Henry Hyde, 83; influential legislator led House impeachment of Clinton

Henry Hyde, whispering to Barney Frank of Massachusetts during impeachment proceedings against President Clinton. (afp file/1998)

WASHINGTON - Henry Hyde, an influential Illinois Republican who sponsored landmark anti-abortion legislation, managed impeachment proceedings against President Clinton, and maintained ties of bipartisan civility during more than three decades in the House of Representatives, died yesterday at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago. He was 83.

Mary Ann Schultz, a hospital spokeswoman, said Mr. Hyde, who had open-heart surgery in July, was admitted for persistent renal failure related to his heart condition and died of arrhythmia.

Mr. Hyde, an eloquent speaker and adept legislator, overcame opposition in both major parties to secure passage of the Hyde Amendment, which bans federal funding of abortions for low-income women. It was the first significant victory for the anti-abortion movement after the Supreme Court's Roe v. Wade decision in 1973 made abortion legal. The funding ban has been added to congressional spending bills every year since 1977.

He was also a leader in 2003 of the ban on what abortion opponents call partial-birth abortions, the first federal restriction on an abortion procedure.

As chairman of the House Judiciary Committee in 1998, Mr. Hyde led House efforts to impeach Clinton on suspicion of lying about his affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky. In 1999, Mr. Hyde was the chief House manager in the unsuccessful effort to win an impeachment conviction from the Senate.

Describing the impeachment as "this melancholy procedure," Mr. Hyde said Clinton's conduct demeaned the office of the president and the laws of the land. He said that "future generations of Americans must know that such behavior is not only unacceptable but bears grave consequences, including loss of integrity, trust, and respect."

Tall, white-maned and imposing, the former Georgetown University basketball player who represented Illinois' Sixth Congressional District could be ferocious in support of bedrock conservative causes, but he was known for his easy humor and cordial relations with Democrats.

"He's ideologically quite passionate, but he doesn't allow that passion to make him unfair," Representative Barney Frank, a Democrat from Massachusetts, told the Washington Post on the eve of the impeachment inquiry.

Mr. Hyde's reputation for civility and evenhandedness was tested by the impeachment ordeal. Critics accused him of losing control of the proceedings to firebrands in his party. "I had thought that Hyde would run a fair and impartial process," said Representative Jerrold Nadler, a New York Democrat. "And he has run a kangaroo court instead."

During the proceedings, Mr. Hyde's own reputation was tarnished when the online magazine Salon disclosed an affair he had with a married woman in the 1960s. The congressman acknowledged the five-year relationship but called it a "youthful indiscretion." Critics noted that he was in his 40s when it occurred.

Mr. Hyde, a 32-year veteran of the House, retired last year. This month, President Bush presented him with the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

"This fine man believed in the power of freedom, and he was a tireless champion of the weak and forgotten," Bush said in a statement yesterday.

Henry John Hyde was born in Chicago. His father worked for the city emptying pay-phone coin boxes. The Hydes lived in suburban Evanston, but the Depression cost them their house. They moved to the city, where they lived in an apartment over a saloon.

Mr. Hyde first came to Washington on a Georgetown basketball scholarship but dropped out after his freshman year to join the Navy. Commissioned an ensign in 1944, he served on amphibious ships in the South Pacific.

He returned to Georgetown after the war and received an undergraduate degree in 1947. He earned a law degree at Loyola University in Chicago in 1949.

Although Mr. Hyde had grown up in a Democratic household and voted for Harry Truman in 1948, he switched parties after becoming a trial lawyer in Chicago.

"I became concerned that communism was a serious threat," he told the Post years later. "I became worried that my government had a blind spot as to the Soviet Union's intentions."

Elected to the Illinois House in 1967, he encountered what would become his signature issue when a colleague asked him to cosponsor an abortion rights law in 1968. Despite his Irish-Catholic upbringing, he told The Post he had never given much thought to the issue. Once he began reading on the matter, he realized he had to oppose it.

He first ran for Congress in 1962 "as a lark" and lost a close race. Elected in 1974, he joined a Congress controlled by Democrats and made a name for himself as an impassioned abortion foe.

The contentious issue wasn't the only one that occupied Mr. Hyde's legislative talents. During congressional hearings on the Iran-Contra scandal, he was one of the most outspoken public defenders of the Reagan White House and the man at the center of the scandal, then-Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North.

Despite his adherence to deeply conservative principles, he wasn't always a predictable GOP voter. He supported the Brady Bill, legislation that imposed a waiting period on gun purchases, and, after the 1999 shootings at Columbine High School, he backed 24-hour background checks for gun sales at gun shows.

He announced in 2005 that he would retire at the end of his term, citing back problems and other ailments. He hated to leave, he told friends and former colleagues at a dinner last year. "When I cross the river for the last time," he said, echoing comments that General Douglas MacArthur made about the Army, "my thoughts will be of the House, the House, the House."