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WASHINGTON: If there was ever a time for healing, this was it. President Clinton seized his final opportunity to express sorrow before the release of Ken Starr's report Friday at a widely televised White House prayer breakfast. The stony mask he wore during the August 17 speech to the nation was gone; in its place, glistening eyes and a cracking voice. "It is important to me that everybody who has been hurt know that the sorrow that I feel is genuine -- first and most important my family, also my friends, my staff, my Cabinet, Monica Lewinsky and her family...
...enthused Rabbi Edward Cohn of Los Angeles. And as if to complete his portrayal of a perfectly penitent sinner, Clinton promised to seek "pastoral support and help from others." What could be missing from the apology this time round? Only the timing. With House members voting to release the Starr report just hours after the prayer breakfast, it wasn't too little, but it may have come too late...
WASHINGTON: They say a gentleman never tells -- and although that bit about the cigar raises questions about whether Bill Clinton is a gentleman, the legal impact of the Ken Starr's 445-page introductory report may hinge on whether Congress interprets the President's non-sexual behavior as manly discretion or what Ken Starr calls, over and over, obstruction...
...from that legal standpoint, obstruction may be the weakest link in Starr's case. The independent counsel has accepted Monica's assertion that she, not Bruce Lindsey, wrote the "talking points." And the discrepancies between Betty Currie's testimony and Monica's -- which Starr seizes on as evidence of Presidential influence -- certainly cut the other way too. "Starr has relied on Lewinsky's version of events as accurate and has reported Currie's contradictory evidence dismissively," says TIME Washington correspondent Elaine Shannon. "But any good defense lawyer would assert that Currie's credibility is greater than that of Lewinsky...
...alleged obstructions, such as the "Titanic"-inspired mash note and the suggested cover stories, rely on Monica's account alone. "Anything substantive took place out of earshot of anyone else -- it's all dependent on that," says TIME senior writer Jeffrey Kluger, who is also a lawyer. And Starr's relentlessly salacious drags Monica through the mud right along with Clinton. "Starr may have done himself a disservice by presenting the naked Lewinsky," says Kluger. "She becomes a less credible, less stable witness." Of course, this case isn't going to court -- it's going to Congress. But if House...