with Lewinsky and directed a conspiracy to conceal it.

The final judgment on Clinton will be rendered by the House of Representatives, should it choose to pursue impeachment hearings, not by Starr or a court of law.