A federal judge throws out Paula Jones' sexual harassment suit against the President, effectively ending the threat of impeachment

By CHRISTOPHER OGDEN /WASHINGTON

ob Bennett was in his office last Wednesday reading a deposition in the Paula Jones sexual misconduct case against his client, President Bill Clinton, when his phone rang. It was U.S District Judge Susan Webber Wright's clerk, calling with startling news: in 30 minutes the judge would announce that she was granting Bennett's motion to dismiss the suit. Jones, the judge had decided, failed to show she had been assaulted or harassed in an alleged 1991 encounter in Arkansas with then Governor Clinton.

Bennett hung up and immediately called White House counsel Charles Ruff. Ruff forwarded the lawyer's call to Clinton in Senegal, the final stop on his 12-day tour of Africa. While waiting for the President to pick up, Bennett suddenly panicked. He thought he had recognized the voice of Wright's clerk, but it was April 1. Wright was a Republican appointed by President George Bush and no one had been expecting a dismissal. Bennett asked an assistant to call the judge's chambers to confirm the news. By the time Clinton came on the line, Bennett could answer with certainty the President's very first question. No, Mr. President: this was not an April Fool joke.

No joke, perhaps, but the President was laughing. "You gotta be kidding," the elated Clinton shouted. He hung up and went to tell his wife Hillary. A film crew in Senegal later spotted him in a T shirt, chewing on a large cigar, beating a drum and playing a guitar. Aides who were soon swigging champagne with reporters said he was simply examining Senegalese handicrafts, not celebrating.

But celebration undoubtedly was in order. After a four-year legal struggle in which the world had been titillated by lurid allegations and heated denials concerning the President's sex life, the lawsuit was finished and with it any clear and present danger of impeachment. While Wright's decision will have little legal impact on other investigations--including that of independent counsel Kenneth Starr--it is unlikely that Congress will pursue Clinton for perjury or obstruction of justice.

Judge Wright did not try to determine whether a lewd advance had taken place in a room in Little Rock's Excelsior Hotel seven years ago, as Jones alleged. Nor did she clear Clinton's name. Wright simply said that even if everything Paula Jones alleged were true, which would have constituted behavior that was "certainly boorish and offensive," it still did not meet the standards the law required to establish sexual harassment. "There are no genuine issues for trial in this case," Wright concluded in a 39-page opinion.

Clinton may have held her close, touched her leg and tried to kiss her on the neck--or even dropped his trousers and urged her to "kiss it," as she alleged--but because Jones acknowledged that he had not threatened her and was not touching her when he allegedly exposed himself, he had not committed sexual assault under Arkansas law. As for harassment, the methodical Wright followed the well-trodden path of higher courts which have defined two kinds: "quid pro quo," in which a plaintiff suffers for not submitting to a superior's advances, and "hostile environment," the somewhat murkier area involving an abusive working environment.

Jones had asserted both kinds of harassment, but Wright made short work of each. Jones had suffered no "tangible job detriment." In fact, she had been promoted and given a raise, cost of living increases and satisfactory job evaluations. Nor was there evidence of a hostile work environment: Jones continued to work at the Arkansas Industrial Development Commission for 19 months, leaving only to accompany her husband on a job transfer to California; she never asked to be relieved of her duty of delivering items on a daily basis to the governor's office; never filed a complaint, told her supervisors of the alleged incident or sought counseling. If Clinton indeed exposed his penis and asked for oral sex, Wright concluded, the act was not a sexual assault but "a mere sexual proposition or encounter, albeit an odious one, that was relatively brief in duration, did not involve any coercion or threats of reprisal and was abandoned as soon as plaintiff made clear that the advance was not welcome."

Nor was the decision welcome to Jones, who heard the news on a cell phone while driving and became so upset that she pulled to the side of the road and broke down in tears. Jones' lawyers pledged to appeal Wright's decision, but even if they were successful in having the judgment overturned, there is little likelihood now that the President will be tried on these charges in the less than three years that remain in his second term. That outraged Clinton's critics. They beseiged conservative talk show hosts, complaining that Wright--a former law school student of Clinton's at the University of Arkansas--should never have been allowed to hear the case. Historically, though, Wright has been no friend of Clinton. They clashed over a test grade while she was his student, and she once worked for a Republican opponent of his in Arkansas.

In Washington, wishful aides predicted Wright's action would mean a quick end to Starr's four-year, $35 million investigation. "The judge's decision has brought the politics of rumor and innuendo to an end," said senior adviser Rahm Emanuel. "The American people will see the judge has ruled, there is closure and a real turning point and they will wonder why there is an ongoing, parallel investigation of a case that a federal judge found without merit."

Although Starr was originally appointed to investigate the failed Whitewater land deal, his inquiry has spread to encompass the 1993 suicide of White House lawyer Vincent Foster, the administration's obtaining of fbi files on prominent Republicans, the improper firing of the White House travel office staff and, most recently, the Monica Lewinsky case. That investigation grew from the Paula Jones lawsuit when Jones' lawyers, in an effort to show a pattern of harassment on Clinton's part, attempted to determine whether the President had lied about having an affair with the White House intern and tried to cover it up.

Starr insisted that the dismissal of the Jones case would have "no effect" on his investigation into whether Clinton or such friends as Vernon Jordan tried to tamper with witnesses. "We work in the realm of facts and law, not public relations," he said. Legally, he will press on. But pragmatically, Wright's decision threw the inquiry into a political tailspin.

"I would hope that Mr. Starr would see it fit now to bring his investigation to a close," said Tom Daschle, the Senate Democratic leader. But Republicans have also taken note of polls showing a majority of Americans are disturbed by Starr's tactics, including subpoenas of records of Lewinsky's purchases from bookstores. "There is a lot of pressure on Ken Starr to finish up," conceded Republican Senator Arlen Specter. "There is real public fatigue." Clinton said that Wright's dismissal meant "vindication." But the judge's ruling cannot erase the damage done to his presidency.

--Reported by Margaret Carlson, James Carney and J.F.O. Mcallister /Washington