Intern's testimony still uncertain

WASHINGTON - Lawyers for Monica Lewinsky and independent counsel Kenneth Starr appeared closer to a cooperation agreement yesterday under which Lewinsky would testify about whether she had a sexual relationship with President Clinton and whether he urged her to deny it.

Starr's staff continued Monday night to review the verbal offer presented by Lewinsky's lawyers. Starr's next step, if prosecutors believe the information in the offer conforms sufficiently to the version of events originally alleged by Lewinsky in privately recorded conversations with a friend, is to interview Lewinsky in detail to resolve any inconsistencies. Her story would have to be put on paper before any plea agreement or immunity deal is reached.

Lewinsky's lawyer William Ginsburg has been sparring with Starr's office for more than a week regarding his insistence that she be guaranteed total immunity from prosecution before she would put her offer in writing. Prosecutors have been equally insistent on guarantees of exactly what testimony she is prepared to give before they offer immunity.

"We're still waiting" for Starr's response to the verbal offer made Monday, Ginsburg said late yesterday. "We've heard nothing. We didn't realistically expect to hear anything until after the State of the Union" that Clinton presented last night.

On the tape recordings, Lewinsky reportedly told her one time confidant, Linda Tripp, that Clinton and his close friend Vernon Jordan, Jr. were urging her to deny the sexual relationship she said she had had with the president. Former White House intern Lewinsky, who'd been confiding in Tripp for months, also urged Tripp to lie about what she knew of the affair when she was questioned under oath by attorneys representing Paula Jones in her sexual harassment case against Clinton.

Sources have said that Clinton testified in his Jan. 17 deposition in the Jones case and said he did not have a sexual relationship with Lewinsky. Ten days earlier, in response to her own subpoena in the Jones case, Lewinsky provided Jones' lawyers a sworn affidavit denying it as well. If she is now prepared to testify that she did have such a relationship, she gives federal prosecutors an important piece of evidence for building a perjury case against the president.

The Jones lawyers sought to interview Lewinsky and Tripp - both former White House aides - to bolster the sexual harassment claim by demonstrating a pattern of extramarital sexual behavior on Clinton's part.

Sources who have listened to the tape recordings said Lewinsky was alarmed over the possibility of having to testify in the Jones case, and recounted to Tripp how she called Clinton to ask what to do. Lewinsky told Tripp that Clinton said she should deny the affair. At some point during the week after Christmas, after she received the subpoena Dec. 17, Lewinsky and Clinton met privately in the West Wing of the White House, according to a knowledgeable source.

The White House yesterday said it would neither confirm nor deny that the meeting took place. Administration officials continue to refuse to release entry and exit records that would show when and whom Lewinsky visited in the White House. She was moved to a job in the Pentagon in the spring of 1996 by aides who thought she was becoming a presidential groupie.

Meanwhile, Clinton's personal secretary, Betty Currie, was called as the leadoff witness by Starr before a grand jury hearing evidence about the Lewinksy matter. Currie, who is the gatekeeper outside the Oval Office, cleared Lewinksy into the White House for visits and helped her line up interviews for jobs outside the government.

When she left the closed-door grand jury proceedings after three hours, Currie immediately was encircled by dozens of television cameramen and reporters. Her lawyer, Lawrence Wechsler, said "She won't be talking. ... She's going back to work."

John Whitehead of the Rutherford Institute, a foundation footing the legal bills for Paula Jones, delivered documents to the grand jury yesterday regarding Lewinsky, including materials dealing with the Jones investigation into whether Lewinsky was sexually involved with Clinton.

But Whitehead did not give the grand jury a copy of Clinton's deposition in the Jones case. U.S. District Judge Susan Webber Wright, who is hearing that case in Little Rock, Ark., held a telephone conference call yesterday on whether she will lift her confidentiality order and allow the deposition to be turned over to Starr.

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