Dan Guthrie felt goose bumps in July 1996 as he walked by the two Marines at the White House door and into the luxurious Map Room, its walls with original war maps that President Franklin Roosevelt agonized over during World War II.
President Clinton suddenly entered the room, appearing hale and friendly, and he shook hands with the dozen or so assembled lawyers. The event was at Guthrie’s behest; he represented two bankers who had been indicted by Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr, and he had to get Clinton’s testimony.
Judge Susan Webber Wright began by swearing in the president. She added, “For the record, please state your occupation.”
A slight smile flitted across Clinton’s face.
“I’m the president,” he said, pausing dramatically, “of the United States.”
A brief silence followed. “Even Starr’s people were affected by that moment,” Guthrie recalled recently. “And I realized, in my feeble brain, `Maybe this is not just another case after all.’ “
On Monday, Clinton will testify once again at the White House, and if anything, the atmosphere will be even more charged. This time, the president will be directly under fire, and the questioning will stem from allegations that could destroy his presidency.
The very few lawyers who have interviewed a U.S. president describe one big challenge–balancing respect and even awe for the presidency with an obligation to treat the most powerful man in the world like just another witness.
“You cannot help but be affected by exposure to such a historic spot as the White House,” said Guthrie, who won his case with the help of Clinton’s testimony. “Forget that it’s Bill Clinton. Forget that it’s Ken Starr. The fact that any man is president of the United States is something I think every American holds in a special regard.”
Sam Heuer, a Little Rock, Ark., attorney who questioned Clinton in 1996, recalled a similar sensation. “It’s an incredible experience, the aura of it,” Heuer said. “I felt like, `Here is this little country lawyer from Arkansas in the big city.’ “
The danger, perhaps, is that such feelings may overwhelm a lawyer’s ability to ask tough but necessary questions. That seems less of a danger for Starr’s team of seasoned prosecutors, who have a testy relationship with Clinton.
In what may be a sign of the times, several recent presidents have been questioned by lawyers at one time or another–though never, before Clinton, as a prosecutor’s primary target.
President Gerald Ford, for example, testified about an assassination attempt, and President Jimmy Carter gave depositions in two criminal trials. President Ronald Reagan was interrogated in the Iran-contra investigation after he left office.
In all, at least eight presidents have given testimony in criminal proceedings. Clinton has been questioned five times while president, including a hard-hitting session in January with lawyers in the Paula Jones sexual-harassment case.
These episodes may be instructive as prosecutors try to figure out how to ask Clinton pointed questions about details of his sex life while also maintaining respect for the office held by Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln.
“You can say all you want that it’s just another witness, but the fact is it’s not just another witness,” said Dan Webb, a Chicago attorney who cross-examined Reagan in 1990. “It seemed almost surrealistic to me that I was questioning the president of the United States.”
A prosecutor in the Iran-contra investigation, Webb traveled to Los Angeles to question Reagan as part of a case against former National Security Adviser John Poindexter.
Webb found himself having to be tougher with Reagan than he had expected.
“Quite frankly, I was in crisis mode,” Webb said. “I had to get over the fact that he was the president of the United States. I had to pursue him, be firm and pointed, and could not allow him to get off the hook by giving me presidential answers.”
Independent Counsel Lawrence Walsh, who headed the Iran-contra probe, questioned Reagan in 1992. By then, Reagan was beginning to show the effects of Alzheimer’s disease, and Walsh found the situation poignant rather than adversarial.
Reagan handed out licorice jelly beans and struggled to be helpful. He eagerly took Walsh to the window to show him the panorama of Los Angeles. When he could not remember an event, Reagan would instead launch into an account of his famous meeting with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev.
“It was very touching,” Walsh recalled. “He was very proud of that. He was trying to show he had some recollection.”
Carter projected an aura of a different sort, less grand and more down-to-earth. In 1992, a group of congressional lawyers trooped down to the Carter Center in Atlanta to ask him about the “October surprise,” the now-discredited notion that Reagan’s allies worked to delay the release of Iran’s U.S. hostages until after the 1980 election.
Just before the interview began, Rosalyn Carter, who had been traveling, stopped by to see her husband and the two embraced.
Nancy Luque, who was then a Democratic staff attorney and a big fan of Carter, recalled becoming emotionally caught up in the interview. She wanted to know how Carter felt about the October surprise allegations–a question she now says was inappropriate.
“If there is any lesson that translates to what’s going on now, it’s that you have to be responsible about the kind of information you seek,” Luque said. “You have to not be a voyeur.”
Monday’s interrogation of Clinton is likely to be far more adversarial than previous presidential interviews.
Among other things, grand jurors will be able to pepper Clinton with questions via closed-circuit television, making the session even more tense and unpredictable.
Still, Clinton will be well-prepared, and by all accounts, he is a good witness and a lawyer.
The nation’s willingness to subject its leader to withering legal interrogation, scholars say, reflects Americans’ conflicting wishes for the president. They want him to be a majestic figure but also a man of the people.
“Every president in the modern era has to walk that fine line,” said Jim Pfiffner, a presidential scholar at George Mason University. “On the one hand, we respect them and want them to have everything they want. On the other hand, they are very constrained–and one aspect of that is when we question them in a judicial matter.”
