I Still Believe
By Michael Kelly
Wednesday, March 18, 1998; Page A21
I've just finished reading the 600 pages of material released last Friday by
Paula Jones's lawyers, and I've just finished watching Kathleen Willey on
"60 Minutes," and I've just finished reading Bill Clinton's statement that he
didn't bother to watch Ms. Willey on TV but that he knows what she says
isn't true anyway. And I still believe the president. Truly, madly, deeply, I
believe. Also verily.
I believe that the president is "mystified" by Ms. Willey's claim that he
sexually assaulted her when she visited him in the Oval Office on Nov. 29,
1993, to ask him for a desperately needed job. I believe the president did
not grab Ms. Willey, kiss her, touch her breasts and place her hand on his
genitals, against her will. I believe that Ms. Willey is perjuring herself to
hurt the president, even though the record shows that she supported and
liked Clinton very much, and continued to support and like him even after
the alleged assault, and that she only talked in the end because she was
compelled to by Jones's lawyers.
I believe Ms. Willey is, like Paula Jones and Gennifer Flowers and Dolly
Kyle Browning and Sally Purdue before her, and like the women who will
come after her, a baldfaced liar. If Monica Lewinsky sticks to her affidavit
that she never had sex with the president, I believe her. If she instead
confirms the long hours of recorded conversation in which she detailed a
sexual affair with the president and affirmed her intention to lie in the
affidavit -- well, then, I don't believe.
I believe all this because I am assured of it by Robert Bennett, the
president's sexual misconduct mouthpiece, which is a distinguished
position. It is distinguished from David Kendall, his personal-finance
corruption mouthpiece; from Lanny Davis, his campaign-finance corruption
mouthpiece; from James Kennedy, his White House general scandal
mouthpiece; from James Carville, his "independent" general scandal
mouthpiece; and from Michael McCurry, his don't ask, don't tell
mouthpiece. I believe that all presidents require, for the handling of daily
press inquiries, enough mouthpieces to outfit the wind section of the
National Symphony Orchestra.
I believe, as the White House whispering campaign already has it, that Ms.
Willey is a bit nutty, and a bit slutty. I believe that, the way things are going,
David Brock will write an article to this effect for Esquire.
I believe White House communications director Ann Lewis is right to
suggest that Ms. Willey's desire to work in Clinton's 1996 campaign casts
doubt on her claim that Clinton abused her in 1993. I also believed Ann
Lewis in 1991, when she explained why Anita Hill continued to work for
Clarence Thomas after he allegedly harassed her: "You don't know what
it's like to be a young working woman, to have this really prestigious and
powerful boss and think you have to stay on the right side of him, or for the
rest of your working life he could nix another job." I believe Ann Lewis is
not a rank hypocrite. I believe that it is not despicable for the president's
henchmen and henchwomen to smear the reputations of others in order to
protect their boss from allegations of misconduct.
I believe that Clinton-Gore fund-raiser Nathan Landow did not try to
pressure Ms. Willey to lie in her deposition in the Jones case, and that
there must be some perfectly innocent reason why, after Ms. Willey was
subpoenaed in the Jones case, Landow's real estate company chartered a
plane to fly Ms. Willey to Landow's Eastern Shore estate.
I believe Ms. Willey is lying even though her account of Clinton's amatory
approach is remarkably similar to the account Ms. Jones offers of the
Clinton modus operandi on May 8, 1991, in a room in the Excelsior Hotel
in Little Rock, Ark. I believe Ms. Jones is lying even though her sworn
account of what happened to her that day is supported, in graphic, pathetic
detail, by sworn contemporaneous accounts from her sister, Lydia Cathey,
and by her friends Pamela Blackard and Debra Lynn Ballentine. I believe
Ms. Willey and Ms. Jones are lying even though their stories are buttressed
by the sworn deposition of Judy Stokes, alleging a similarly sudden and
unwanted sexual approach by Clinton against a former Miss Arkansas,
Elizabeth Ward.
I believe that L. D. Brown, Larry Patterson and Roger Perry, three former
Clinton bodyguards, were all lying in their sworn depositions in which they
described, to varying but conforming degrees, Clinton as a sexual
adventurer of great recklessness and a man who used the resources and
perks of office to further his sexual pursuits.
I believe everybody is lying except my Bill.
Michael Kelly is a senior writer for National Journal.
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