Starr's report raises threat of impeachment

A DAMNING report arguing for the impeachment of Bill Clinton was delivered to the US Congress last night, setting in motion a process that could lead to the removal of a president from office for the first time in American history.

The independent counsel Kenneth Starr, who has been investigating the President for more than two years, sent his report on Mr Clinton and a van-load of supporting information to Capitol Hill, where it was placed in the custody of the Sergeant-at-Arms. It will remain sealed until Congress has passed a resolution setting out the terms of an investigation into the President in the next few days.

The delivery of the report kicks off the process that could lead to the impeachment of the President for "high crimes and misdemeanours", as the Constitution puts it.

"The office of independent counsel submitted a referral to the House of Representatives containing substantial and credible information that may constitute grounds for impeachment of the President of the United States," said Charles Bakaly, spokesman for Mr Starr.

The 500-page report includes a 25-page summary, 280 pages detailing the President's relationship with the White House intern Monica Lewinsky, and subsequent attempts to cover it up, and a tightly argued 140-page section pressing for the impeachment of the President.

Mr Starr contends that the President lied under oath about his relationship with Ms Lewinsky to a court investigating a sexual harassment suit brought by a former Arkansas employee, Paula Jones, concealed the relationship, and tried to make others perjure themselves.

With the report went two sets of 18 boxes containing transcripts and videos of the President's testimony to the grand jury, and depositions and transcripts from dozens of other witnesses. "Many of the supporting materials contain information of a personal nature that I respectfully urge the House to treat as confidential," Mr Starr said in a letter accompanying the documents.

Together, these documents make up what the Starr team believes is a watertight case for the impeachment of the President, something that Congress will now consider in its own hearings. It virtually guarantees that the President's sex life and attempts to conceal it will be the subject of daily examination for months in public, rather then behind the closed doors of the grand jury.

The White House was yesterday establishing a war room to fight the charges, and a meeting of key White House political advisers was hurriedly convened. "There is no basis for impeachment," Mr Clinton's lawyer, David Kendall, said within minutes of the report arriving at Congress. "People should keep in mind that the documents delivered to Congress today represent only the prosecutor's allegations, allegations that we have been denied a chance to review."

But from now on, it is Congress, not the lawyers, who will decide the President's fate. "We have fulfilled our duty," said Mr Bakaly. "The responsibility for the information we have transmitted today and any further action now lies with Congress."

The sudden and surprise release of the report completely overshadowed what the President had clearly planned as a key day in his fightback. In a last-minute attempt to regain public sympathy, he gave what was intended to be a humbling speech to a fund-raising lunch in Florida yesterday. "I let my family down and I let this country down, but I am trying to make it right," he said in an emotional speech. "These have been the toughest days of my life ... I have no one to blame but myself for my self-inflicted wounds."

Earlier, the President had sought to buttress support in his own party, meeting several Congressional Democrats for breakfast at the White House. "What we saw was a father, a husband, a leader of our country who was contrite and very sorry for his actions," said David Bonior, a senior figure in the House. "I think Democrats, when they meet with the President, talk to the President as we have, will understand the deep, deep pain that he feels personally and he knows he has caused folks."

Meanwhile, however, the legal machine that could take the President to trial is being fine-tuned. Newt Gingrich, Speaker of the House of Representatives, met his Democrat counterpart Richard Gephardt yesterday to lay ground rules for how the Congress will handle the Starr report. One key issue is when, and how, the report will be made public. "Next to declaring war, this may be the most important thing we do, so we have to do it right," said Mr Gephardt.

Not since the impeachment hearings into Richard Nixon has a White House incumbent been in such grave trouble, and the consequences are still very hard to calculate. At best, the White House will be semi-paralysed for months.