Day 2: Defense Fills In ‘Stubborn Facts’

WASHINGTON — She is the insider at the White House counsel’s office, a longtime loyalist whom critics accuse of doing too good a job of protecting the president--at the public’s expense.

He is the outsider, a veteran of legal flash-floods who was brought onto the team just a few months ago to help “quarterback” the courtroom battle and salvage the presidency of his old friend Bill Clinton.

Together, attorneys Cheryl Mills and Gregory Craig took center stage Wednesday in the Senate impeachment trial as the White House offered a second day of vigorous defense.

One day after White House Counsel Charles F. C. Ruff made the broad-brush case against removing Clinton from office, Mills and Craig were charged with filling in the agonizing details--the “stubborn, stubborn facts,” as Mills called them.

Mills Delivers Eloquent Defense

The 33-year-old Mills delivered an eloquent and sometimes personal defense on issues of obstruction, summoning her background as an Army brat, a woman, an African American and a lawyer to make her case for Clinton.

“The very fact that I can represent the president of the United States, on the floor of the Senate of the United States, is powerful proof that the American dream lives,” she said.

She also offered a point-by-point refutation of the obstruction charge. She chided House managers for calling secretary Betty Currie’s recollections “fuzzy” when in fact Currie testified five times that Monica S. Lewinsky, not the president, suggested that Currie keep the gifts Clinton had given Lewinsky.

Craig, a gray-haired 53-year-old with a boyish face, rebutted grand jury perjury charges against Clinton, mixing detailed legal analyses with folksy talk about “how really bad” the House case is and even a zinger at the legal profession.

Craig is well accustomed to the spotlight, having represented or advised as disparate a group as presidential assailant John W. Hinckley Jr., Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.), Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and a number of international business and political figures in often-messy legal battles.

But his colleague Mills has felt the glare of public scrutiny as well--perhaps most notably as the target of Republican accusations concerning a 1996 congressional investigation into a controversial White House database.

Republicans charged that Mills lied to Congress and withheld key documents, effectively obstructing efforts to determine whether the White House misused the government database to aid Clinton’s 1996 campaign. A House Republican referred the matter to the Justice Department last fall, but officials could not give the status of that case Wednesday.

Republicans charge that the White House lawyers have adopted a dangerous new bunker mentality, clamping down on the flow of information and resorting to claims of executive privilege more than ever before to protect Clinton, said a House Republican investigator.

Mills “is a very loyal, hard-working foot soldier. She’s very good at what she does,” the Republican official said. “The problem is she views her client as Bill Clinton, when we think it should be the presidency. The role of protecting the presidency has been totally submerged, and she and that office have simply become criminal defense attorneys.”

One conservative legal group in Washington, Judicial Watch, went so far as to put out a press release this week that asked: “Should Clinton Lawyers Also Be on Trial?”

The group criticized Mills because of her alleged role in the database matter and Craig because he “should not be part of these [impeachment] proceedings” after having represented Hinckley.

“I think it’s an interesting ethical issue when a man who defended a would-be assassin of the president is now working for the White House. It ought to raise an eyebrow or two,” said Judicial Watch Chairman Larry Klayman.

The White House dismissed the attacks on its lawyers.

“These kinds of smear tactics are regrettable, and they’re part of the reason we’re in this situation in the first place,” said Jim Kennedy, spokesman for the White House counsel’s office.

Signs of Dissension Tied to Craig’s Role

Mills, a graduate of Stanford Law School, has been with the counsel’s office since the beginning of the Clinton administration and is the longest-serving attorney there, officials said. She was promoted in 1997 to deputy counsel to the president.

Craig joined the office only grudgingly last fall at the request of Clinton, a fellow student at Yale Law School, leaving his post as director of policy and planning at the State Department. He has also served as a senior partner at the powerhouse Washington law firm of Williams & Connolly when not employed in the public sector.

With Craig thrust into a key role at a chaotic time in the White House, his emergence triggered early signs of dissension on the legal team.

“There’s never a seamless addition to a legal team, particularly when there are individuals who have been there toiling in the vineyards for some time,” acknowledged former Watergate prosecutor Richard Ben-Veniste, who testified on Clinton’s behalf during the House proceedings.