BY ALISON MITCHELL
The New York Times
WASHINGTON - After a passionate debate that was by turns solemn with history, fiercely partisan and at times sorrowful, the House Judiciary Committee voted along party lines Friday to impeach President Clinton and remove him from office for perjury and obstruction of justice.
About 4:20 P.M., the Republican-controlled committee, voting 21 to 16, late Friday afternoon charged Clinton in one article of impeachment with providing "perjurious, false and misleading testimony" last Aug. 17 before a grand jury investigating the Monica Lewinsky matter.
A few hours later, one Republican - Rep. Lindsey O. Graham of South Carolina - broke with his party as the committee voted 20 to 17 to approve a second article of impeachment on perjury, this time for Clinton's deposition in the Paula Corbin Jones sexual harassment case. Graham had long said he would not support impeachment for a lie in a civil case.
And then at 9:15 P.M., the committee again voted 21 to 16, this time to approve the third article, which accuses the president of obstruction of justice. The article accuses Mr. Clinton of trying to influence witnesses in the Lewinsky matter, including his personal secretary and the White House intern. The committee adjourned for the evening, planning to resume debate on the fourth article of impeachment, on abuse of power, on Saturday morning.
So what began with a civil sex harassment suit by an obscure Arkansas civil servant and was transformed into a criminal investigation of sex and mendacity by the president, left Clinton Friday as the third president to confront impeachment, with a House vote scheduled for next week.
Andrew Johnson was spared removal from office by one vote in the Senate after the House impeached him in 1868. Richard Nixon resigned in disgrace in the Watergate scandal 24 years ago after the Judiciary Committee approved three articles against him, but before the House voted.
On Friday Rep. Henry Hyde of Illinois, the chairman, brought the Judiciary Committee's ten-week ina close, insisting on the gravity of the case.
"When the president performs the public act of asking God to witness his promise to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, that is not trivial," the Illinois Republican said. "Whether it's a civil suit or before the grand jury, the significance of the oath cannot or must not be cheapened if our proud boast that we are a government of laws and not of men is to mean anything."
Mr. Clinton himself commented for the first time since the committee began televised proceedings. Just minutes before the committee was to take its first vote, the president walked into the Rose Garden and spoke once again of his remorse for his affair with Ms. Lewinsky. For the first time he publicly said he would accept a rebuke or censure. "Mere words cannot fully express the profound remorse I feel for what our country is going through and for what members of both parties in Congress are now forced to deal with," he said.
"These past months have been a torturous process of coming to terms with what I did," he said.
But Mr. Clinton stopped well short of the admission that some undecided Republicans were looking for that he had in fact lied under oath.
At the Judiciary Committee, most members left the debate to watch the president on television. Then, minutes later, in the same cavernous hearing room where Mr. Nixon's fate was weighed 24 years ago, they voted to approve the first article of impeachment and moved on to the second.
The committee is to vote today on articles accusing the president of obstruction of justice and abuse of power.
House Democrats on Friday argued that Mr. Clinton had deceived the nation, but said he did not deserve removal from office for lies about an affair.
"Wake up America" implored Rep. Robert Wexler of Florida, calling for the nation, which polls show overwhelmingly opposes impeachment, to make its feelings known.
The president's chances of avoiding trial in the Senate - where his opponents are exceedingly unlikely to get the 67 votes needed for conviction - rest with a few dozen Republican moderates. The vote in the full House, which is to return on Thursday, is considered too close to call.
In a sign that Mr. Clinton is not making headway, six previously undeclared Republicans came out in favor of impeachment or said they were leaning that way.
"I don't want this to be an endless process," Mr. Hyde said. "I think it's in the interest of the country to finish it, and we have tried to do our level best. And I have tried to grant every request the Democrats have made. Maybe I haven't succeeded, but I have certainly tried."
But as the long day went on the partisanship became ever more pronounced. Democrats fought to the end against every charge against Mr. Clinton and demanded to know precisely which of the president's statements were perjurious.
Rep. Barney Frank, a Massachusetts Democrat, charged that the Republicans were guilty of "deliberate vagueness and obfuscation" because they were prepared to impeach Mr. Clinton over definitions of sex.
"He didn't tell us what he touched, therefore it was perjury," Mr. Frank said, mocking the Republicans' case.
Recalling the Watergate scandal of 24 years ago, Republicans countered that the articles of impeachment against Nixon had also lacked a detailed bill of particulars.
And Rep. Charles Canady, a Florida Republican, noted that it was the Republican defenders of Nixon who had made the same demand for specifics.
Latest updates from Associated Press