The Associated Press

Excerpts from Democratic counsel Abbe Lowell's testimony before the House Judiciary Committee Dec. 10, as transcribed by the Federal Document Clearing House:

With the time I have today, Mr. Chairman, I would like to first set out the framework for an impeachment. In other words, I'd like to address the questions of what an impeachment is, and what it is not.

Second, I will take some time taking you through what you have designated as the evidence to demonstrate that there are no clear facts on which to base such an action.

Third, I would briefly compare the facts against the constitutional requirements that an impeachment may proceed only for high crimes and misdemeanors and only on the basis of clear and convincing evidence.

And fourth, I would like to further explain how the process used in this matter should cause this committee to have second thoughts about proceeding with the third impeachment in American history.''

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Impeachment is not a means to punish the president. Impeachment is not a means to send a message to our children that the president isn't above the law. There are better ways to do that. Impeachment is not a vote of confidence for Independent Counsel Starr. Impeachment is not a penalty for the president not answering the 81 questions as some of you would have wished. Impeachment is not a form of rebuke or censure for the president's conduct. In fact, impeachment is not about the president's conduct; it's about Congress' conduct.

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Just because the president might disgrace his office by his actions and just because the independent counsel may have shown partiality and zeal in his investigation, this House can do better. The road to dishonor in office can end in this committee, in this room, on this very day: because what an impeachment is, of course, is the single device to remove from the office the chief executive who you decide is constitutionally disqualified to serve, and by doing so, overturn two national elections. As many of you have said, it is the political equivalent of the death penalty.

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The public has been telling us for months and in every way they possibly can that they do not want to see a trial in the Senate where the issues will be about sex, and that they want there to be a censure or other alternatives to impeachment as the means to demonstrate that the president is not above the law.

So before this week is out, I hope we listen to the wisdom of the nation as well.

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As we have participated in every hearing and listened to all the statements, it appears that many in the majority seem to be going out of their way to find reasons to impeach when our history tells us it should be the other way around.

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Mr. Chairman, some have asked whether the role of the minority staff is the same as the president's counsel. It is not. We are not here to defend the president. He, better than anyone, has said that his conduct was not defensible and he has apologized for it.

We are here, however, to strenuously defend the requirements the Constitution poses on all of us before we would even consider the word impeachment. Our obligation is to leave Article II, Section 4 the way we found it on Nov. 9.

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Are the issues of the president's conduct in the case so grave that you would doom the country to additional months of this ordeal and government paralysis? On the slimmest of votes on the House floor? And no likely conviction in the Senate?

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Mr. Chairman, I know you and the staff are trying to be fair, but how is it fair to make these kinds of unspecified charges in these halls in the people's house on something as grave as impeachment? We should be doing better than filing charges that would be thrown out for vagueness in every courtroom in the land.

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For a week or more, the majority has stated that the president or the minority did not call fact witnesses. Mr. Inglis repeated that charge to White House counsel Ruff yesterday. But in America, it should not have been our burden to do so.

However, if it's fact witnesses you need, then it will be fact witnesses you get. Mr. Chairman, on behalf of the minority, I now call to the stand Monica Lewinsky, Betty Currie, Vernon Jordan, Linda Tripp and the president of the United States.

You see, their sworn testimony contained in the same boxes on which majority counsel is relying to put forth articles of impeachment actually proves the president's case. And this is what the witnesses have to say.

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Even though majority counsel has told us that they want parts of President Clinton's deposition in that case released, I thought you should have the whole picture, and hear the amazing exchange between three lawyers and a judge that went into the contorted definition of sexual relations at the Paula Jones deposition that has gotten us all here today. Please pay attention to how long all this takes and listen to how all of them, and especially Judge Webber Wright, accurately predicted that the twisted definition would create havoc and confusion.

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''To those who would impeach the president and condemn him for not being more forthcoming in that deposition, put yourself in his position on that day. He was being set up by the Paula Jones attorneys and Linda Tripp, who met with the office of independent counsel just the day before. He knew that there was some collusion going on to embarrass him, not about sexual harassment, but about a consensual affair.

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In any courtroom in America, so certainly in the halls of Congress, the president's misstatements about a consensual relationship made during a case alleging nonconsensual harassment was not material then and are not grounds for impeachment now.

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How can you in good faith ask this nation to endure a Senate trial to determine the difference between three months? How much more trivial can an impeachment charge and a trial, let alone one paralyzing the Senate and the Supreme Court, possibly be?

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How would you have a trial in the Senate to conclude about whether the president was right about what he thought the phrase ''sexual relations'' meant? You heard and saw the gyrations that it took three lawyers and a judge to deal with this silly expression. So who would you call to determine that the president did not believe in his interpretation?

The answer is that you don't have to call anyone. You have enough information right now to include that such a trial is unnecessary.

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Given statements from President Roosevelt's failure to remember that he promised military support for Panama in its conflict with Colombia over the canal, to President Reagan's failure to remember how funds flowed to the Contras, this committee should not make presidential lapses of memory into impeachable offenses or the office could go vacant forever.

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It is not surprising, improper or impeachable for the president to want to hide his improper relationship, and even hope that in conversations he might test what others knew about it. Yet this proposed article of impeachment alleges that which does not exist and literally impossible to prove, no matter whether a Senate trial would take a day or a year.

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Members of the committee, most of you - I think almost all of you - are lawyers. Your colleagues on the floor are going to be looking to you to give them guidance about the law. Certainly, for something as grave as an impeachment, do not rewrite 100 years of law.

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In Watergate, abuse of power was proved with tapes of President Nixon telling his aides to get the CIA to stop an FBI investigation, to create a slush fund to keep people quiet; with tapes that you can hear him directing the break-in of people's offices or to get IRS involved in going after political enemies.

Here, the charge stands on tapes - of Monica Lewinsky and Linda Tripp talking about going shopping.

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As to the substantive charge that misstatements to the staff might be repeated in the grand jury or even to the public, this article of impeachment merely repeats in another form the same charge, that the president wanted to conceal his private, sexual relationship from anyone and everyone he could. As my daughter would say, ''duh.''

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As the committee takes up this proposal, keep focused that this was not an attempt by a president to organize his staff to spread misinformation about the progress of the war in Vietnam. Or about a break-in in Democratic headquarters at the Watergate. Or even about how funds from arm sales in Iran were diverted to aid the Contras. This was a president repeating to staff the same denial of an inappropriate and extremely embarrassing relationship, the same denial he had already made to the public.

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Members of the committee, let us not lose sight of the fact that unlike the case in 1974, Bill Clinton's alleged crimes are not those of an errant president, but are that of an unfaithful husband.

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I have heard the majority state that a president should not be above the law, and yet this proposed article would place him below the law that gives every American the right to assert legally accepted privileges without fearing being thrown out of his job.

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Members of the committee, in light of the high threshold and the need for clear and convincing evidence, what can you make from the fact that the minority staff is demonstrating that the evidence is so slight, that it does not even exist on many of the charges?

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This entire referral results from charges made by Linda Tripp, who is responsible for the Office of Independent Counsel in - for getting the Office of the Independent Counsel in the case just a few days before she gave the fruits of her illegal tapes to the Paula Jones attorneys so they could set up the president and create the events that are now before the committee.

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With that high standard in mind, members of the committee, the majority must not further dilute the Constitution by arguing phrases like the House is a grand jury that simply votes out an article of impeachment and lets the Senate worry about it. Or when it states that the House does not have to hear evidence or makes decisions about who is telling the truth, because that's the Senate's job.

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If you try to rewrite history by contending that the House is merely the body that accuses and the Senate is the body that tries, you forfeit the double protection that the founders intended to exist. Contrary to having the House be a mere rubber stamp for sending allegations of wrongdoing to the Senate, the Constitution actually requires that the House as well as the Senate look to the same evidence with the same standard.

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It's a good thing that the majority has made that attempt. You see, the committee is right to be on the lookout for Watergate similarities, because that sad chapter of American history really does describe that which are truly impeachable offenses.

But calling something a Watergate offense does not make it so. The more you look at Watergate, the more you will see just how different these proceedings are.

In the end, Watergate was a congressional event which both sides could identify as serious and substantial enough to call for truly bipartisan action, just as both you, Mr. Chairman, and Chairman Rodino understood needed to be the case.

But that is not the situation today. Both Watergate and today's inquiries started with a referral from a special prosecutor sending grand jury material to the Congress. But that is where the similarity ends.