The Office of the Independent Counsel (OIC or Office) hereby submits substantial and credible information that President William Jefferson Clinton committed acts that may constitute grounds for an impeachment.
(1) The information reveals that President Clinton: lied under oath at a civil deposition while he was a defendant in a sexual harassment lawsuit; lied under oath to a grand jury; attempted to influence the testimony of a potential witness who had direct knowledge of facts that would reveal the falsity of his deposition testimony; attempted to obstruct justice by facilitating a witness's plan to refuse to comply with a subpoena; attempted to obstruct justice by encouraging a witness to file an affidavit that the President knew would be false, and then by making use of that false affidavit at his own deposition; lied to potential grand jury witnesses, knowing that they would repeat those lies before the grand jury; and engaged in a pattern of conduct that was inconsistent with his constitutional duty to faithfully execute the laws.
The evidence shows that these acts, and others, were part of a pattern that began as an effort to prevent the disclosure of information about the President's relationship with a former White House intern and employee,Monica S. Lewinsky, and continued as an effort to prevent the information from being disclosed in an ongoing criminal investigation.
Monica Lewinsky's account of her affair with the President
In light of the President's testimony, Ms Lewinsky's accounts of their sexual encounters are indispensable for two reasons. First, the detail and consistency of these accounts tend to bolster Ms Lewinsky's credibility. Second, and particularly important, Ms Lewinsky contradicts the President on a key issue. According to Ms Lewinsky, the President touched her breasts and genitalia - which means that his conduct met the Jones definition of sexual relations even under his theory. On these matters, the evidence of the President's perjury cannot be presented without specific, explicit, and possibly offensive descriptions of sexual encounters. According to Ms Lewinsky, she and the President had 10 sexual encounters, eight while she worked at the White House and two thereafter. The sexual encounters generally occurred in or near the private study off the Oval Office - most often in the windowless hallway outside the study. During many of their sexual encounters, the President stood leaning against the doorway of the bathroom across from the study, which, he told Ms Lewinsky, eased his sore back.
Ms Lewinsky testified that her physical relationship with the President included oral sex but not sexual intercourse. According to Ms Lewinsky, she performed oral sex on the President; he never performed oral sex on her. Initially, according to Ms Lewinsky, the President would not let her perform oral sex to completion. In Ms Lewinsky's understanding, his refusal was related to "trust and not knowing me well enough". During their last two sexual encounters, both in 1997, he did ejaculate.
According to Ms Lewinsky, she performed oral sex on the President on nine occasions. On all nine of those occasions, the President fondled and kissed her bare breasts. He touched her genitals, both through her underwear and directly, bringing her to orgasm on two occasions. On one occasion, the President inserted a cigar into her vagina. On another occasion, she and the President had brief genital-to-genital contact.
Whereas the President testified that "what began as a friendship came to include [intimate contact]," Ms Lewinsky explained that the relationship moved in the opposite direction: "[T]he emotional and friendship aspects . . . developed after the beginning of our sexual relationship."
Emotional attachment
As the relationship developed over time, Ms Lewinsky grew emotionally attached to President Clinton. She testified: "I never expected to fall in love with the President. I was surprised that I did." Ms Lewinsky told him of her feelings. At times, she believed that he loved her too. They were physically affectionate: "A lot of hugging, holding hands sometimes. He always used to push the hair out of my face." She called him "Handsome"; on occasion, he called her "Sweetie," "Baby," or sometimes "Dear". He told her that he enjoyed talking to her - she recalled his saying that the two of them were "emotive and full of fire", and she made him feel young. He said he wished he could spend more time with her.
Ms Lewinsky told confidants of the emotional underpinnings of the relationship as it evolved. According to her mother, Marcia Lewis, the President once told Ms Lewinsky that she "had been hurt a lot or something by different men and that he would be her friend or he would help her, not hurt her." According to Ms Lewinsky's friend Neysa Erbland, President Clinton once confided in Ms Lewinsky that he was uncertain whether he would remain married after he left the White House. He said in essence, "[W]ho knows what will happen four years from now when I am out of office?" Ms Lewinsky thought, according to Ms Erbland, that "maybe she will be his wife".
Conversations and phone messages
Ms Lewinsky testified that she and the President "enjoyed talking to each other and being with each other". In her recollection, "We would tell jokes. We would talk about our childhoods. Talk about current events. I was always giving him my stupid ideas about what I thought should be done in the administration or different views on things." One of Ms Lewinsky's friends testified that, in her understanding, "[The President] would talk about his childhood and growing up, and [Ms Lewinsky] would relay stories about her childhood and growing up. I guess normal conversations that you would have with someone that you're getting to know." The longer conversations often occurred after their sexual contact. Ms Lewinsky testified: "[W]hen I was working there [at the White House] . . . we'd start in the back [in or near the private study] and we'd talk and that was where we were physically intimate, and we'd usually end up, kind of the pillow talk of it, I guess . . . sitting in the Oval Office . . ." During several meetings when they were not sexually intimate, they talked in the Oval Office or in the area of the study. Along with faceto-face meetings, according to Ms Lewinsky, she spoke on the telephone with the President approximately 50 times, often after 10 p.m. and sometimes well after midnight. The President placed the calls himself or, during working hours, had his secretary, Betty Currie, do so; Ms Lewinsky could not telephone him directly, though she sometimes reached him through Ms Currie. Ms Lewinsky testified: "[W]e spent hours on the phone talking." Their telephone conversations were "[s]imilar to what we discussed in person, just how we were doing. A lot of discussions about my job, when I was trying to come back to the White House and then once I decided to move to New York . . . We talked about everything under the sun." On 10 to 15 occasions, she and the President had phone sex. After phone sex late one night, the President fell asleep mid-conversation. On four occasions, the President left very brief messages on Ms Lewinsky's answering machine, though he told her that he did not like doing so because (in her recollection) he "felt it was a little unsafe". She saved his messages and played the tapes for several confidants, who said they believed that the voice was the President's.
By phone and in person, according to Ms Lewinsky, she and the President sometimes had arguments. On a number of occasions in 1997, she complained that he had not brought her back from the Pentagon to work in the White House, as he had promised to do after the election. In a face-to-face meeting on July 4, 1997, the President reprimanded her for a letter she had sent him that obliquely threatened to disclose their relationship. During an argument on December 6, 1997, according to Ms Lewinsky, the President said that "he had never been treated as poorly by anyone else as I treated him," and added that "he spent more time with me than anyone else in the world, aside from his family, friends and staff, which I don't know exactly which category that put me in".
Testifying before the grand jury, the President confirmed that he and Ms Lewinsky had had personal conversations, and he acknowledged that their telephone conversations sometimes included "inappropriate sexual banter". The President said that Ms Lewinsky told him about "her personal life", "her upbringing", and "her job ambitions". After terminating their intimate relationship in 1997, he said, he tried "to be a friend to Ms Lewinsky, to be a counsellor to her, to give her good advice, and to help her".
Gifts
Ms Lewinsky and the President exchanged numerous gifts. By her estimate, she gave him about 30 items, and he gave her about 18. Ms Lewinsky's first gift to him was a matted poem given by her and other White House interns to commemorate "National Boss Day", October 24, 1995. This was the only item reflected in White House records that Ms Lewinsky gave the President before (in her account) the sexual relationship began, and the only item that he sent to the archives instead of keeping. On November 20 - five days after the intimate relationship began, according to Ms Lewinsky - she gave him a necktie, which he chose to keep rather than send to the archives. According to Ms Lewinsky, the President telephoned the night she gave him the tie, then sent her a photo of himself wearing it. The tie was logged pursuant to White House procedures for gifts to the President. In a draft note to the President in December 1997, Ms Lewinsky wrote that she was "very particular about presents and could never give them to anyone else - they were all bought with you in mind". Many of the 30 or so gifts that she gave the President reflected his interests in history, antiques, cigars, and frogs. Ms Lewinsky gave him, among other things, six neckties, an antique paperweight showing the White House, a silver tabletop holder for cigars or cigarettes, a pair of sunglasses, a casual shirt, a mug emblazoned "Santa Monica", a frog figurine, a letter opener depicting a frog, several novels, a humorous book of quotations, and several antique books. He gave her, among other things, a hat pin, two brooches, a blanket, a marble bear figurine, and a special edition of Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass. Ms Lewinsky construed it as a sign of affection when the President wore a necktie or other item of clothing she had given him. She testified: "I used to say to him that `I like it when you wear my ties because then I know I'm close to your heart'. So - literally and figuratively." The President was aware of her reaction, according to Ms Lewinsky, and he would sometimes wear one of the items to reassure her - occasionally on the day they were scheduled to meet or the day after they had met in person or talked by telephone. The President would sometimes say to her, "Did you see I wore your tie the other day?" In his grand jury testimony, the President acknowledged that he had exchanged a number of gifts with Ms Lewinsky. After their intimate relationship ended in 1997, he testified, "[S]he continued to give me gifts. And I felt that it was a right thing to do to give her gifts back."
Messages
According to Ms Lewinsky, she sent the President a number of cards and letters. In some, she expressed anger that he was "not paying enough attention to me"; in others, she said she missed him; in still others, she just sent "a funny card that I saw". In early January 1998, she sent him, along with an antique book about American presidents, "[a]n embarrassing mushy note". She testified that the President never sent her any cards or notes other than formal thank-you letters. Testifying before the grand jury, the President acknowledged having received cards and notes from Ms Lewinsky that were "somewhat intimate" and "quite affectionate", even after the intimate relationship ended.