Senate will not end trial

WASHINGTON - Senate Republicans rejected a bid to dismiss President Clinton's impeachment trial yesterday, rammed through their own plan to question three witnesses in the case and then immediately plunged into talks with Democrats on a plan that could end the trial by mid-February.

Although the dismissal motion lost, 56-44, the vote was noteworthy for Democrats - and Clinton - because it showed what until now has only been surmised: The two-thirds majority needed to convict the president of "high crimes and misdemeanors" simply is not there, barring some major unforeseen development.

"The president will not be removed from office," Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle (D-S.D.) declared moments after the votes. "For the good of the country, and in keeping with the Constitution, it is now time to end this trial. It is now time to move on."

But Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.) ignored such talk and focused instead on the logistics of deposing the witnesses, all proposed by House Republican prosecutors. "I feel good about where we are, and we'll go forward," Lott said.

The questioning of the witnesses - Monica Lewinsky, whose affair with Clinton sparked the impeachment case, presidential confidant Vernon Jordan and White House aide Sidney Blumenthal - could occur as soon as this weekend.

As of last night, however, Lott and Daschle were unable to agree on a blueprint governing the logistics of the depositions, as well as the remainder of the trial.

Before leaving the Capitol, Lott said both sides hoped to unveil an agreement today that will win the blessings of Republicans and Democrats.

The vote approving witnesses mirrored the vote rejecting dismissal - 56-44. The witness issue had loomed as the most contentious procedural issue since the Senate trial began earlier this month.

Except for a lone Democrat who twice sided with the GOP majority - Russell Feingold of Wisconsin - the back-to-back votes yesterday broke along party lines.

"Calling witnesses will not serve any good purpose, but will, instead, only intensify the spread of the cancer of the bitter political partisanship on the Senate floor and throughout the nation," said Sen. Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.) author of the defeated motion to dismiss the trial.

With the approval of the witness list, the immediate challenge facing Lott and Daschle was to agree on the array of details surrounding the depositions - such as what parties may attend, how much time each witness is to be deposed and whether the sessions will be videotaped.

Some Democrats expressed the hope that the three witnesses will add nothing new to the record - and thus the White House would forego calling its own witnesses.

In such a case, Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) said, the trial could then go right to final arguments and then votes on the two articles of impeachment.

Republicans had offered a plan that they said could end the proceeding within 10 days - if the president's lawyers do not call witnesses.

The GOP plan also contained a proposal to allow the Senate to adopt a "finding of fact," putting the chamber on record as stating that the allegations against Clinton are true - but not require members to formally convict him, which would automatically lead to removal from office. But Democrats are vehemently opposed to that suggestion.

Another snag surfaced when some Republican senators expressed opposition to a plan to set a time for the trial to end - because they fear that might foreclose the opportunity to call live witnesses, as sought by the House prosecutors, sources said last night.

Before leaving the Capitol for the night, Lott and Daschle said the two sides were narrowing their differences and that the final plan could end the trial by Feb. 12.

The two key roll-call votes early yesterday afternoon came after more than 55 hours of arguments by House GOP prosecutors and White House lawyers and on the 13th day of the nation's second-ever presidential impeachment trial.

Aside from Feingold, the other 44 Senate Democrats voted to dismiss the case. Thus even if all 55 Republicans voted to oust Clinton, they would need 12 Democrats to join them to reach the required two-thirds majority.

By prior agreement, there was no floor debate preceding yesterday's votes. Each had been debated by the Senate in closed sessions earlier this week.

If the three witnesses could be deposed this weekend, Lott said, the trial could resume as early as Tuesday.

But whether or not the depositions can actually take place remains uncertain. Two of the three are not in town. Lewinsky has returned to Los Angeles after meeting over the weekend with three House prosecutors. Jordan is attending a business conference in Switzerland.

A speedy trial resolution, said Sen. Joseph Lieberman (D-Conn.), would require not only "a lot of very quick movement in terms of depositions," but also "the president's counsel to forgo some of the discovery in the legal sense that they said they felt they had to do to protect the interest of their client."

Clinton press secretary Joe Lockhart raised the prospect that the depositions could be delayed when he argued for full access to the documents of the House prosecutors. "We believe that it's a fundamental issue of fairness that the accused gets a right to, and access to, the same material that the prosecution gets," he said.

But in a statement after the Senate votes, Gregory Craig, special counsel to the president, stated: "Any proceedings from this date forward only serve to delay the final resolution."

House managers seemed generally satisfied with the day's result, even though they initially had sought as many as 15 witnesses.

"The good news for the day is that we'll have a trial to conclusion," said Rep. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.). "It would not be under the procedures I would like. But at the end of the day we'll have a base for whether or not the articles (of impeachment) were proven ..."

Feingold cited similar reasoning in explaining why he broke ranks with his fellow Democrats, saying dismissing the trial and refusing the witness request would unfairly short-circuit the procedure.

But Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California said she and many other Senate Democrats are concerned that the deposing of witnesses "will turn into a type of fishing expedition ... to embroider, to expand ... and really, in fact, humiliate this president more than he has already been humiliated."

The House prosecutors, meanwhile, continued pressing the need for live testimony, especially from Lewinsky.

Under the procedures worked out at the start of the Senate trial, another vote is required to approve live testimony. And some GOP senators stressed that their vote in favor of deposing witnesses should not be construed to mean they favor having testimony in the Senate chamber itself.

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