Lawyer: Case is all semantics
White House special counsel says House Republicans went too far
WASHINGTON (AP) - A White House lawyer
Wednesday dismissed the charge that President
Clinton lied before a grand jury as nothing more
than “arguments over semantics” and accused
House Republicans of drawing conclusions more
extreme than those of Kenneth Starr. “It is hard to
take the charges seriously,” the lawyer told sena
tors.
White House special counsel Gregory Craig
opened a second day of defense aiguments by urg
ing senators in the impeachment trial to read the
grand jury testimony and “see the president is
truthful.”
Craig denounced the impeachment article that
accuses Clinton of perjury before a grand jury last
August as “really bad ... legally, structurally and
constitutionally.”
“If you convict and remove President Clinton
on the basis of these allegations, no president of the
United States will ever be safe from impeachment
again,” Craig said. Craig argued that House prose
cutors had wrongly tried to criminalize “utterly
meaningless” conflicts in testimony.
For example, Craig said the House prosecutors
were wrong to argue that Clinton had lied under
oath when he told the grand jury that he engaged in
intimate contact and sexual banter with Monica
Lewinsky “on certain occasions” in 1996 and 1997
when Lewinsky was a White House employee. She
testified the activity began in late 1995 when she
was still an intern.
“There is simply no way that a reasonable per
son can look at this testimony and conclude or
agree with the managers that it is a ‘direct lie.’
What message do the managers send to America
and to the rest of the world when they include these
kinds of allegations as reasons to remove this pres
ident from office?” Craig asked.
“It is hard to take the charges seriously, when in
each case they boil down to arguments over seman
tics,” he added.The president was out of
Washington on Wednesday, lobbying for policies
he introduced in his State of the Union speech
Tuesday night.
One prominent Republican, former presiden
tial candidate Pat Robertson, said today that
Clinton had “hit a home run” in his speech and had
dashed any possibility that he would be convicted
at the impeachment trial.
“From a public relations standpoint, he’s won.
u
It is hard to take the charges
seriouslywhen in each case
they boil down to arguments
over semantics."
Gregory Craig
White House special counsel *
... They might as well dismiss this impeachment
hearing and get on with something else, because
it’s over as far as I’m concerned,” Robertson said
on “The 700 Club” television show.
Before the defense resumed its rebuttal, sena
tors met privately in party caucuses. Republicans
emerged sounding more certain they will seek to
call at least some witnesses during the trial to
resolve conflicts in testimony.
“This all doesn’t need to go beyond mid
February, even with the deposition of witnesses,”
said John Czwartacki, the spokesman for Majority
Leader Trent Lott.
Kosovo fighting continues
despite NATO warnings
SIPOLJE, Yugoslavia (AP) - Serb
forces battled ethnic Albanian rebels in
northwestern Kosovo on Wednesday as
both sides ignored NATO warnings to
halt the fighting. At least two guerrillas
were killed and a Serb mother and her
two children were reported injured.
The deaths came in a gunbattle that
broke out near Kosovska Mitrovica, 25
miles northwest of Pristina, the capital
of the separatist province. There were
no reports of Serb casualties.
Each side blamed the other for
starting the fighting. Serb police said
the Kosovo Liberation Army rebels
began shooting when officers entered a
nearby village to search for guerrillas
who wounded five policemen two days
earlier.
Reporters saw the bodies of two
ethnic Albanians, including one cov
ered with ammunition belts' with a
machine gun at his side. The other was
carrying a pistol.
Rebels said they opened fire after
Serb forces shelled the nearby village
of Vraganica. Dozens of frightened
ethnic Albanian civilians fled the fight
ing aboard horse-drawn carts.
Serbian media reported a Serb
mother and her two children were
I
injured before dawn Wednesday when
a mortar exploded on their home in a
village near here. A 14-year-old girl
was reported to be in serious condition.
In Brussels, Belgium, NATO’s
supreme commander, Gen. Wesley
Clark, and German Gen. Klaus
Naumann admitted they made little
progress during more than seven hours
of talks Tuesday with Yugoslav
President Slobodan Milosevic.
Clark told alliance ambassadors
Wednesday that Milosevic showed “no
flexibility.”
With diplomacy making little
headway, NATO’s policy-making
body, the North Atlantic Council,
ordered the USS Enterprise, currently
in the Aegean Sea, to steam into the
Adriatic Sea and moved an eight-ves
sel Mediterranean naval force to
Brindisi, Italy.
The council also reduced the notice
to pilots and others for carrying out
airstrikes from four to two days.
In London, British Prime Minister
Tony Blair said that Milosevic “risks a
rapid military response from NATO” if
he fails to abide by die Oct 12 cease
fire, which temporarily ended seven
months of fighting.
I
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Omaha officer cleared
in 1997 shooting death
OMAHA (AP) - A second
grand jury has exonerated Omaha
police officer Todd Sears in the
traffic stop shooting death of
Marvin Ammons.
The jury returned its verdict
Wednesday, which found no proba
ble cause that criminal conduct
contributed to Ammons’ death.
Last year, a grand jury met for
three weeks and indicted Sears on a
manslaughter charge. However, a
judge threw out that indictment in
November, citing misconduct by an
alternate juror.
Sears also was cleared in an
internal police investigation and
returned to regular duty after the
indictment was dismissed.
Ammons was shot in the early
morning hours of Oct. 26, 1997,
during a snowstorm that left much
of the city without power. Sears and
his partner, Troy Kister, had been
called to an area of north Omaha to
investigate a traffic accident and
disturbance.
The officers encountered
Ammons standing outside his car.
Sears told investigators that
Ammons reached for a handgun
clipped to his waist. The police
account said the gun and its holster
were found near Ammons’ right
hand.
A civil lawsuit filed by
Ammons’ family is still pending.
Muslims accuse Denny’s
HELENA, Mont. (AP) - Denny s
restaurant workers may have deliber
ately slipped bacon and ham into the
meals of two Muslims who had
requested no-pork dishes, an investi
gator with the Montana Human
Rights Bureau says.
* “The fact that the ingredients for
these meals are packaged separately
and do not contain any pork products
... implies that these products were
placed in the food intentionally,”
according to the investigator’s report.
Two Muslims, Abdussalam Sipes
and Clarence Watson, had filed a reli
gious discrimination complaint with
the bureau, seeking an seeking an
apology and $ 1 million each. The
investigator’s report was made public
this week by an Islamic organization.
A lawyer for Denny’s, which has
been dogged by charges of racism for
years, did not return calls. The man
ager of the Billings restaurant,
Richard Graves, denied the incident
was intentional.
Sipes, whose religion forbids the
eating of pork, said in an interview
Tuesday, “My soul was poisoned.”
Watson said he had to purge hiiqself
by vomiting the meal and was unable
to read the Koran or pray for 40 days.
The accusations arose from a
March lunch at which the men asked
that their meals be prepared in sepa
rate skillets to avoid contamination
• > ';;
66
My soul
was poisoned.”
Abdussalam Sipes
Muslim
by pork.
Sipes said he noticed pieces of
ham hidden in the food and com
plained. The manager offered them
another dish, but Sipes said that when
he inspected it, he found a strip of
bacon buried underneath.
“They’re claiming it’s a giant
coincidence that ham - not once but
twice - found its way into both of
their meals,” said the men’s attorney,
Jeff Ferguson. “They’re saying it was
a comedy of errors.”
Denny’s, based in Spartanburg,
S.C., settled a $46 million discrimi
nation suit in 1994 filed by black
Secret Service agents who com
plained they were denied service at a
Maryland restaurant.
The restaurant chain recently
launched a $2 million anti-racism
campaign consisting of a series ofTV
commercials.
Denny’s employees are now also
required to undergo anti-discrimina
tion sensitivity training.
I worm am nation 1
I Buytiyls I
■ Egypt
Iraqi opposition group
turns down U.S. support
CAIRO. (AP) - A prominent
Iraqi opposition group on
Wednesday turned down support
offered by President Clinton for
efforts to oust Iraqi leader Saddam
Hussein, saying accepting American
help would hurt their cause.
Despite the rejection from the
Tehran-based Supreme Council for
Islamic Revolution in Iraq, two other
groups - the London-headquartered
Iraqi National Congress and the
Jordan-based Iraqi National Accord
- welcomed the American offer.
■ China
Entrepreneur sentenced
for cyberspace dissent
SHANGHAI (AP) - China
extended its crackdown on dissent
into cyberspace for the first time
Wednesday, sentencing a software
entrepreneur to two years in prison,
for giving e-mail addresses to dis
sidents abroad.
Lin Hai, 30, was convicted of
subversion in a case that highlight
ed China’s conflicting efforts to
promote Internet use for business
and education at the same time it is
stamping out political activity.
Subversion is among China’s
most serious crimes and is normal
ly used against political dissidents.
■ Guatemala
Women raped on trip
called to testify
ESCUINTLA (AP) - Four U.S.
women who were raped while on a
college trip were inrtjuatemala on
Wednesday to testify against three
men charged in the 1998 attack.
The women were among 13 stu
dents and three faculty members
from St Mary’s College in St Mary’s
City, Md., who were traveling in
Guatemala as part of a study tour last
January. Gunmen forced their bus to
stop, robbed the passengers and
raped the women in a field.
■ Indonesia
Christian, Muslim gangs
battle after rioters kill 17
JAKARTA (AP) - Police fired
warning shots into the air Wednesday
to keep apart rival Christian and
Muslim gangs after two days of riot
ing in northern Indonesia left at least
17 people dead.
The mobs were enraged by
reports that mosques and churches
had been set on fire on Ambon
Island, 1,450 miles northeast of
Jakarta, die country’s capital.
The official Antara news agency
said at least 100 people had been
badly injured and more than 30 hous
es burned in die main city, Ambon.
■ India
Experts to assess plot
used to bomb embassy
NEW DELHI (AP) - U.S.
counter-terrorism experts have
arrived in India to assess what police
sty was a plot by Osama bin Laden to
bomb the U.S. Embassy and two
consular off-ces, an embassy spokes
woman said Wednesday.
Police have arrested four people,
including a Bangladeshi man
accused of working for Pakistan’s
intelligence agency, according to
newspaper reports in New Delhi.