Three to Testify

Monica Lewinsky

What more can she say? The siren of the Oval Office has given hours and hours of testimony. But the men who are running the Senate impeachment trial want to know more, partly to clear up discrepancies between her testimony and Bill Clinton's and partly because they believe she will help to galvanise the case for impeachment.

To avoid taking the proceedings down a pornographic path she will not be asked about differences between her account of their sexual liaisons and his. Instead, the questioning will centre on the matter of what the President did or did not tell her to do; the famous gifts she was given by him, and their disposal; and her job hunting.

Vernon Jordan

One of Mr Clinton's inner circle, he knows the byways and highways of power as well as anyone in Washington. He started out as a civil rights lawyer in the Sixties, but now works for an impeccably pukkah legal firm in Washington, Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld.

The trial managers suggest that Mr Jordan tackled the Lewinsky problem by finding her a job and buying her silence. Not so, Mr Jordan and the White House respond: he did this for many people.

The questions for him are: what did you know and when did you know it?

They will also be interested in conversations he had with Ms Lewinsky about evidence of her relationship with the President.

Sidney Blumenthal

The White House brought in the former journalist for glossy publications such as The New Yorker in 1997 as a communication strategist, and he has been drawn into its inner-most secrets. A close friend of the President and (especially) the First Lady, he makes no bones about being fiercely partisan.

He will be quizzed over what the President told him about Ms Lewinsky, knowing Mr Blumenthal would be a witness before the grand jury.

He is also suspected of leaking unflattering stories about Ms Lewinsky, which he denies.

He has already been quizzed by the Special Prosecutor, Kenneth Starr, in a prolonged and uncomfortable session where little was achieved. He claimed that many of the conversations between himself and the President and First Lady were covered by executive privilege: a judge disagreed.

Andrew Marshall