By contrast, Clinton remembered right off the bat seeing Lewinsky outside his office in late December 1997. No official reception, formal function, or other event, just Monica right outside his office. And this he remembered without having the luxury of time to refresh his recollection and confer with lawyers before answering, as had Lewinsky. The leader of the free world recalled a chance meeting with a former White House intern that had evidently not made much of an impression on the intern. It must have slipped her mind.
He did interpose a cover for their meeting: his secretary, Betty Currie. In fact, it was Currie whom Lewinsky had come to see. “She came by to see Betty sometime before Christmas. And she was there talking to her, and I stuck my head out, said hello to her.”5 First Currie had asked Clinton to bring some gifts to Lewinsky from The Black Dog, and then she starts inviting Lewinsky to drop by the White House to visit. That Betty palling around with Monica was going to cause the president no end of trouble.
In an immunity-less proffer negotiated by her lawyer, William Ginsburg, Lewinsky told a different story altogether: it was at that late December meeting,6 she says, that Clinton told her to say her visits to the White House were to see Currie, and not to see him. Betty Currie has testified that Lewinsky and the president were sometimes alone in his office, though she apparently does not know if they had a sexual relationship.
SUPER LAWYER VERNON JORDAN
Then there was the matter of Vernon Jordan. In the tape-recorded conversations, Lewinsky says super lawyer Jordan informed her that perjury in civil cases is rarely prosecuted. In her proffer to the independent counsel, Lewinsky said she told Jordan she had had sex with Clinton and that she planned to lie to the court, without cavil from Jordan.7 After testifying before the grand jury, Jordan said, “I did not in any way tell her, encourage her, to lie.”
Jordan did, however, get her a job and get her a lawyer—who would help her draft her perjurious affidavit denying she had ever had sexual relations with the president. Jordan’s strenuous efforts on behalf of a twenty-four-year-old former intern would be odd enough if she had been his intern. Lewinsky’s only connection to Jordan was through Clinton.
According to Lewinsky’s proffer to the independent counsel in early March, Clinton advised her that she could avoid giving a deposition in the Jones case if she were in New York.8 Jordan told the grand jury that he personally gave the president regular progress reports on his efforts to get Lewinsky a job. He partially confirmed Clinton’s statement that Betty Currie was the one who referred Lewinsky to him. Yet he also explained that he assumed the referral was made at the president’s request.9
Jordan insisted, “[M]y efforts to find her a job were not a quid pro quo for the affidavit that she signed.”10 On NBC’s Today show Hillary Clinton explained Vernon Jordan’s herculean efforts to land a job for the Valley Girl intern by noting “how outgoing and friendly Vernon Jordan is” and saying that “he has helped literally hundreds of people—and it doesn’t matter who they are.”11
THE TALKING POINTS
Most mysterious were the talking points. On Wednesday, January 14, 1998, two days before Starr’s deputies confronted Lewinsky at the Ritz Carlton Hotel—and the day after they had wired Tripp to tape a conversation with Lewinsky—Lewinsky handed Tripp a typed, three-page, single-spaced document titled “Points to Make in an Affidavit.” In addition to advising Tripp to be a “team player,” the document told her exactly how—providing Tripp specific points to make that would benefit Clinton in the sexual harassment suit.
The proposed “recollections” were not exclusively, nor even primarily, about Lewinsky. They were about Kathleen Willey—whom Tripp was on record as having seen emerging from the Oval Office “disheveled” on the day Willey says she was groped by the president. Tripp was instructed to declare:You now do not believe that what [Willey] claimed happened really happened. You now find it completely plausible that she herself smeared her lipstick, untucked blouse, etc. You never saw her go into the Oval Office, or come out of the Oval Office. You have never observed the President behaving inappropriately with anybody.
As to Lewinsky herself, the talking points advised Tripp to denounce Lewinsky as “this huge liar,” and to claim, “I found out she left the WH because she was stalking the P[resident] or something like that.” Finally the talking points requested that Tripp submit her affidavit to “Bennett’s people” for review before turning it over to Jones’s lawyers. Once again, Lewinsky, if not “the Big He,” is caught dead to rights suborning perjury—even if she is “this huge liar.”
Like Craig Livingstone—the former bar bouncer turned White House director of personnel security who was caught with nine hundred FBI files in the White House—the only explanation for the talking points is that they materialized out of thin air.
If Lewinsky did type the talking points—and phrases like “this huge liar” suggest that possibility—there is little doubt that she was coached by someone, presumably a lawyer. The points read like a valley girl’s transcription of a lawyer’s advice. Most implausibly, the talking points concern a certain “Jane Doe” in the Jones case who would not be at the top of Lewinsky’s concerns. Willey was of great concern to Clinton; Lewinsky was mainly concerned with getting a job in New York and preventing “the Big Creep” from finding out that she had been talking about their “affair.” The request to let “Bennett’s people” review the final declaration doesn’t make any sense coming from Lewinsky. By all accounts, Monica was primarily interested in Monica.
The leading candidates for talking points coach are Vernon Jordan, Clinton aide Bruce Lindsey, and of course the only person who would personally benefit from Tripp’s suborned perjury—Clinton himself.12 Lewinsky reportedly loathed Lindsey, and Jordan reportedly is not an idiot. Of the three, Clinton is the only one known to have left messages on Lewinsky’s home answering machine.
Though it seems incredible that the president of the United States would be coaching a twenty-four-year-old former intern on how to tamper with a witness, it is also incredible that the president of the United States would be getting oral sex from a twenty-something intern, sending her love tokens, and leaving messages on her answering machine.
Moreover, according to news accounts of Lewinsky’s proffer, Clinton was the one who told her how to commit another felony. Clinton is said to have advised the intern that she could trip up the Jones lawyers’ subpoena for any gifts he had given her if she relinquished possession of the gifts. Following his advice, Lewinsky packed up the gifts and sent them to Betty Currie. Then Betty Currie took them straight to Ken Starr.
Lewinsky was left holding the bag again: even if Clinton never laid a finger on Lewinsky and really was just consulting her about monetary policy, she is the only person who clearly concealed these gifts from the court in the Jones case. Concealing subpoenaed evidence from a court is obstruction of justice, a felony.
As Lewinsky plaintively notes on the tapes, the only reason she is in this mess is because Clinton wouldn’t settle the Paula Jones case. Lewinsky at least has no doubt about who is telling the truth. She tells Tripp that Clinton will never settle with Jones because “he’s in denial.” Jane Doe #6 explains to Tripp why she is willing to commit perjury for Clinton: “I will deny it so he will not get screwed in the case.” Presciently, she continues: “[B]ut I’m going to get screwed personally.”13
PRIAPUS’S PERJURY
Either the president was getting oral sex from Lewinsky while being sued for sexual harassment by Paula Jones, perjured himself about this relevant evidence sought by Jones’s attorneys, suborned Lewinsky’s perjury, and persuaded Lewinsky to tamper with another witness in the case, or Lewinsky is “this huge liar.”
In order to believe the “this huge liar” scenario, one would also have to believe, among many, many other implausible things:• Lewinsky developed a fantasy affair with the president that she was capable of droning on about to several people in vivid detail over a period of at least one y
ear.
• Lewinsky’s fantasy would include a derisive and belittling portrait of the president’s private parts.
• The fantasy of a twenty-one-year-old girl would have her repeatedly performing oral sex on a fifty-year-old man (with physical limitations noted above) and with no further sexual satisfaction for her.
• The fantasy of a twenty-one-year-old girl would also not include any significant romantic accoutrements.
• Lewinsky would try several tacks to persuade Tripp to deny knowing of the affair, including offering to pay Tripp’s medical expenses for a foot operation and offering her a one-half interest in Lewinsky’s condo in Australia. But it would never, ever occur to Lewinsky to just come clean and admit to Tripp that the whole story was a fantasy to begin with.
• By dint of her sheer force of will, Lewinsky managed to secure a job interview conducted at her apartment complex with Clinton friend and Ambassador to the United Nations Bill Richardson. She would have the job offered, decline it, and then lyingly tell Tripp that the interview and job offer were implicit paybacks for her perjurious affidavit in the Jones case.
• Also on her own, Lewinsky would procure the assistance of Clinton friend and power lawyer Vernon Jordan and then, again, lyingly tell Tripp that the legal assistance and job offer from Revlon were an implicit payback for her perjurious affidavit in the Jones case. Inexplicably corroborating Lewinsky’s payback fantasy, Jordan would later admit that he kept the president informed of his efforts on Lewinsky’s behalf.
• Entirely on her own initiative, Lewinsky sought advice from a lawyer on how she could tamper with Tripp’s recollection of an incident having nothing to do with Lewinsky—to wit, Tripp’s encounter with Kathleen Willey. Following the lawyer’s counsel, Lewinsky typed up a memo titled “Points to Make in an Affidavit,” instructing Tripp how to discount Willey’s smeared lipstick and untucked blouse.
• Also on her own initiative, Lewinsky advised Tripp in the talking points memo that Tripp show her affidavit to Clinton’s lawyer in the Jones case before submitting it to Jones’s lawyers.
• Lewinsky had a completely innocent reason to pay three dozen visits to the White House after leaving her job there, including dates when Lewinsky’s close friend—hard-working, discrete Betty Currie—was on vacation.
• It is normal for a middle-aged, married man to be leaving messages on a twenty-something’s home answering machine and exchanging gifts with her. (The president confirmed this under oath in his Jones deposition, specifically admitting that Lewinsky had given him a tie, and “a book or two,” and that he had given her gifts from The Black Dog, and “could” have given her a Walt Whitman book and a hat pin.)
These are just some of the things one is required to believe in order to believe the president didn’t perjure himself, didn’t suborn Lewinsky’s perjury, and didn’t persuade Lewinsky to tamper with another witness in the case.
No one is “waiting for the facts to come in,” any more than O.J. is looking for the real killer.
Chapter Five
Kathleen Meets Paula
Lewinsky was not the only Jane Doe who would be “screwed personally” on account of Clinton’s offer to screw her presidentially. Soon even soccer mom Kathleen Willey came in for it from the White House. Willey was a fervent Clinton loyalist, just like all the women who would later tell pollsters they thought Willey was a liar. As she told 60 Minutes interviewer Ed Bradley, she would have carried Clinton’s grope “to the grave” with her if she had not been outed to Paula Jones’s lawyers and ultimately compelled by a court to answer questions under oath in the Jones case.
Paula Jones’s first set of lawyers had issued a request for Willey’s deposition on July 29, 1997. A few months earlier, Jones lawyer Joseph Cammarata had received an anonymous telephone call from a woman claiming to have relevant evidence in Paula Jones’s suit against President Clinton. The woman told Cammarata, “I had a similar thing happen to me in 1993.”1
Though the anonymous caller may not have actually been Kathleen Willey2—and she has explicitly denied being the caller—the tipster talked at great length about “herself ” and her experience with the sexual predator-in-chief but would not give her name. She said the “similar thing” occurred a few years back when she met with President Clinton to make a request for a White House job with more responsibility.
The gist of her story was that the president took her into a private office adjacent to the Oval Office where he began to “comfort” her regarding her troubles. He hugged her, and then moved from feeling her pain to feeling certain of her body parts, as well. The rest of her story largely tracked the contours of Jones’s allegations in her complaint regarding Clinton’s sexual advances in the Excelsior Hotel: Willey pulled away and left the room.
The Jones team went to work to learn the identity of the anonymous caller. From the tip that her husband had committed suicide (and consequently was listed on many of the right-wing Clinton-associate death lists) Jones’s lawyers determined that it was Kathleen Willey, whose husband committed suicide on November 29, 1993.
On August 1, 1997, Newsweek reporter Michael Isikoff broke the story. This was the article that contained a quote from Clinton lawyer Bob Bennett about Linda Tripp that would induce her to begin taping her conversations with Lewinsky. Once those tapes were to come out, Tripp would be denounced on a pro-Clinton “fact sheet” for such outrages as being “Thought by Neighbors to Be a Republican.” But back when she was being asked about Willey, she was a good Clinton loyalist.3
Tripp gave Isikoff the White House spin:Linda Tripp, then an executive assistant in the White House counsel’s office, recalls bumping into Willey in the West Wing after Willey had allegedly left the Oval Office. Willey was “disheveled. Her face was red and her lipstick was off. She was flustered, happy and joyful,” Tripp told NEWSWEEK. Willey said she had to talk to Tripp right away. According to Tripp, Willey said the president had taken her from the Oval Office to his private office, a small adjoining hideaway, and kissed and fondled her. She was not in any way “appalled,” Tripp told NEWSWEEK.
Tripp, who says she and Willey were once friendly but are no longer, agreed to speak to NEWSWEEK “to make it clear that this was not a case of sexual harassment.”
Just a sentence or two later Bennett insulted Tripp, saying she was “not to be believed.” Soon Tripp was cuing up the tape machine.
In the rest of the article, Isikoff reported on Willey’s encounter with the president on November 29, 1993, as told by her friend Julie Steele.4 In her first quoted version of the facts—and there would be several—Steele said Willey had told her about being groped by the president the night it happened, and said Willey was “distraught.” Willey was not quoted by Isikoff.
Before the article went to print, Steele called back to say she had lied. In fact, she now said, Willey only told her about the presidential fondling a few weeks after it had occurred and, frankly, didn’t seem so damned upset about it. In that second in a series of stories she would eventually give, Steele said she had lied at Willey’s request.5
For his part, Clinton’s first version of his story, as given by his lawyer, Bennett, was that he had “no specific recollection of meeting [Willey] in the Oval Office.”
Meanwhile, Willey was fighting Jones’s lawyers like a wildcat. Willey held her job as a member of the United Service Organization’s Board of Governors as a Clinton appointee. Not surprisingly, Willey was not eager to leap into the Paula Jones fracas by taking a public stand against her benefactor, President Clinton. She said she was “outraged” at Jones’s attempt to pull her into the case.6
First, she retained a lawyer to block the deposition. Her lawyer, Daniel A. Gecker, promptly moved to quash the subpoena—a motion he could not possibly have won—and issued a statement from Willey saying she “continues to have a very good relationship with the President,” and “does not have any information that would be relevant to the Paula Jones case.”7
&nbs
p; At first, these dilatory tactics worked. Jones’s lawyers agreed to delay the deposition on their own accord.
That gave the president’s friends time to work on Willey. The Clinton White House began its response to the Willey revelation by denying that she had ever worked in the White House. Once that response became inoperable, the White House took the position that it would neither admit nor deny whether Willey had ever worked in the White House. This actually happened.
Next the White House attempted to discredit Willey, by explaining, through Clinton lawyer Bennett, that she may have been confused by the president’s attempt to comfort her after her husband’s suicide. But it was “preposterous” to suggest that Clinton had “made a sexual advance.”8 Unfortunately, her husband’s body was not discovered until the day after President Clinton felt her pain.
Bennett objected to Willey’s deposition on the grounds that she “has absolutely no knowledge or information of any relevance regarding Paula Jones or her allegations.” Defying the legion of TV lawyers sagely nodding their assent to Bennett’s claim, and just about everyone else to report on it,9 the court ordered Willey to give her deposition to Jones’s attorneys.
THE WILLEY DEPOSITION
She didn’t go down without a fight though. Throughout the deposition, taken on January 10, 1998, getting her to answer simple questions was like getting the president to answer questions about Lewinsky. Willey was practically spitting her monosyllabic answers at Jones’s attorneys. Every time she was asked to say what happened next, Willey answered with the highly abbreviated, but nonperjurious, “I left.” She had clearly been extremely well prepared by her lawyer. Unless Jones lawyer Donovan Campbell phrased his questions in precisely the right way, she denied it. Lesser lawyers would have walked away from the Willey deposition empty-handed.