Did President Clinton lie? That is the major question here, and to answer it you must determine whether or not Monica Lewinski is truthful in HER testimony.

In essence, President Clinton stated that he did not perform sexual acts upon Monica Lewinski; at no point did he deny that she performed sexual acts on him.

Sexual acts, as roughly defined by the Jones deposition, entailed acts committed by the person being deposed, the president.

He states that he did not perform sexual acts upon her.

Ms. Lewinski states that their relationship entailed more than this.

Thus, the issue before Congress’ decision is this: believe Clinton or Lewinski.

No other people can validate the particulars of either version of the story, and thus it becomes an issue of credibility.

One could not easily say without partisanship that one version is any more viable than the other.

$40 million.

That is the number that is thrown around as the cost of the Starr investigation.

An investigation that started out with a land deal has now degraded into whether Ms. Lewinski or President Clinton is lying about their individual accounts of an extramarital affair.

The Starr Report consists solely of charges dealing with this issue.

There are no references to Whitewater.

There are no references to the travel office.

If the Paula Jones case hadn’t come to trial, what would Starr have to show for his years of tailing the president?

The lack of any content pertaining to events dealing with anything other than Ms. Lewinski indicates more than a just a single-minded hunting of this president by the independent council, but it also shows that the council had no evidence against the president prior to this spring.

This also becomes an issue of credibility.

A rush to judgement on a “he said/she said” with deep moral undertones seems to just about fill the bill to bail out a bankrupt investigation.

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Tony Forsmark

Ames