Who's Who.

• Author: THREADGILL, SUSAN

In his new book The Breach, Peter Baker describes "a different approach" taken by Bill Clinton's impeachment lawyers as they sought his acquittal. "Sitting on the Republican side of the chamber, some of the White House attorneys were regularly striking up conversation with the senators during breaks. Strom Thurmond, the ancient senator from South Carolina, kept sidling over to the defense table to flirt with Nicole Seligman and Cheryl Mills. "`How come you're so cute?' he would ask, then clutch one of their arms, `I just love holding on to you,'" Baker writes.

In 1992, Richard Holbrooke co-chaired a commission that recommended that the White House be the "center for strategic planning" for national security, domestic policy, and economic policy formulation. Our pal Al Kamen wonders how Holbrooke feels about that recommendation now that he seems slated to land outside the White House as Secretary of State.

Kamen, by the way; also reports that doubts as to who would be formulating national security policy inside an Al Gore White House seemed removed last month when Gore's brain truster Leon Fuerth announced himself to 300 members of the Council on Foreign Relations as the "putative national security adviser."

Arthur Laffer, the father of Ronald Reagan's supply-side economics who last year made Time's list of "the century's 100 greatest minds," has, according to a company he sued, developed a lucrative "pattern and practice of preying on small cash-strapped companies by promising to sit on their boards of directors, reneging on his promise, and then suing to extort the stock he was to receive for his services." According to the New York Observer, "the economist has considerable leverage in the disputes because companies that eagerly announced his appointment to their boards are loath to lose the legitimacy his name brings and are ill-financed to fight his lawsuits."

You may have wondered why there suddenly appeared on the House floor a resolution condemning the Turkish massacre of Armenians, an event that, however lamentable, did after all take place 80 years ago. The explanation is that Republicans control the House and a Republican congressman, James Rogan, is in a closely contested race for reelection in a California district that happens to contain more than 20,000 registered voters of Armenian descent. "The fact this is of interest to his constituents is not lost on the leadership," Rep. Thomas Davis, head of the House Republican...