Dump Day

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WASHINGTON: "Dump Day" was Monica's name for the day President Clinton broke off their relationship, but the real dump occurred Monday: hastily bound books containing 3,183 pages of supporting documents that were supposed to make us blanch, recoil, impeach -- something. But as with the long-awaited presidential video testimony, the promised revelations are, at first glance, less than revelatory.

Special Report Included: The FBI lab report on the stained dress, a table detailing the progression (from "eye contact" through "oral sex") of Bill and Monica's inappropriateness and photos, lots of grainy photos, of everything from the dress to the gifts to the two lovers together in the White House. Also part of the package are letters between Starr and Clinton lawyer David Kendall in which Kendall avers that the President is simply too busy with Saddam to testify -- refusals that Starr cites as obstruction of justice. Not included: some rumored-to-be really dirty bits, blacked out by Judiciary members, "that did not have evidentiary value," as member Rep. Charles Canady (R-Fla.) put it. The early verdict is that the data dump nails down a lot of what Starr had already made a convincing case for. What it hasn't done is close the holes in Starr's 445-page opening salvo that the President and his lawyer are trying their best to jump through.