Jones’ Lawyers Open Books on Clinton Suit

WASHINGTON —  Attorneys for Paula Corbin Jones unveiled Friday the core of their case against President Clinton, releasing first-hand testimony they said shows that Clinton systematically preyed on women for sex and then used rewards or intimidation to keep them silent.

The information, packed inside 700 pages of legal motions, transcripts and other material filed in Jones’ sexual-harassment case, questioned the character of the president who for the last two months has been under sharp fire for alleged sexual misconduct.

Included in the new material are large portions of Clinton’s Jan. 17 deposition in the Jones case, in which the president comes off as controlled and cautious, but also at times is clearly irritated and on the defensive.

Clinton denied in his deposition making sexual advances or having a sexual relationship with any of the women he was questioned about except Arkansas singer Gennifer Flowers.

His lawyer, Robert S. Bennett, said the documents show the case is nothing more than “cotton candy.”

“When you bite into it,” he said in a Los Angeles press conference, “there’s nothing there.”

The documents were filed in federal court in Little Rock, Ark., to counter efforts by Clinton’s attorneys to have Jones’ case dismissed before the scheduled May 27 trial. In the filing, attorneys for the former Arkansas state employee attempted to demonstrate that women’s careers prospered or declined depending on how they responded to Clinton’s advances and whether they remained silent afterward.

This is a crucial legal issue in the case. Jones’ lawsuit rests on her ability to show that her own job standing suffered after she allegedly rejected an advance she claims Clinton made in a Little Rock hotel room in 1991.

The new depositions filed included Clinton’s answers to questions about Monica S. Lewinsky, the former White House intern whose contacts with Clinton are now the subject of an independent counsel’s inquiry.

At one point, Clinton said the last time he saw Lewinsky was before Christmas, and that he joked to her that she might be called in to testify by Jones’ lawyers, who were attempting to show a pattern of Clinton making sexual advances toward women.

“I said that you all might call every woman I ever talked to and ask them” to appear in court, Clinton said.

He also suggested that his personal secretary, Betty Currie, rather than he, took the lead in trying to help Lewinsky get a job. Independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr is investigating whether Clinton and others acting for him helped arrange a public relations job in New York for Lewinsky to keep her from telling about a sexual relationship with Clinton.

Referring to Currie, Clinton said in his deposition: “I think that she and Betty were close, and I think Betty did it.”

Furthermore, when asked about an alleged sexual encounter with former White House volunteer Kathleen E. Willey, Clinton said: “I emphatically deny” that it ever happened.

He also suggested that he is the kind of person who, as president, often hugs and embraces people. “I did to her what I have done to scores and scores of men and women who have worked for me or been my friends over the years,” Clinton said.

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But Willey, in her deposition, gave a different account of her meeting with Clinton in the Oval Office in 1993. She said that after she went to Clinton to seek a full-time job at the White House, he touched her breast and then placed her hands on his genitals.

“It was very unexpected,” Willey said.

The depositions outlined the scenario Jones’ attorneys are envisioning for the trial, with a series of women taking the witness stand to bolster Jones’ case by describing their own intimate episodes with Clinton both as governor of Arkansas and as president.

Donovan Campbell, the lead Jones attorney, charged that the Clinton White House has mounted “a vast suppression-of-evidence attempt in this case.”

He dismissed Clinton attorneys’ contention that Jones has no bona fide legal case against him.

“Our president,” Campbell said, “is wrong.”

Neither Clinton nor his wife, Hillary Rodham Clinton, responded to the Jones allegations, and the couple left the capital late in the afternoon for the presidential retreat at Camp David, Md.

Presidential spokesman Mike McCurry, when asked to describe how the president felt about the Jones filing, said of Clinton: “He’s a human being and he has human reactions when he reads stuff like that.”

In Los Angeles, Bennett said Jones and her counsel are pursuing a claim that is not only frivolous but politically damaging for the country.

“She has no case. She has suffered no damages. She was never harassed,” Bennett said.

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He said he knew of no new allegations being raised or new evidence to support previous accusations of sexual harassment by Clinton. To the contrary, he claimed, Jones’ attorneys had only “recycled” old, unfounded charges against the president.

“Her filing is really not a serious legal document,” Bennett said. “It is a scurrilous paper, which really proves what we have been saying all along--namely, that the plaintiff and her political and financial backers are pursuing this case as a vehicle to humiliate and embarrass the president and to interfere with his presidency.

“The Clinton haters are trying to hound him out of office, and filings such as today are part of that scheme,” he said.

“This is a terrible thing for our country,” he added. “This is wrong what is going on here. This is a form of insanity,” he said.

The next move in the Jones suit will be Bennett’s, who now can file a response to the Jones filing. U.S. District Judge Susan Webber Wright will weigh both sides and rule whether Clinton will become the first sitting president in history to have to go to trial over his personal conduct.

Jones’ lawyers maintained Friday that the law does not require a female employee to prove she was fired or demoted to claim sexual harassment.

Clinton was not an ordinary employer, they said. Her lawsuit claimed that as the state’s chief executive, he used his power acting “under color of law” to violate her constitutional rights.

Moreover, an employer’s particularly outrageous conduct, even if it happened only once, can sustain a claim of sexual harassment, Campbell said, citing several court rulings.

Clinton may not consider it to be “severe” harassment for the head of an organization to expose himself “to a low-level female employee in her early 20s, whom he had never met until five minutes earlier . . . but a reasonable juror might disagree,” Campbell said.

Jones, a clerical worker, contends that after she rejected Clinton’s advance, she did not receive the raises and other benefits she would have otherwise.

Clinton, in his deposition, said he believes people are offered incentives to lie about him.

Clinton said an Arkansas trooper, Danny Ferguson, related that he had been offered $700,000 “if they would trash me.”

The president claimed that Ferguson told him “that what they said about me did not have to be true” and “if three of them told the story they could get it printed anywhere, whether it was true or not.”

The documents Friday include the first public airing of a sworn and signed statement from Lewinsky.

As has been reported, Lewinsky denied having sex with Clinton either while she she an intern, as a paid employee at the White House or afterward.

During later negotiations with prosecutors, however, Lewinsky’s lawyers indicated she would acknowledge engaging in oral sex with the president if given immunity from prosecution.

William H. Ginsburg, her lead lawyer, said Friday that Lewinsky “stands by the affidavit.”

In her Jan. 7 statement, Lewinsky said:

“I have the utmost respect for the president who has always behaved appropriately in my presence. . . . I have never had a sexual relationship with the president, he did not propose that we have a sexual relationship, he did not offer me employment or other benefits in exchange for a sexual relationship, he did not deny me employment or other benefits for rejecting a sexual relationship.”

At the time, Lewinsky was resisting any attempt to be deposed by Jones’ lawyers in the lawsuit.

“Requiring my deposition in this matter would cause disruption to my life, especially since I am looking for employment, unwarranted attorney’s fees and costs, and constitute an invasion of my right to privacy,” Lewinsky said.

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* CLINTON’S TESTIMONY

President admits touching but calls it innocent. A14