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Professors, historians to speak on background of impeachment
Updated November 3, 1998
3:25 a.m. ET
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Law professors, historians, a former lawmaker
from President Nixon's impeachment inquiry and a former attorney
general head the witness list for a House hearing next Monday on
"The Background and History of Impeachment."
While the Judiciary subcommittee on the Constitution prepared
for the hearing, a deputy to Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr
offered to discuss with Democratic investigators their request to
review sensitive material from the prosecutor's investigation.
The hearing list released Monday includes noted historian Arthur
M. Schlesinger Jr., a Kennedy administration White House aide. He
was among 400 historians who signed a statement last week
maintaining that President Clinton's conduct with Monica Lewinsky
was not an impeachable offense.
The list also includes Carter administration Attorney General
Griffin Bell, law professor Laurence Tribe of Harvard University
and the Rev. Robert Drinan, a law professor at Georgetown
University and former congressman who served on the House Judiciary
Committee during the Nixon impeachment investigation.
"I do not think the founders would have regarded this as a high
crime or misdemeanor," Schlesinger said last week. Drinan has said
he does not believe Clinton committed an impeachable offense.
A letter from Starr's office Monday, signed by Deputy Independent Counsel Robert J. Bittman, responded to a request last week from Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., senior Democrat in the impeachment investigation.
Conyers wants his investigative staff to review records that
supported expansion of Starr's investigation last January to the
Clinton-Lewinsky relationship, documents requesting court
permission to submit secret grand jury material to Congress and
other internal materials.
Bittman, repeating his caution of last week, described the
documents as voluminous, part of an active investigation and very
sensitive.
"Although I cannot commit to providing you the documents you
request, in light of ... the sensitivity of the materials, I think
it best that your staff contact me ... to discuss how to make
relevant materials available ... without jeopardizing our ongoing
investigation," he wrote Conyers.
Other material sought by the Democrats:
-- FBI reports on whether audio tapes provided by Linda Tripp of
her conversations with Ms. Lewinsky were altered or duplicated.
-- All "rough notes" for any interviews of witnesses whose
testimony was sent to Congress as part of Starr's Sept. 9 referral.
-- All pictures taken by Starr's agents during a meeting between
Ms. Lewinsky and Mrs. Tripp on Jan. 13 at an Arlington, Va., hotel,
when Mrs. Tripp was wearing an FBI listening device.
-- All additional grand jury testimony, interviews or depositions
taken from Mrs. Tripp or her friend Lucianne Goldberg since Starr's
referral was transmitted to Congress Sept. 9.
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