The secret right conspiracy is unfolding.. NY Times: "THE LAWSUIT
Quietly, Team of Lawyers Who Disliked Clinton Kept Jones Case Alive
By DON VAN NATTA Jr. and JILL ABRAMSON 12/24/99
WASHINGTON -- This time last year, Hillary Rodham Clinton
described, in a now-famous appearance on the NBC News
program "Today," how a "vast right-wing conspiracy" was trying to
destroy her husband's Presidency.
As it turns out, some of the most serious damage to Bill Clinton's
Presidency came not from his high-profile political enemies but from a
small secret clique of lawyers in their 30's who share a deep antipathy
toward the President, according to nearly two dozen interviews and
recently filed court documents.
While cloaking their roles, the lawyers were deeply involved -- to an
extent not previously known -- for nearly five years in the Paula Jones
sexual misconduct lawsuit. They then helped push the case into the
criminal arena and into the office of the independent counsel, Kenneth W.
Starr.
The group's leader was Jerome M. Marcus, a 39-year-old associate at
the Philadelphia law firm of Berger & Montague, whose partners are
major contributors to the Democratic Party.
Although Ms. Jones never met him or knew he had worked on her behalf,
Marcus drafted legal documents and was involved in many of the
important strategic decisions in her lawsuit, according to billing records
and interviews with other lawyers who worked on the case. As much as
any of Ms. Jones's attorneys of record, Marcus helped keep Ms. Jones's
case alive in the courts.
Marcus recruited others to assist his efforts, including several friends from
the University of Chicago Law School. One of those who was
approached, Paul Rosenzweig, briefly considered doing work for Ms.
Jones in 1994, according to billing records and interviews, but decided
not to. In November 1997, Rosenzweig joined Starr's office, where he
and Marcus had several telephone conversations about the Jones case.
It was Rosenzweig who fielded a "heads-up" phone call from Marcus on
Jan. 8, 1998, that first tipped off Starr's office about Monica S. Lewinsky
and Linda R. Tripp. The tip was not mentioned in the 445-page Starr
report, even though the information revived a moribund Whitewater
investigation that would not have produced, it now seems, an
impeachment referral to Congress.
Marcus did make his views known publicly last month when he wrote an
impassioned commentary in The Washington Times urging the
impeachment of Clinton. "The cancer is deadly," Marcus wrote. "It, and
its cause, must be removed." He identified himself in the newspaper
simply as "a lawyer in Philadelphia."
In his long efforts to promote Ms. Jones's lawsuit, and in helping Mrs.
Tripp find her way to Starr, Marcus found other allies, including another
Chicago law classmate, Richard W. Porter. Porter had worked as an aide
to former Vice President Dan Quayle and was a partner of Starr's at the
law firm of Kirkland & Ellis, based in Chicago.
George T. Conway 3d, a New York lawyer educated at Yale, shared
Marcus's low view of President Clinton. When the Jones case led to Ms.
Lewinsky, Marcus and Conway searched for a new lawyer for Mrs.
Tripp. Marcus and Porter helped arrange for Mrs. Tripp to take her
explosive allegations to Starr.
Their efforts are only now coming into focus, as a few of their associates
have begun to discuss their activities and their names appear repeatedly in
the final legal bills submitted by the original Jones legal team. Messrs.
Marcus, Porter and Conway did not respond to numerous requests for
comment.
In their arguments before the Senate this week, the President's lawyers
said that there was collusion between Starr's office, Mrs. Tripp and the
lawyers for Ms. Jones in the weeks leading up to the President's
deposition last January. If witnesses are called in the Senate impeachment
trial, the President's lawyers may explore the issue further, several Clinton
legal advisers said.
Charles G. Bakaly 3d, the spokesman for Starr, denied there was
collusion between the independent counsel's office and the Jones team,
including Marcus. "There was absolutely no conspiracy between the
Jones lawyers and our office," Bakaly said. "Judge Starr has testified to
the circumstances as to how this matter came to our attention, and the
actions that we took thereafter."
Clinton said in his grand jury testimony in August that his political enemies
"just thought they would take a wrecking ball to me and see if they could
do some damage." That wrecking ball was wielded by Marcus and his
colleagues, who managed to drive Paula Corbin Jones's allegation of
sexual misconduct into the courtroom and beyond.
Three Classmates at Chicago Law School
arcus, Porter and Rosenzweig were classmates at the University
of Chicago Law School, graduating in 1986. Conway met the
others through the Jones case. Some of the lawyers were also involved
with the Federalist Society, a legal group that includes conservative and
libertarian luminaries like Starr, Robert H. Bork and Richard Epstein, a
University of Chicago law professor.
Porter was the most overtly political member of the group, having worked
on the staff of Vice President Quayle and on the Bush-Quayle campaign,
where he did opposition research.
Porter was also an associate of Peter W. Smith, 62, a Chicago financier
who was once the chairman of College Young Republicans and a major
donor to Gopac, a conservative political group affiliated with former
Speaker Newt Gingrich. Beginning in 1992, Smith spent more than
$80,000 to finance anti-Clinton research in an effort to persuade the
mainstream press to cover Clinton's sex life. Among others, his efforts
involved David Brock, the journalist who first mentioned the name "Paula"
in an article on Clinton.
Smith declined an interview request.
In 1993, Brock said, Smith helped introduce him to the Arkansas state
troopers who accused Clinton of using them to procure women when he
was Governor of Arkansas. Brock wrote an article based on the
troopers' account of Clinton's sexual escapades that was published in the
January 1994 issue of The American Spectator, a conservative magazine.
According to Brock, Smith wanted to establish a fund for the troopers, in
case they suffered retribution. Brock said he opposed payments because
they would undermine the troopers' credibility.
To allay his concerns, Brock said, Smith urged him to speak to Porter,
who was then working at Kirkland & Ellis, the Chicago law firm that
employed Starr in its Washington office. Brock said he had hoped his talk
with Porter would put an end to any planned payments to the troopers,
but Smith did pay them and their lawyers $22,600.
In 1992, Smith also paid Brock $5,000 to research another bit of
Arkansas sex lore regarding Clinton, a rumor that has since proved to be
baseless. Brock did not pursue an article.
Brock's trooper article in The American Spectator mentioned a woman
identified as "Paula," and in May 1994, Ms. Jones filed her lawsuit against
President Clinton. Ms. Jones's lawyers of record were from the
Washington area, Gilbert K. Davis and Joseph Cammarata, whom
Marcus had helped recruit.
Lawyers of Record Had Help From Start
he Davis and Cammarata billing records show that from their
earliest involvement in the case, they were consulting with Marcus
and Porter. Conway also helped draft briefs, Cammarata said.
"Marcus was involved," Cammarata said, "but he insisted that he not be
identified. But that was fine with me. We were just two guys involved in
the middle of a world war. We welcomed his help."
No one was more important to the Jones case than Marcus. Besides
helping to write several important briefs, Marcus spoke numerous times at
the most critical moments in the case with Cammarata and Davis, offering
legal advice that Cammarata said was "vital."
According to the billing records, Porter also offered "legal strategy" and
once wrote a memo on "investigative leads" that might embarrass the
President.
"Porter was a cheerleader," Cammarata said. "He used to call up and say,
'Maybe we can find you some money.' "
One of President Clinton's legal advisers said he noticed a marked
difference in quality between the routine legal pleadings filed by the
Cammarata and Davis team, and the polished, scholarly briefs written by
the shadow legal team headed by Marcus and Conway.
Marcus, meanwhile, was so successful at keeping the extent of his role a
secret that even Cammarata only found out recently that Marcus had
trouble finding lawyers to agree to represent Ms. Jones. "No one wanted
to touch this case," Cammarata said. "No one wanted to take on the
President of the United States."
Another friend of Marcus also briefly considered assisting the Jones
lawyers.
In June 1994, Rosenzweig, a lawyer at a small law firm in Washington,
with experience working in the Justice Department, expressed interest in
doing legal work on behalf of Ms. Jones, but he did none, lawyers
involved in the case said.
Law Firm Included Influential Democrats
onway wanted his role kept hidden as well, because his New York
law firm, Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz, included influential
Democrats like Bernard W. Nussbaum, a former White House counsel.
Conway's name does not appear on any billing records.
Although the billing records show communication between Porter and the
Jones lawyers from 1994 to 1997, he denied in a written statement last
fall doing legal work for Ms. Jones.
Because Porter is a partner at the firm where Starr worked until he took a
leave of absence last August, any role played by Porter in the Jones case
could have posed a conflict of interest for Starr once he became
independent counsel. Starr has said he did not discuss the Jones case with
Porter.
Starr has acknowledged contacts with Davis, specifically six telephone
discussions the two had in 1994, before Starr became independent
counsel. In fact, Starr has been criticized for not disclosing the phone
conversations to Attorney General Janet Reno when he was seeking to
expand his investigation to the Lewinsky matter. Starr has said it did not
occur to him to mention the conversations because he did not do work on
the Jones case and simply offered his publicly stated position on a point of
constitutional law that Presidents are not immune from civil lawsuits.
Before the Jones lawyers argued before the Supreme Court in May 1996,
paving the way to the fateful 9-0 decision that the President was not
immune from civil lawsuits, Conway went to Washington for a practice
argument. He joined Davis, Cammarata, Judge Robert Bork and
Theodore Olson, a Washington lawyer and friend of Starr, at the
Army-Navy Club here.
When Cammarata and Davis quit as Ms. Jones's lawyers after she failed
to reach a settlement with President Clinton's lawyers in 1997, Marcus
and his colleagues established ties to her new lawyers at the Dallas law
firm of Rader, Campbell, Fisher & Pyke and the Rutherford Institute of
Charlottesville, Va., which helped pay her legal expenses.
In November 1997, Rosenzweig went to work as a prosecutor in Starr's
office. And from November to January, Rosenzweig spoke several times
by telephone with Marcus and discussed the Jones case, a lawyer with
knowledge of the conversations said. But Bakaly, a spokesman for Starr,
said that Rosenzweig did not tell any of his colleagues about what he
learned about developments in the Jones case. (SURE!)
By this time, Mrs. Tripp was cooperating with the Jones lawyers. She
was also taping her conversations with Ms. Lewinsky, which her friend,
Lucianne Goldberg, a Manhattan literary agent, had incorrectly assured
her was legal. In December, Mrs. Tripp became frantic that she might be
prosecuted because such taping is illegal in Maryland, where Mrs. Tripp
lives. Mrs. Tripp and Ms. Goldberg thought of a possible solution:
perhaps she could receive immunity from prosecution from Starr.
Ms. Goldberg called Smith, the Chicago financier, and Porter for advice
on how Mrs. Tripp might approach Starr. In a teleconference during the
first week of January 1998, Ms. Goldberg talked to Porter and Marcus.
Meanwhile, Marcus sought new lawyers for Mrs. Tripp. Conway
suggested an old friend, James Moody, a Washington lawyer and fellow
Federalist Society member, whom Mrs. Tripp retained.
Because he was Starr's former law partner, Porter did not want to be the
first one to call the independent counsel's office on behalf of Mrs. Tripp.
So Marcus made the call to Rosenzweig."
Nothing less than a secretive, determined, persistent effort to unseat a popularly elected President by any means. |
