JONES' LAWYERS GOING ON OFFENSIVE; TEAM TRIES TO PAINT CLINTON AS PREDATOR.

Byline: Francis X. Clines The New York Times

Trying to bolster their sexual-misconduct suit against President Clinton, lawyers for Paula Jones on Friday released 600 pages of sometimes graphic court documents in which they sought to portray Clinton as repeatedly engaging in sexual harassment of female underlings from his executive positions in government.

Most dramatic in the court attack was the sworn deposition of Kathleen Willey, a former White House office worker who described the president sexually groping her against her will in an Oval Office hallway Nov. 9, 1993.

``I recall him saying that he wanted to do that for a long time,'' Willey testified in a Jan. 10 deposition.

The alleged incident, which the president firmly denied in his deposition, is a critical element in the Jones case's attempt to portray Clinton as an executive who abused his authority and preyed on female subordinates. He approached Willey in Washington for office sex, the lawyers argued, just as Jones was harassed in Arkansas when she was a state clerical worker in the Clinton administration.

The salvo of court documents was immediately denounced as ``a pack of lies'' by Clinton's main lawyer in the case, Robert Bennett, who said it was part of ``an organized campaign to smear the president of the United States'' through a groundless lawsuit financed by Clinton's political enemies.

Arguing against the president's motion to dismiss the Jones suit, Jones' lawyers submitted a ream of paper and a lengthy brief insisting that she did indeed suffer emotional anguish and job discrimination after, by her account, she rebuffed Clinton's sexual advances seven years ago in an Arkansas hotel room when he was governor.

Thick with quotations

The court filing was thick with deposition quotations from Clinton denying sexual liaisons with a number of women, notably Monica Lewinsky. She is the former White House intern who is at the heart of a separate criminal investigation of Clinton into charges that he sought to have her lie under oath in the Jones case about a sexual relationship that she reportedly told friends she had had with him.

``Did you ever have a sexual affair with Monica Lewinsky?'' Clinton was asked Jan. 17, just as the criminal investigation was quietly begun by Kenneth Starr, the Whitewater independent counsel.

``No,'' the president replied. When asked whether Lewinsky would lie about such an affair, Clinton declared: ``It's certainly not the truth. It would not be the truth.''

The new court papers included Lewinsky's sworn affidavit denying an affair with the president. The affidavit was composed before Starr opened his inquiry on the strength of secret tape recordings in which Lewinsky reportedly admitted repeated sexual encounters with Clinton at the White House.

The presidential deposition released Friday confirmed a number of revelations reported earlier, including Clinton's confirmation, after years of denial, that he had had sex with Gennifer Flowers, a one-time Arkansas employee.

With the Lewinsky matter thus far excluded from the Jones suit because of Starr's criminal inquiry, Jones' lawyers consider Willey's deposition crucial in their attempt to prove a pattern of sexual behavior by Clinton involving women in subordinate government jobs.

In releasing Willey's deposition, Jones' main lawyer, Donovan Campbell Jr., pointedly noted that she was a reluctant witness who subsequently corrected her testimony on a potentially key point.

Sunday broadcast

Some or all of Willey's side of the story is expected to be broadcast nationally Sunday in an interview on ``60 Minutes,'' the CBS television show on which Clinton first categorically denied an affair with Flowers at the height of the 1992 presidential election.

In his January deposition, the president, though finally confirming a sexual encounter with Flowers, was precise in denying Willey's report that he had sought to kiss her and fondle her breasts in an encounter in his private dining room off the Oval Office.

``I emphatically deny it,'' Clinton said. ``It did not happen.''

``Do you know why she would tell a story like that if it weren't true?'' he was asked.

``No, sir, I don't,'' the president replied. ``I don't know.

``She'd been through a lot,'' he added, referring to the crisis in Willey's family life that had prompted her to ask to speak to the president, a crisis that ended with her husband's suicide amid heavy debts.

With the Jones case scheduled for trial in Little Rock on May 27, the documents released Friday were denounced by Bennett as ``scurrilous'' and clearly not relevant to the case. ``They have recycled a bunch of old rumors,'' he said, comparing the filing to ``a big piece of cotton candy - when you bite into it, it just doesn't exist.''

But Jones' lawyers signaled their intended points of emphasis in the trial. They underlined previously disclosed testimony by Arkansas state troopers that they had regularly escorted sexual partners to Clinton when he was governor.

Bennett noted that the troopers' stories were recently criticized by David Brock, a right-wing writer who originally wrote about the alleged sexual incidents in a critical fashion but who apologized to the president this week, now insisting, ``The troopers were greedy and had slimy motives.''

The Jones team argued there has been a widespread attempt by such Clinton loyalists as Bruce Lindsey to suppress all sorts of sexual allegations over the years - an attempt to build an obstruction of justice in the civil case to parallel Starr's inquiry. As part of this point, the Jones team released the declaration of Linda Tripp, an erstwhile friend of Lewinsky's who furtively taped the intern's tales and eventually cooperated with both Starr and Jones' lawyers.

Clinton has denied Jones' charges that he suddenly dropped his trousers and demanded oral sex in a private encounter with her. He had no specific memory of Jones, he testified, until she began making her allegations.