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Politics : Clinton's Scandals: Is this corruption the worst ever? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Who, me? who wrote (7767)	10/5/1998 11:12:00 AM
From: Les H	Respond to of 13994

Secrets and Lies newsweek.com A slew of documents casts harsh light on life inside the White House--and in the camps of Clinton's foes. But will it change anyone's mind? By Evan Thomas In some ways it was an ordinary ladies' lunch at the Pentagon City Ritz Carlton Hotel on Jan. 13, except that one of the ladies had been having sex with the president and the other was wearing a hidden microphone. As they share a cheeseburger, neither one is what she appears to be. Monica Lewinsky cries for help and compares Linda Tripp to her own mom. At the same time, she maneuvers to draw Tripp into a cover-up. Tripp expresses her deep concern for Lewinsky, even as she angles to trap the younger woman in a criminal conspiracy. They call each other friends, though it's clear they're not. At one point, Linda Tripp declares, "The truth is the truth and a lie is a lie." Maybe in that purer and better world where Ken Starr would take us all, but not in Washington in the age of Bill Clinton. The latest 4,600 pages of evidence released by the House Judiciary Committee, which is expected to vote this week to begin a formal impeachment inquiry, is a murky mess of half-truth and clever evasion, a strange stew of banality and absurdity that is not, in the end, likely to sway Congress one way or the other. There is a little something for everyone on Capitol Hill, accusers and defenders alike, and enough weird, prurient grist to keep the talk shows babbling for weeks. The evidence in the three fat volumes, taken together with Starr's earlier report to Congress and the president's videotaped testimony, harshly illuminates life backstage at the Clinton White House--and in the camps of his enemies. Specifically, when Tripp made her high-minded pronouncement about the truth, she was trying to manipulate her friend Lewinsky into implicating Clinton and his golfing buddy, superlawyer Vernon Jordan, for the benefit of listening FBI agents and lawyers from the Office of the Independent Counsel. Lewinsky, for her part, was trying to cajole Tripp into lying to the lawyers representing Paula Jones in her sexual-harassment case against the president. "You know the truth, Linda?" Lewinsky says to Tripp. "What's the truth? The truth is you're either an F.O.B. or you're not." Tripp tries to coax Lewinksy into saying that Jordan, the ultimate Friend of Bill, told her to lie under oath and deny any sexual relationship with the president in return for a cushy job. "Vernon Jordan is behind you. He's a very powerful man," insists Tripp. But Lewinsky, who can be weepy and whiny, shows that she's also cunning and shrewd. She denies that Jordan is "behind her," and seems to intuitively sense that if the story of her love affair with Clinton gets out, Jordan will be an innocent bystander. "I think he's going to distance himself from me," she tells Tripp. "I don't know why." During five days of relentless questioning by Starr's prosecutors, Jordan makes no attempt to disguise his role as a fixer. Indeed, he seems to revel in it. When he calls the president, he says, "most of the White House operators recognize my voice. It's so wonderful." He was pleased to be able to get Lewinsky a job. She had "drive, she was obviously ambitious, and when she was not in tears, she was impressive," he explained to the grand jury. But was he doing the president a favor in order to buy Lewinsky's silence? "Absolutely, unequivocally, indubitably, no," he answered. How could he explain that quick succession of phone calls to the president after Lewinsky had been subpoenaed in the Jones case? The president and he discuss many "matters of state," he gravely replied. Page 1 of 3 Jordan faced only one dangerous moment. According to Lewinsky, she had breakfast with Jordan at the Park Hyatt Hotel on Dec. 31. She claims she told Jordan that she had notes mentioning the president. "Notes from the president to you?" Jordan allegedly asked. "No, notes from me to the president," Lewinsky said. "Go home and make sure they're not there," Jordan replied, according to Lewinsky's testimony. Lewinsky says she went home and threw out 50 letters. If Lewinsky is telling the truth, Jordan could be accused of obstructing justice. Before the grand jury, however, Jordan not only denied Lewinsky's account, he denied ever having breakfast with her. Yes, he regularly eats at the Park Hyatt--at a corner table--but never with Monica. Lewinsky seemed to have a clear memory of the breakfast, right down to what the two ate (she had the omelet, he had the yogurt). Starr clearly believed her, and his report cites as proof an American Express receipt signed by Jordan. The corroborating evidence, however, proves nothing. The restaurant receipt mentions the yogurt but not the omelet. More important, it's for the wrong date, Jan. 7, not Dec. 31. As for his knowledge of a sexual relationship between Lewinsky and the president, Jordan first dismissed Lewinsky's infatuation as a "bobby-soxer" crush. The other main actor in the alleged cover-up, Betty Currie, was much less confident with the grand jury but equally hard to pin down. First confronted by FBI agents when the story broke, she seemed to indicate that the president had coached her to lie. She told of being summoned on the day after the president testified in the Jones case so the president could lead her in a series of questions (the president was never alone with Lewinsky, "right?"). She said the president woke her up the night the story emerged, urged her to find Lewinsky and then repeated his questioning/coaching the next day, when it was obvious to both that Clinton was now the target of a criminal probe. But Currie's clear recollections seemed to fade after the White House found her a lawyer. After her lawyer met with White House lawyers, Currie testified before the grand jury on Jan. 27. She became vague and muddled. Her memory of crucial events, she testified, was "getting worse by the minute." In her first interview with investigators in January, she told the FBI that Clinton and Lewinsky would meet alone for up to a half hour. By July, she was saying the president and the former intern were "never really alone." Last week, the White House went on the offensive. The most damning new anti-Tripp revelation: she inadvertently caught herself on tape conspiring with Clinton's enemies. Last November, after recording one of her endless conversations with Lewinsky bemoaning the inattention of the "Big Creep," Tripp left her tape recorder running. A call comes in from David Pyke, a lawyer for Paula Jones. Pyke tells Tripp that he has been tipped off by Tripp's friend, New York literary agent Lucianne Goldberg. Tripp confirms to Pyke that she has been talking to a woman who has had a relationship with the president. "It is very sad," says Tripp, "and the girl will deny it to her dying breath." Pyke wants Tripp to tell the story to Jones's lawyers under oath. Tripp agrees, although for the sake of keeping her government job, she has to appear to be a "hostile witness." Page 2 of 3 Tripp emerges as a nefarious plotter in this conversation. Yet other phone calls and messages make her appear more ambivalent. In October, Tripp e-mailed Lewinsky, who had been calling her "20 to 30 times a day," and said that she just wanted to be left alone. Even so, Tripp edits her love letters and urges her to push harder for a lucrative job. In October, when Monica reads aloud a letter to "Handsome" demanding a job at the United Nations as a GS-12 or -13 (a certain salary level, usually $50,000 a year), Tripp says she is going to "throw up." "Oh Monica, Monica, Monica," sighs Tripp. She insists Lewinsky "can do better." For all her avowed disapproval, Tripp is titillated by Lewinsky's involvement with Clinton. When Monica tells her about phone sex with the president, Tripp calls her a "little Marilyn Monroe vixen," and means it as a compliment. "The you-know-what of the you-know-what found you awfully attractive," Tripp coyly praises Lewinsky. "He finds anybody attractive," Lewinsky glumly responds. "Oh, that's not true," says Tripp. "It is true," says Lewinsky. "I guarantee you that given the opportunity, he'd let anybody" perform oral sex on him. Lewinsky's relationship with the president was apparently no secret to White House insiders. One Secret Service agent testified that when Lewinsky entered the White House complex, agents would make bets on how long it would take the president to start heading for the Oval Office, where the two could be alone. About the last person to know seems to have been Hillary Clinton. White House aide Sidney Blumenthal related to the grand jury his conversation with the First Lady shortly after the scandal broke. Mrs. Clinton told Blumenthal that she was "distressed" that the president was being attacked "for political motives." Her husband had told her that he had just "ministered" to a "troubled" young person. "The First Lady said he had done this dozens if not hundreds of times with people," Blumenthal testified. "The president had come from a broken home," Hillary explained, according to Blumenthal. "It was very hard to prevent him from ministering to these troubled people." The charade became even more darkly comical when Blumenthal told the president of the First Lady's concern. Blumenthal says he warned Clinton that these "troubled people can get you into incredible messes." But the president replied, "It's difficult for me to do that given how I am. I want to help people." Clinton went on to say that he felt like a character in "Darkness at Noon," unfairly accused by his enemies. Blumenthal took the president at his word. Then, in true Washington fashion, he set out to smite the enemy. He told the grand jury that, from one of Clinton's private lawyers, he received a videotape of a news show aired on a local Los Angeles TV station. The tape purported to show that one of Starr's prosecutors had, in the past, bullied a witness about her sex life. What did Blumenthal do with the tape? He had 10 copies made and gave one to the Democratic National Committee, just in case, he explained, any reporter was interested. With Daniel Klaidman, Mark Hosenball and Michael Isikoff Newsweek, October 12, 1998 Page 3 of 3