HOUSE MAY LACK HEART TO IMPEACH.

Byline: William Neikirk Chicago Tribune 

With the testimony of Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr, the House Judiciary Committee is moving toward a mid-December vote on articles of impeachment against President Clinton that lawmakers from both parties believe will pass.

But Clinton can look forward to a good Christmas if, as many members now expect, the House rejects the panel's recommendations in a floor vote in the third week in December. On top of this, even a censure of the president is considered in doubt.

Rep. Henry Hyde, R-Ill., chairman of the committee, finds himself in a political box from which he has no escape. He has indicated that he supports impeachment on grounds that the president undermined the judicial system by lying under oath. At the same time, he can read the House's political mood: An overwhelming majority want the matter to go away before a new Congress takes office in January.

Even the committee's pace reflects this attitude. Only a few witnesses, four of them behind closed doors, are on the panel's list, and time is running out. Committee sources said Hyde likely will summon more witnesses to public hearings in the first week of December, then bring in a constitutional expert to testify on Dec. 7 or 8, before pushing for a vote.

Rep. Bill McCollum, R-Fla., a Judiciary panel member, said Starr's testimony energized Republican members of the panel and made it less likely that any of the 21 GOP representatives will vote against articles of impeachment. ``I think he shored up the courage and determination of almost all our Republicans,'' he said. Rep. Steve Chabot, R-Ohio, another panel member, agreed, saying Starr made a good case against Clinton.

Once considered to be on the fence, Rep. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said he is now inclined to vote for impeaching the president because of evidence that Clinton lied before a federal grand jury investigating the Monica Lewinsky case.

McCollum and Chabot clung to the hope that once the entire House is confronted with the case against Clinton, they will think otherwise about rejecting it out of hand. ``House members haven't had the experience of looking straight down the barrel of the evidence,'' said McCollum.

But the resolve among committee Republicans is not shared in the House as a whole.

Rep. Ray LaHood, R-Ill., predicted that the committee will approve articles of impeachment, but said 20 to 50 Republicans will vote against them on the House floor and send them to their defeat. The fact that the committee will likely approve impeachment on a party-line vote ``will not be a very good message to the American people,'' he added.

Punishment options

Censure of the president is seen as a possible alternative to impeachment, but Rep. James Moran of Virginia, a moderate Democrat, said from 50 to 60 members of his party - primarily on the liberal end - are solidly against censure. At the same time, many Republicans do not like the censure option either, saying that it raises constitutional questions and is essentially a cowardly way out.

While committee Republicans seem determined to go ahead with impeachment, they have had a hard time developing a clear strategy for the case, still debating what witnesses to call and whether the case should be expanded to take up matters other than the Lewinsky case.

``I don't think Republicans on the committee know where they are going next,'' said Rep. Tom Barrett, D-Wis., a committee member.

But any uncertainty is based partly on the fact that the White House has yet to respond to Hyde's list of 81 questions to the president that asked Clinton to admit or deny basic facts and allegations in the case - such as whether he lied under oath, urged Lewinsky to lie about their relationship in her deposition in the Paula Jones case, or coached his secretary, Betty Currie, to lie about what she had witnessed in the White House.

Before calling new witnesses, Hyde and his staff want to see the president's answers to these questions and weigh them against the evidence in Starr's report.

Other possible witnesses

The chances that the committee will summon the major players in the impeachment drama, Lewinsky and Linda Tripp, are low. The committee will rely chiefly on their grand jury testimony. The same goes with witnesses like Clinton confidante Vernon Jordan and the president's secretary Currie.

If Lewinsky or Tripp were called, said LaHood, ``that would turn it into more of a circus than anyone could imagine.'' In today's climate, he and others said, no one wants the impeachment inquiry to be turned into a sensational public airing of the main charges in Starr's report.

Republicans said any new witnesses likely would be called to help bolster the basic ``core'' charges against the president by establishing a ``pattern and practice'' of behavior that Congress would consider impeachable.

That is the main purpose of taking depositions from two people involved in the case of Kathleen Willey, who alleges that Clinton made a sexual pass at her in the Oval Office, Clinton's lawyer, Bob Bennett, and White House deputy counsel Bruce Lindsey.

Barring hitches, Willey's lawyer, Daniel Gecker, and real estate developer Nathan Landow will testify by deposition Monday and Tuesday about any efforts to keep Willey quiet, while Lindsey and Bennett would be deposed next week.

Judiciary Committee Republicans said looking into the Willey case does not represent a major expansion of the inquiry, but merely a way to provide more evidence to support allegations of obstruction of justice or abuse of power, two of the counts the committee may consider.

Some committee members want Hyde to call John Huang, a former Clinton fund-raiser, to seek testimony on his knowledge of a $100,000 payment to former Justice Department official Webster Hubbell from Indonesia's Riady family while Hubbell, an Arkansas friend of the Clintons, was under investigation.

Committee sources said no decision had been made on whether to summon Huang, prominent in the 1996 fund-raising scandals, to develop a circumstantial case against Clinton that the president knew about alleged hush money paid to Hubbell from the Riadys.

Calling Huang would be seen as a significant and controversial expansion of the inquiry. Starr, who investigated hush-money payments to Hubbell, did not list that as one of the counts of his impeachment referral to Congress. ``I would be surprised if they called Huang,'' said Barrett.

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PHOTO Kenneth Starr may have energized the House Judiciary Committee, but the House is believed likely to reject impeachment in a floor vote.

Doug Mills/Associated Press