BY DAVID ESPO
Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON -- The House of Representatives is increasingly likely to vote for a formal impeachment inquiry in the next few weeks, congressional officials said Sunday, a step that could ratchet up the political jeopardy confronting President Clinton.
Officials in both political parties, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that if it takes such a step, the House would not necessarily limit its inquiry to Kenneth Starr's review of Mr. Clinton's sexual relationship with Monica Lewinsky and his attempts to deny it under oath.
Instead, these officials said, the House Judiciary Committee might be empowered to range over numerous other issues, from Whitewater to Mr. Clinton's involvement in questionable campaign fund-raising in 1996.
Attorney General Janet Reno has steadfastly refused to appoint an independent counsel to review campaign fund-raising.
These officials spoke as several Democrats, joined by a top Republican senator, talked publicly about a punishment short of impeachment for Mr. Clinton and demanded his lawyers end "legal hairsplitting" as they rebut Mr. Starr's report.
"There's going to be some sort of sanction here," said Sen. Orrin Hatch, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee. "The question is what -- from impeachment to censure to rebuke to condemnation or what," the Utah Republican said.
Added Rep. David Bonior of Michigan, the second-ranking House Democrat: "I think in the days and months ahead you will find people talking about the middle option, that of a public rebuke for his personal behavior."
One lawmaker, Rep. Vic Fazio, D-Calif., addressed the issue of a formal impeachment inquiry during the day in an appearance on ABC. "Ultimately, if the president and the Congress want to have the due process that they are both allowed in this instance, we may end up going to that next level," said the California Democrat, third-ranking member of his party in the House.
A second lawmaker, Rep. Asa Hutchinson, R-Ark., a member of the Judiciary Committee, said in a telephone interview, "It would be very hard to avoid an impeachment inquiry with the seriousness of the allegations and the review that we're going through now." Such a vote, if it occurs in the next few weeks, would take place in the shadow of the midterm elections. As a result, it would leave Democrats in the position of having to choose between a deeper investigation of Mr. Clinton on the one hand, or laying themselves open to campaign charges of attempting to cover up his alleged wrongdoings on the other.
Mr. Clinton skipped church services during the day, remaining out of the public eye in the White House.
But with his presidency clearly in peril, his lawyers and aides fanned out across the Sunday TV talk shows to declare that whatever his transgressions, Mr. Clinton committed no impeachable offenses. Mr. Starr's report, released Friday, cites 11 potentially impeachable offenses, all stemming from Mr. Clinton's sexual relationship with former intern Monica Lewinsky -- described in explicit detail -- and his later denials under oath.
The White House issued a blistering rebuttal Saturday that accused Mr. Starr of a "hit-and-run smear campaign" without legal merit.
Mr. Clinton's lead attorney, David Kendall, argued in the same vein in an appearance on ABC's This Week program: "The president did not commit perjury. Mr. Starr's report is full of graphic and unnecessarily salacious material. It is not relevant."
That type of lawyerly defense drew dismissive reaction from Sen. Bob Kerrey, D-Neb. "The president's going to lose if they continue to do that," Mr. Kerrey said, appearing alongside Mr. Hatch on Face the Nation on CBS.
"He is being very badly served with this legal hairsplitting," agreed Mr. Hatch. "I think the president has a chance of getting through this, if he'll quit splitting legal hairs, if he'll quit playing this legal game."
At the same time, the White House's counterattack against Mr. Starr was achieving success among the public. A CBS poll, taken Saturday, found 60 percent of those responding thought Mr. Starr included numerous lurid sexual details in his report to embarrass the president. Only 33 percent thought it was to prove perjury. Mr. Clinton's political fate will begin to come into clearer focus at the beginning of the week, when lawmakers return to Washington from a weekend of campaigning and testing public opinion in their home districts.
Even before Judiciary Committee members have a chance to complete their review of Mr. Starr's evidence, officials expressed a growing belief that the House is likely to take the next step and vote a formal impeachment inquiry.
It would be up to the panel to recommend such a step, and the entire House would have to approve it.
It is not clear whether such a vote would be preceded by a public hearing. Republicans have talked for months about the possibility of convening a hearing, possibly to permit Mr. Starr to lay out his evidence, and for a representative of the president to offer a rebuttal. Still, the Judiciary Committee would presumably be free to call any witness it chooses -- ranging from Mr. Starr to Mr. Kendall to Ms. Lewinsky to Linda Tripp, the woman who tape-recorded her conversations with Ms. Lewinsky and later notified Mr. Starr's office of the existence of such recordings.
A Judiciary Committee aide said no decision about a hearing has been made.
A few committee members have begun looking through the 17 boxes of material that Mr. Starr submitted as backup to the report that has been made public.
Lawmakers also will pay attention to public opinion in the weeks just before an election.
The first few polls taken in the wake of Mr. Starr's report suggested the public continues to give Mr. Clinton high marks for job performance, yet wants to see him punished in some way.
A narrow majority in an ABC News poll, 53 percent, said they favor impeachment hearings. A majority in a CBS News poll, 56 percent, and the CNN poll, 59 percent, said they favor censure for the president. The ABC phone survey of 508 adults Saturday had a margin of error of plus or minus 4.5 percentage points. The CBS phone survey of 680 adults and the CNN phone survey of 902 adults, both on Saturday, had margins of error of plus or minus 4 percentage points.
