The Week

Rev. Wogaman also noted in his Times interview that both the President and his intern had had a rough time of it in childhood-he with his abusive stepfather, she with her weight problem and divorced parents. The President has used this one before. He told the First Lady that he had merely been "ministering" to a troubled young subordinate who had a background similar to his, a line Mrs. Clinton passed on to others, who, in turn, shared it with Mr. Starr's grand jury. Finally, Rev. Wogaman urged America to forgive the President rather than "heap the sins of the nation on him." Maybe Bill Clinton should be canonized! The President as the Lamb, suffering and sacrificing for the benefit of us all.

The Pollard case

Free Him? Or Hang Him?

PRIME Minister Bibi thought he had gotten a promise from President Bill at the Wye talks to release jailed super-spy Jonathan Pollard, who sent U.S. secrets to Israel. Clinton wiggled out of that promise, if that's what it was. But he did order a "review" of the case, with a deadline of early 1999. The U.S. national-security establishment is adamantly opposed to Pollard's release. And the plot thickens, because there is the matter of the trunkload of highly sensitive revelations-of U.S. intelligence codes, sources, and methods-but now also a question of the adequacy of Israeli security in husbanding the pirated information. If betrayal isn't treated gravely, the offense is trivialized, and vibrations of unconcern contaminate the security culture. Senator Moynihan is most certainly correct in his book (Secrecy) that much too much material gets classified than need be. But no one is doubting the gravity of the Pollard spycatch. And prison sentences shouldn't be reflections of the longevity of a secret's usefulness. If the security code you stole in June gets changed in July, that doesn't mean a 30-day sentence is appropriate. The appropriate punishment for the betrayal that can mean life and death is execution. We were spared decades' demonstrations to free Julius Rosenberg. The director of the Central Intelligence Agency threatened to resign in November when word got out that President Clinton was thinking of releasing Pollard as a favor to Netanyahu. Congress should give time to an appropriate way to signal to Mr. Clinton that we do not free traitors who have endangered national security and have been instrumental, in many cases, in the detection and execution of friends of the United States.

Impeachment

Moderating Full Time

ALFONSE D'Amato has at last garnered some good press, however late for his re-election campaign as Senator. D'Amato came out against impeachment, earning him the plaudits not only of big-media types but of the President himself, who phoned D'Amato personally to express his thanks. D'Amato took his stand in part because Rep. Peter King, a fellow New York Republican also opposing impeachment, asked him to do so. "I made it real personal," King explained to a Washington audience. "I told him I was getting killed, a thousand calls a day, and I needed a favor from him."