White House Counsel Charles Ruff unveiled this new legal argument on NBC's "Meet the Press" Sunday, only two days after independent counsel Kenneth Starr's sexually detailed and damning report to Congress was released to the American people. "Whatever the president did or whatever the president said, whether it be in January or in August, there simply is no basis for removing the president from office, and that is the key question here," he said.

One lawyer who was involved in the strategy shift told Salon that, in the face of overwhelming evidence in Starr's report that Clinton and Lewinsky had a relationship involving oral sex and mutual fondling, the president's earlier claims that he didn't have a sexual relationship with her were "too legalistic and unbelievable to work." Ultimately, this attorney said, such arguments would hurt the president in his campaign to avoid impeachment.

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That's the question David Kendall, President Clinton lawyer, and other Clinton supporters are asking as the nation finally gets to pore over Whitewater independent counsel Kenneth Starr's lengthy report on possible impeachable offenses committed by the president.

On Friday, Congress posted Starr's report, alleging perjury, obstruction of justice, witness tampering and abuse of power by Clinton in hiding his 18-month-long affair with former White House intern Monica Lewinsky, on the Internet.

Starr's report mentions no impeachable offenses by Clinton as a result of the investigation into the Whitewater land deal, which took up the bulk of Starr's four-year, $40 million inquiry into the president. Indeed, in the entire 445-page report, Starr alludes only once to the Whitewater investigation, citing suspicious parallels between Vernon Jordan's efforts to help convicted Whitewater figure Webster Hubbell financially and to find Lewinsky a job, presumably to buy their silence.

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Another crucial component of any White House political strategy, aides say, is Clinton's dependence upon moderate Republicans' distaste for impeachment proceedings and the political damage it could cause to the GOP.

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After four years of investigating Whitewater, Travelgate, Filegate, the suicide of Vince Foster and the Lewinsky affair, Starr is now expected to submit to Congress a detailed report sometime later this month. The White House is anticipating a highly partisan report that will include evidence that Clinton committed a variety of crimes, including perjury, obstruction of justice and abuse of power. Clinton's advisors clearly hope Starr's report will focus primarily on the Lewinsky affair, but there have been mixed signals from Starr's camp on whether that will be the case.

"What this case is about is sex," one senior White House advisor argues. "Of course, Starr will try to prove that it's more than sex, that it's about obstruction, perjury and God knows what else. But this is not a legal case. This is about two people who had consensual sex. Now, that in itself is not very appropriate, but it's not illegal. There's nothing here that's impeachable."

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The market's impressive comeback appeared to confirm the views of those strategists who refused to be spooked by the losses of last week and yesterday, interpreting the declines as an opportunity for bargain hunters. The resurgence also seemed to bolster comments by President Clinton and Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin that despite the economic turmoil in Asia and Russia, the U.S. economy remains fundamentally sound.

Such confidence was absent in Asia and Russia, where market slides reflected continued political uncertainty. In Russia, the government blocked trading the ruble for the fifth straight day, undercutting Russian stocks even further. Despite a slight gain by Japanese stocks, Tachi Sakaiya, the country's chief economic planner, dismissed any suggestion of an extended recovery and warned that Japan's economy is "now going through one of its darkest stages."

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Never mind that Russia is not yet lost and that its political and economic crises could still stabilize. But with Wall Street's 513-point plunge Monday, fanned by continued global uncertainty -- and by Russia's prolonged political crisis in particular -- concern is deepening about the fragile young democracy.

"It could get much worse," Stephen Cohen, a Russian specialist at Princeton, told PBS's "Newshour with Jim Lehrer," referring to the crisis in Russia. "It will get worse, I'm absolutely convinced of it.

"Russia's economic collapse will mean social pain, social anger, vengeance, hatred," Cohen said, reminding viewers that all this would be playing out in a country that was not long ago the second superpower. "Leave aside the nuclear weapons. If this country spins out of control, if this country becomes an Albania or Indonesia scenario, you're talking about a major political catastrophe as well."

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That's the question David Kendall, President Clinton lawyer, and other Clinton supporters are asking as the nation finally gets to pore over Whitewater independent counsel Kenneth Starr's lengthy report on possible impeachable offenses committed by the president.

On Friday, Congress posted Starr's report, alleging perjury, obstruction of justice, witness tampering and abuse of power by Clinton in hiding his 18-month-long affair with former White House intern Monica Lewinsky, on the Internet.

Starr's report mentions no impeachable offenses by Clinton as a result of the investigation into the Whitewater land deal, which took up the bulk of Starr's four-year, $40 million inquiry into the president. Indeed, in the entire 445-page report, Starr alludes only once to the Whitewater investigation, citing suspicious parallels between Vernon Jordan's efforts to help convicted Whitewater figure Webster Hubbell financially and to find Lewinsky a job, presumably to buy their silence.

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Behind the images of angry mobs burning effigies of President Clinton is a vast hinterland of outrage and reluctant sympathy for bin Laden, populated not only by the poor and disenfranchised but also by articulate middle-class Arabs and Muslims who have the most to lose from the challenges posed by the wealthy Saudi-turned-Islamic warrior.

Railing for the removal of American forces from the Persian Gulf and a return by Middle Eastern governments to strict Islamic law and values, fundamentalists like bin Laden are widely regarded by Arab moderates as threats to the stability of their societies. To illustrate the consequences of bin Laden's vision, moderates point to the civil war in Algeria, where fighting between militant Muslims and government troops over the past five years has left at least 80,000 dead. In Egypt, where Islamic militants have attacked tourists and intellectuals and tried to assassinate President Hosni Mubarak, there is broad support among middle-class Egyptians for the government's crackdown on violent fundamentalist groups.

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Though Democratic Congress members are showing demonstrative signs of support for Clinton as he prepares for his own grand jury testimony on Aug. 17, many are feeling uncomfortably tentative when it comes to their reelection strategies only months before the fall midterm elections. Moreover, a host of unanswered questions about the president's relationship with Lewinsky, coupled with the public's unpredictable reaction should an affair be proven, has created another zone of political darkness as the party looks toward the presidential election in 2000.

"The reality is we are in uncharted waters," says one Democratic pollster, who asked not to be identified. "We are certainly where no human being has gone before. Nobody can say with any certainty what will happen under any scenario."

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The GOP whisper campaign halted dead in its tracks.

A decade later, as Kenneth Starr moves to wrap up his investigation of the Monica Lewinsky scandal and submit his final report to Congress on his four-year-long criminal probe of the president, the lessons of that confrontation have not been lost on some Clinton allies. While Republican and Democratic lawmakers, pundits and supporters urge the president to apologize for a sexual relation with Lewinsky to avoid impeachment, these die-hard Clinton loyalists are spreading the word that a long-ignored but fearsome tactic has now resurfaced as an element in the president's survival strategy: The threat of exposing the sexual improprieties of Republican critics, both in Congress and beyond, should they demand impeachment hearings in the House.

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In May, it should be recalled, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright tried to revive the gasping Middle East peace process by delivering a clear and unambiguous ultimatum to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu:

Either accept a U.S. proposal for a modest Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank or the Clinton administration would "re-examine our approach to the peace process" and go public with its disagreements with Netanyahu's ultra-right-wing government. Albright and her aides made a point of reiterating that the American proposal, which calls on Israel to surrender 13 percent of the territory in return for concrete Palestinian steps to bolster Israel's security, would not be "watered down."

The peace process stalled because Netanyahu was offering only a 9 percent withdrawal. Albright's threat to go public meant that for the first time Netanyahu would have been forced to explain to Israeli voters -- two-thirds of whom support continued negotiations -- why the other 4 percent of territory was worth killing the peace process and straining relations with the country's chief ally. It would have meant exposing the damaging role played by his obstinate coalition partners, most of whom refuse to relinquish one more inch of West Bank territory to the Palestinians.

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Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch and the other Republicans on the panel are now studying a draft lawsuit against Reno, drawn up by committee member Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Penn, that accuses her of ignoring evidence of federal election law violations by Clinton, Gore and their staffs, and asks the court to appoint an independent counsel to investigate the evidence. Specter says he's confident that a majority of Republicans on the committee will join the lawsuit and that this group will have standing to file the petition, as early as next month.

"I think the conclusions [of the lawsuit] are very strong," says Specter, a former prosecutor.

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As part of the federal appellate panel that refused to hear the administration's arguments to prevent Secret Service agents from testifying last week, U.S. Judge Laurence H. Silberman wrote a scathing opinion that accused Reno of acting not on behalf of the U.S. government, but in the personal interests of President Clinton. Then, using language seldom seen in the federal judiciary, Silberman questioned whether Clinton himself, by allowing his aides to attack Starr, was "declaring war on the United States."

The administration lost its legal battle last Friday when Supreme Court Chief Justice William Rehnquist cleared the way for the agents' testimony. Clinton's chief bodyguard, Larry Cockell, and six other Secret Service agents were scheduled to appear before Starr's grand jury Tuesday to answer questions about what they know about Clinton's relationship with Monica Lewinsky.

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The allegations, coming one day after Starr subpoenaed Larry Cockell, head of Clinton's Secret Service security detail, were contained in a report by NBC Washington bureau chief Tim Russert that aired on the network's "Today" show Wednesday morning.

"There are lots of suggestions coming out of people close to Ken Starr that perhaps the Secret Service facilitated for President Clinton," Russert reported. "Remember that code word," Russert cautioned, referring to the word "facilitated." "It was used about the state troopers in Little Rock." Russert was referring to controversial 1993 charges that Arkansas state troopers assigned to Gov. Clinton's security detail helped him arrange extramarital affairs.

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The talking points document reportedly instructs Tripp how to respond to questions about the alleged 1993 sexual encounter between Clinton and White House volunteer Kathleen Willey. In systematic, lawyerly tones, the document walks Tripp through a series of explanations, or talking points, to suggest that her original account of the incident, given to Newsweek, was erroneous. "You now do not believe that what (Willey) claimed happened really happened," the document instructs Tripp to say. "You now find it completely plausible that she herself smeared her lipstick, untucked her blouse, etc."

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"They are breaking new ground here," says Michael Bromwich, the Justice Department's inspector-general. "There are no ground rules to follow when you have a serious investigation of the investigator, particularly in an independent counsel context, which is not set up to deal with it. I've never seen anything like this."

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Webster's reservations about joining the panel underscore the political and professional quandaries that complicate the investigation, which will involve an unprecedented probe of the independent counsel's office itself. The investigation is expected to begin in earnest in September, Justice Department sources said.

Late last month, after Attorney General Janet Reno called for an investigation into allegations that David Hale, Starr's key Whitewater witness, had been paid by President Clinton's conservative critics, Starr appointed former Justice Department watchdog Michael E. Shaheen Jr. to conduct the inquiry. To avoid any appearance of impropriety, Starr's office agreed that Shaheen, a respected 22-year veteran of the Justice Department's office of professional responsibility, would report to the three-member panel of senior judges instead of Starr or Reno.

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"They are breaking new ground here," says Michael Bromwich, the Justice Department's inspector-general. "There are no ground rules to follow when you have a serious investigation of the investigator, particularly in an independent counsel context, which is not set up to deal with it. I've never seen anything like this."

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It was a gentle lecture, the first of several speeches Clinton will deliver stressing the importance of human rights. Clinton's early mention reflects the political controversy that continues to surround his China policy back home. Even as the president spoke in Xian, Republicans in Congress continued to criticize the administration's emphasis on trade and pressed ahead with their investigations into civilian missile technology transfers that may have aided in the modernization of the Chinese military. From Xian, Clinton is scheduled to visit a small village, then travel to Beijing, where he will be welcomed at Tiananmen Square -- the site of the 1989 massacre of pro-democracy activists. Over the weekend, Clinton's summit talks with Chinese President Jiang Zemin will begin.

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Some insist the president has nothing to worry about at all. Even if Starr gets Lewinsky to admit that she had sex with the president, as recent reports have suggested he might, Clinton's lawyers will respond with the president's unequivocal assertion that he "didn't have sexual relations with that woman" and demand that Starr prove Lewinsky's admission beyond a reasonable doubt. At the end of the day, says Stanley Brand, a prominent criminal defense lawyer in Washington, D.C., "it's a case of he said, she said."

"The president's legal exposure is zero," Brand says confidently.

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