Bill Clinton went into his cross examination with the cards stacked against him. He came out remarkably unscathed. This was partly due to his very skilful preparation and approach and partly to the mechanical, unadaptable, and sometimes inept conduct of his five cross-examiners.
In the Paula Jones depositions, Mr Clinton had denied on oath having sexual relations with Ms Monica Lewinsky. Then Mr Ken Starr got hold of Mrs Linda Tripp, wired her up, and got her to encourage Ms Lewinsky to boast over drinks about sexual encounters with Mr Clinton. He then threatened Ms Lewinsky and her mother with jail, and later gave them immunity in exchange for Ms Lewinsky's testimony.
This put Mr Clinton in a bind in the run-up to his cross examination. But he came out fighting. The Jones deposition was a political set-up, not an ordinary trial. It was funded by political opponents. He had carefully analysed the definition of sexual relations laid down in that case and had answered narrowly but truthfully. Why shouldn't he - Ms Jones had no case, as the court found, and the whole thing was just an excuse to take him down?
The prosecutors seemed surprised at this approach. Against all maxims of cross examination, they asked a long series of open-ended general and repetitious questions. This allowed Clinton to say:
That the Jones lawyers were funded by political activists and repaid this by constant illegal leaks;
That Starr himself had helped prepare Ms Jones's lawyers and assisted them with the Tripp material "to take a wrecking ball to me";
That, accordingly, he "was entitled to be legal without being particularly helpful"; and
That the definition of sexual relations was not his own, but that of Ms Jones's lawyers, and that he responded in their terms.
This was perhaps the only line he could have taken. He had been narrow, legalistic and literal minded in his answers in the Jones case. He couldn't deny it. So he said he had to be that way, and was entitled to be, because he was a victim of a plot to use a baseless legal case to destroy him. To this viewer, at least, that made sense.
A huge amount of the cross examination related to very detailed questions about precise dates and times of conversations with people he met daily, eight or nine months before. This was tedious and useless. Mr Clinton made the telling point that many of these matters were of no great significance at the time but "you [Mr Starr] have made this the most important issue in America".
It is a familiar prosecutor's ploy to suggest that any vagueness is a badge of guilt. This rarely works because it is unrealistic. Here it was flogged to death, with a pretence of expecting total recall.
This contrasted amusingly with the prosecutor who asked a question about a tie and then couldn't recall which tie it was. More importantly the tactic back-fired in allowing Mr Clinton to say he couldn't recall various obscure details, which made it easier to say the same in relation to more important matters.
A major ploy of Mr Starr's was to try to go into graphic sexual detail. Mr Clinton drew a line in the sand about this. He admitted an inappropriate relationship with Ms Lewinsky but said that his family's privacy and the dignity of his office prevented his going into detail. Besides such detail was irrelevant to the grand jury's work. This drew some heavy innuendo but no real challenge.
When Mr Clinton flatly denied any impropriety with Ms Kathleen Willey, he was not challenged. But he went further, accusing Mr Starr of withholding the evidence that entirely discredited Ms Willey and of unlawful leaking. Not only was there no riposte but, since the recording of the testimony, out of context extracts from it have been widely leaked.
The tactic of having five cross examiners was a poor one. It made Mr Clinton appear the under-dog: one against five. Worse, only one - Mr Wisenberg - was even an averagely competent cross-examiner. The rest seemed slow, hidebound, so enmeshed in detail that they couldn't adapt quickly. They seemed incapable of distinguishing a good point from a bad one and they gave equal time to each. For example, the significance of letters signed "Love. . . " or the entire Kathleen Willey episode.
FOUR hours is a cruelly long time to endure hostile cross-examination, and Mr Clinton tired visibly towards the end. But the cross-examination totally lacked the pace and mastery of fact that, in skilful hands, can force confessions from a witness.
It is not cross-examination to ask repetitious questions beginning "If so and so says such and such (long quote) what do you say?" It gives an opportunity to a skilful witness to draw breathe, adapt and answer in his own terms. One should never allow a witness, especially a politician, to make a speech. But they did, time after time.
Mr Clinton's evidence was given before he knew what others, particularly Ms Lewinsky had said. In the hindsight available now, there was remarkably little conflict. This shows excellent preparation by Mr Clinton and his lawyers but also suggests that he is truthful over a wide range of collateral issues.
Mr Ken Starr, one presumes, will return to the attack. But if he takes on President Clinton again in courthouse or senate hearing, he'll have to do better than this.