Hi CR. I'm dying to know if you watched the Condit interview and, if so, what you thought. Here's this morning's NYT article on the interview. I'll add my comments later this morning (I promise, Karen, if you're reading this!)
August 24, 2001
Condit Denies Any Knowledge of Levy's Fate
By TODD S. PURDUM
LOS ANGELES, Aug. 23 — Battling for
his political life, Representative Gary A.
Condit of California acknowledged in a tense,
nationally televised interview tonight that he
had had a "very close" relationship with
Chandra Ann Levy, a Washington intern
from his home district. But he declined to say
whether it was sexual and repeatedly said he
knew nothing about Ms. Levy's
disappearance nearly four months ago.
They were his first extended comments about
a case that had been prominent in the news
all summer and jeopardized the political future
of Mr. Condit, a six-term Democrat who
represents a conservative district that
stretches through California's Central Valley.
In the interview, Mr. Condit told Connie
Chung of the ABC News program
"Primetime Thursday" that "Chandra and I
never had a cross word," and that he knew of
no reason why anyone would want to harm
her.
"We had a close relationship," Mr. Condit
said, looking drawn and sometimes clenching
his jaw in the 30- minute interview taped this
afternoon at a friend's ranch in Modesto,
Calif. "I liked her very much."
But under determined questioning by Ms.
Chung, Mr. Condit, 53, repeatedly declined to
describe the exact nature of what he called
his five- month relationship with Ms. Levy, a
24-year-old intern at the Bureau of Prisons
whose family lives in Modesto. She was last
seen on April 30 at a health club near her Washington apartment. After her
disappearance, family members said she had been intimately involved with Mr.
Condit.
In refusing to elaborate on the details of his relationship with Ms. Levy, Mr.
Condit told Ms. Chung: "I've been married for 34 years, and I've not been a
perfect man. But out of respect for my family, and out of a specific request
from the Levy family, I think it's best that I not get into those details about
Chandra Levy."
Mr. Condit said Ms. Levy's parents, Robert and Susan, who were at their
home in Modesto today, had made a request on "one of the TV shows" that
"they did not want to hear about the details of the relationship." In fact, it was
their lawyer, Billy Martin, who made that original comment in a televised
interview this week, but he said tonight that the Levys had no objection to Mr.
Condit's making the relationship public. "He's hiding and I wish he would
answer the questions," he said tonight on "Nightline."
Asked point blank, "Did you kill Chandra Levy?" Mr. Condit replied, "I did
not."
During the interview, Ms. Chung, facing Mr. Condit in armchairs, asked him at
least a dozen times to specify the exact nature of his relationship with Ms.
Levy.
Mr. Condit's interview was part of a publicity blitz intended to salvage a
political career that fellow Democrats have said is badly damaged at best as
Mr. Condit prepares to seek a seventh term next year. One leading
Democratic consultant said today that before the summer Congressional
recess, Mr. Condit had told House colleagues that he did not intend to seek
re-election, and some Democrats were described as aghast at the prospect
that he would.
Earlier today, a letter from Mr. Condit to more than 200,000 households in his
district began arriving in constituents' mailboxes. In it, he wrote, "I am not
perfect and have made my share of mistakes," but said he had nothing to do
with Ms. Levy's disappearance.
In the letter, he wrote that despite accusations that he had remained silent
about her disappearance, "I have not been silent with those in charge of finding
Chandra." The letter continued, "I have answered every single question asked
by the police and F.B.I."
The Washington police have interviewed Mr. Condit four times but have
steadfastly said he is not a suspect in Ms. Levy's disappearance, which is
being handled as a missing persons investigation and not as a crime. He
provided a privately administered polygraph test that he said proved he was
telling the truth but declined investigators' requests to administer a lie detector
test.
Terrance W. Gainer, Washington's deputy police chief, took issue with Mr.
Condit's assertion of early and complete cooperation with investigators after
Ms. Levy's disappearance. "It took us three interviews and a lot of effort to
get as far as we got," Mr. Gainer told The Associated Press on Thursday
night.
But Mr. Condit's lawyer, Abbe Lowell, disputed that contention, saying the
Washington police chief, Charles Ramsey, had characterized his client as being
"completely cooperative." Mr. Martin, the lawyer for Ms. Levy's parents, said
tonight that Mr. Condit's reluctance to discuss his connection to Chandra Levy
had jeopardized the police investigation from the start.
"It's interesting to us that Congressman Condit spent so much time, and so
much effort preparing for his interaction with the media," Mr. Martin said. "All
we ever wanted, and continue to seek, is for him to speak with us, and tell us,
confidentially, all that he knows that may aid our search."
While there were no preconditions on the questions Ms. Chung was allowed to
ask, ABC agreed to broadcast the interview unedited. In it, Mr. Condit
declined to answer many other specific questions, including why he had thrown
an empty watch box, which he said had contained a gift from a woman in his
office, into a trash can on a street shortly before the police searched his
apartment.
After the Levy case became public, a flight attendant, Anne Marie Smith,
came forward to say that she had had an earlier affair with Mr. Condit and
that he had urged her to sign an affidavit denying it. Tonight, Mr. Condit called
that "an absolute lie" and dismissed such an affidavit as "a lawyer-to-lawyer
statement."
Under Ms. Chung's questioning, Mr. Condit said he did not love Ms. Levy, that
she had never said she loved him and that the two had never discussed
marriage. He said he had not lied to Ms. Levy's mother when she asked him in
a telephone conversation whether he had had an affair with her daughter.
He said he had never told Ms. Levy not to carry identification when she came
to visit him. One of Ms. Levy's relatives reported that she had said he had
done so. He declined to say how often she had visited his apartment but said
he typically talked with her several times a week,
Mr. Condit said that his last conversation with Ms. Levy, on the telephone,
occurred on April 29, lasting about a minute and that "it was simply talking
about her travel plans" of returning to California for her graduation from the
University of Southern California. "She wasn't upset about anything," he said.
Mr. Condit said he placed a call to Ms. Levy a couple of days later, but never
heard back and first learned of her disappearance when her parents called his
home on May 6 and spoke to his wife, Carolyn.
"I was horrified to hear that she was missing," he said.
In the letter, paid for with campaign funds, Mr. Condit said he wanted to write
to the voters in his district before speaking to the news media.
"I have known so many of you for a long time," he wrote. "You know me to be
hard working, committed to our issues and dedicated to my community and my
family." He added, "I hope our relationship is strong enough to survive all this."
On Tuesday, Mr. Condit gave an interview to People magazine and posed with
his wife for a cover photograph for an issue that will be on newsstands on
Friday. His spokeswoman in Washington, Marina Ein, said he would also give
interviews to Newsweek, two small newspapers in his district that she declined
to identify and to the CBS-TV affiliate in Sacramento. Judy Bachrach, a writer
for Vanity Fair also interviewed him this week, but Mr. Condit has declined to
talk to the Modesto and Fresno Bee newspapers, which have called for his
resignation.
Reaction to the letter was mixed in Mr. Condit's hometown of Ceres, just
south of Modesto in the Central Valley, where television cameras were
camped outside his house on Acorn Lane and a news helicopter followed a
sport utility vehicle that emerged from the garage carrying Mr. Condit to the
interview taping.
"He doesn't have to explain himself to me," said Mirl Morse, 47, a retired
Army sergeant astride his black Yamaha motorcycle when he looked at Mr.
Condit's letter. "To me, that is a personal issue."
William Teaney, a certified public accountant, marched up to Mr. Condit's
front door to deliver his personal reply to the letter. He said the response,
dropped in Mr. Condit's mailbox, was "private," but added, "He needs to
resign." |
