President Clinton yesterday received a rousing welcome from congressional Democrats, who professed to be unconcerned by the sex scandal surrounding him as they looked ahead to this year's legislative elections.
But while Democrats were holding a boisterous pep rally for their party agenda and demonstrating their full support for Mr Clinton, Republicans were quietly beginning preliminary preparations for an impeachment investigation against him.
In recent days it has appeared increasingly likely that Mr Kenneth Starr, the independent counsel investigating Mr Clinton's alleged affair with a former White House intern, Ms Monica Lewin
sky, will eventually present his evidence to the Republican-controlled House of Representatives.
National Public Radio quoted sources who said it was "almost certain" Mr Starr would deliver his evidence to the House Judiciary Committee, reasoning that was preferable to trying to obtain an indictment against a sitting President.
Republicans have been discussing the use of a $4.4 million reserve fund for a possible impeachment investigation and have also been looking for a secure room at the Capitol in which impeachment documents would be guarded, party aides said.
The grand jury proceedings continued yesterday when a retired Secret Service agent, Mr Lewis Fox, said Mr Clinton and Ms Lewinsky met alone in the White House Oval Office. Mr Fox told the Washington Post that in late 1995 he led Ms Lewinsky to the office at Mr Clinton's request. He said that when his shift ended 40 minutes later he had not seen her emerge.
But Democrats insisted the scandal was the farthest thing from their minds at their rally, the opening salvo in the November legislative election campaign.
Senator Edward Kennedy said of the rally: "It's the first time I've seen this kind of meeting in 35 years." Asked if the scandal was sapping support from Democrats as they enter the autumn campaign, he said: "I haven't seen it."
Meanwhile, a report published in London claimed a White House aide was transferred abruptly to the Pentagon after being named as a long-standing lover of Mr Clinton in Ms Paula Jones's sexual harassment lawsuit. The Daily Telegraph claimed Ms Robyn Dickey, the former White House Director of Special Projects and Special Needs, was appointed to the new post of chief of the protocol office at the Defence Department last November, days after an affair with Mr Clinton was raised in a deposition.
The Telegraph said a former Arkansas state trooper, Mr Douglas Brown, testified that Mr Clinton had a sexual relationship with Ms Dickey (50) during the 1980s. She was administrator of Mr Clinton's mansion in Little Rock, Arkansas, in the mid-1980s. Her daughter lived at the White House as nanny to Chelsea Clinton.