BY TED BRIDIS
The Associated Press
WASHINGTON - Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates accused Justice Department lawyers Wednesday of trying "to put words in my mouth" in the trial of their antitrust suit against his company.
Mr. Gates, in a telephone interview, said he "answered every question completely, truthfully through many, many, many long days" when government lawyers deposed him last summer on videotape. The multibillionaire founder of Microsoft is not among the 24 witnesses scheduled to testify personally in the trial. But lawyers showed hours of the videotaped testimony in federal court in an effective effort to portray Mr. Gates as evasive.
On the tape, Mr. Gates dodges questions he believes overly broad, professes not to remember events and frequently asks government lawyers to restate their questions.
"If the government wanted me as a witness, they could have called me as a witness," Mr. Gates said Wednesday night. "Using the videotape in this way is, in a lot of ways, it's more about government P.R. than the substance of the case.
". . . The fact that they're taking snippets out of that and holding them up without having me there because they chose not to call me as a witness, I think, is quite novel," he said.
He accused David Boies, one of the Justice Department attorneys in the case, of "doing his best over many, many long days to put words in my mouth."
In its suit, the government alleges that Microsoft has used the dominance of its Windows computer operating system software to stifle competition from other software producers and technology companies.
The Justice Department and attorneys general from 20 states allege that Microsoft tried to maintain what they describe as its monopoly power over the software that runs most of the world's computers and then extend that dominance into new areas, such as the market for Internet software.
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