Vol. 11 No. 1 (January 2001) pp. 38-41.

THE BREACH: INSIDE THE IMPEACHMENT AND TRIAL OF WILLIAM JEFFERSON CLINTON by Peter Baker. New York: Scribner, 2000. 464 pp. Cloth $27.50. ISBN 0-684-86813-X.


Reviewed by Richard A. Glenn, Department of Government and Political Affairs, Millersville University, Pennsylvania.
Peter Baker has written the definitive account of the impeachment and trial of President Bill Clinton, and it is not about sex. Instead, THE BREACH is about how a sex scandal involving the president escalated into a partisan constitutional and political struggle nonpareil in modern political history. THE BREACH begins its narration on August 17, 1998, the day President Clinton appeared before a grand jury via closed-circuit television and admitted his relationship with Monica Lewinsky. The book concludes on February 12, 1999, the day the Senate acquitted the president on two articles of impeachment brought by the House of Representatives. The primary actors are not Paula Jones, Monica Lewinsky, or Kenneth Starr. The salacious details are barely referenced. The main characters are Bill Clinton and the Republican and Democratic leadership in the House and Senate in the aftermath of the Starr grand jury investigation. "For all of the titillation about thongs and cigars, the story of the impeachment and trial of William Jefferson Clinton was not so much about sex as it was about power," the author writes. "It may have started with an unseemly rendezvous near the Oval Office, but it mushroomed into the Washington battle of a generation, ultimately dragging in all three branches of government."


The research in THE BREACH is almost all original. Baker, who was the primary reporter covering the impeachment and trial for the WASHINGTON POST, relies upon in excess of three hundred interviews and thousands of pages of personal documents - internal memos, diaries, letters, calendars, e-mails, tape recordings, notes, speech drafts, and transcripts - never before made public. Nearly two hundred individuals, including such key players as Tom Delay, Dick Gephardt, Bob Livingston, Henry Hyde, and Tom Daschle, cooperated with the research for the book. The bottom line is that Baker convinced people to talk. As such, THE BREACH reads as if it its author were omnipresent during the tumultuous six-month period. At times, this trait can be annoying. For example, the author tells us time and time again what key players in the drama were eating and drinking at critical junctures. (Perhaps there is a purpose to this excessive and irrelevant information. It reminds the reader that Baker had uncommon access to many of the "cast of characters.")
Unlike other books on this subject, THE BREACH is without spin. It is an extensively researched, incredibly detailed, unbiased account of "what happened" with the Clinton impeachment, and it reads like a drama of Shakespearean proportions. In spite of the twenty-four hour news cycle,


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and thousands of print reporters, there were still so many behind-the-scenes machinations during this time to which the public was not made aware. In THE BREACH, Baker reveals many of these happenings. For example:


- Clinton dispatched his personal lawyer, David Kendall, to inform the first lady that the president indeed had carried on a sexual relationship with Monica Lewinsky.

- House Republican leader Tom Delay set up a war room his aides called "The Campaign," a relentless drive aimed not just at impeaching Clinton but forcing him to resign. In fact, Baker credits Delay with masterminding the impeachment process in the House of Representatives.

- Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr investigated twenty-one women with potential sexual links to the president.

- In September 1998, Clinton was in far more serious danger than those on the outside knew. House Democratic leader Dick Gephardt put together a list of one hundred Democratic representatives (out of 206) who were considering a vote for impeachment. Senate Democratic leader Tom Daschle refused to take Clinton's phone calls. Senior White House aide Harold Ickes sounded out senior Democrats and labor leaders about seeking Clinton's resignation. Ickes discussed the idea with John Sweeney, head of the AFL-CIO, who encouraged caution.

- House Judiciary Chairperson Republican Henry Hyde and White House lawyer Charles Ruff engaged in secret negotiations throughout the fall. Hyde wanted Clinton to accept an impeachment; in return, Hyde would negotiate for no trial in the Senate. Ruff wanted Hyde to accept a strongly worded censure.

- House Democratic leader Dick Gephardt proposed a censure plan with a loss of pension. Neither the first lady nor Gephardt's own caucus would agree to the plan.

- Numerous Republicans were terrified that their own personal failings would come to light, including one who confessed adultery to his wife for fear that his sexual dalliances were about to be "exposed."

- While pressuring the Republicans for a censure vote in the House of Representatives, Democratic lobbyist Butler Derrick asked an aide to Speaker- designate Republican Bob Livingston, "Bob can stand scrutiny, can't he?"

- On December 18, 1998, the day before the impeachment vote, Livingston had an eleventh-hour "moment of doubt." "This must stop," he remarked to an aide. That aide encouraged Livingston to press on, reminding him, "There's a rapist in the White House."

- Clinton accuser Kathleen Willey visited Republican Senator Susan Collins in her own home, privately lobbying her to vote for conviction.
Baker also reveals some of the more comic occurrences during the impeachment and trial. James W. Ziglar, the Senate sergeant-at-arms, had to warn the aging Republican Senator Strom Thurmond to stop flirting with the president's young female lawyers. "How come you're so cute?" he would ask them, and then he would clutch one of their arms and say, "I just love holding on to you." "What would we do if

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they filed some sort of sexual harassment suit?" Ziglar asked the senator. A mischievous grin crossed Thurmond's face, "Now, wouldn't that be nice." Similarly, during one of the lengthy breaks in the trial, Ziglar had to reprimand Chief Justice William Rehnquist and his staff for gambling, which violated Senate rules.
Although these revelations are intriguing, THE BREACH also makes a significant contribution by examining the rancorous partisanship in the House of Representatives. Baker shows clearly how the entire process in the House was subsumed with party-line thinking. The Republicans allowed their revulsion with Clinton to consume them to the point that it precluded any real opportunity to forge a consensus with Democrats who were furious at their own president. Also, the Democrats orchestrated a plan "to win by losing": fostering partisanship and using it as a shield for the president - "demonizing his critics, resisting every Republican move and even manufacturing disagreements where there were none, all to prove the political perfidy of the other side." Although THE BREACH also chronicles the bitterness and disappointment among the president's advisers, and the frustration in the Senate, it does not do so with as much intrigue. Perhaps that is because the divide was much greater in the lower chamber than elsewhere. Baker is keen, however, to detail those representatives, senators, and White House aides of both parties who, while publicly adhering to the wishes of their party leadership, privately struggled with their consciences.
THE BREACH differs from other books written on this well-documented subject. UNCOVERING CLINTON: A REPORTER'S STORY, authored by Michael Isikoff, for example, is about events leading up to the grand jury confession - sex and all. SELL OUT: THE INSIDER STORY OF PRESIDENT CLINTON'S IMPEACHMENT, penned by David P. Schippers and Alan P. Henry, is a diatribe against the president's actions and a lament on the Senate's failure to convict. AN AFFAIR OF STATE: THE INVESTIGATION, IMPEACHMENT, AND TRIAL OF PRESIDENT CLINTON, written by Richard A. Posner, is a discussion of constitutional history, law, jurisprudence, morality, politics, and even sociology. THE BREACH is about none of these things. Rather, THE BREACH is about a phenomenal power struggle that brought about the impeachment and acquittal of the first elected president in U. S. history.
President Bill Clinton opened his second term by promising to bring Republicans and Democrats together. Referencing a passage from the Old Testament book of Isaiah in his second inaugural, he vowed to become the "repairer of the breach." Now, Clinton's second term has ended. Apparently, the breach was much wider and much deeper than even Clinton had anticipated.
Newspapers, it has been said, are the "first draft" of history. If that is true, then THE BREACH is the more refined, more accurate, better "second draft" of history - the more complete story behind the headlines. Baker is content to leave the opinions and editorials to others. On this subject matter, that is a quite refreshing departure from the norm.

REFERENCES:

Isikoff, Michael. 1999. UNCOVERING CLINTON: A REPORTER'S STORY. New York: Crown Publishing Group.

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Posner, Richard A. 1999. AN AFFAIR OF STATE: THE INVESTIGATION, IMPEACHMENT, AND TRIAL OF PRESIDENT CLINTON. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

Schippers, David P. and Alan P. Henry. 2000. SELL OUT: THE INSIDER STORY OF PRESIDENT CLINTON'S IMPEACHMENT. New York: Regency.



Copyright 2001 by the author, Richard A. Glenn