MO for a President?
By Michael Kelly
Thursday, February 25, 1999; Page A23
So now Bill Clinton has been accused, publicly, and it appears with some real
credibility, of rape.
On Feb. 19, the Wall Street Journal published a lengthy article by its stellar
editorial page investigative reporter, Dorothy Rabinowitz, in which Juanita
Broaddrick told the long-whispered story of Clinton's alleged sexual assault
on her. The Post published a front-page story the following day, also based
on an interview with Broaddrick, which added details to the rape account.
Broaddrick has also told her story on camera to NBC News, which held the
interview for a month while confirming that the story was, as NBC News
President Andrew Lack said, "rock solid." The interview aired last night.
Much seems believable about Broaddrick's story that, on April 25, 1978,
Arkansas' then-attorney general, Bill Clinton, raped and assaulted her in a
Little Rock hotel room.
The 55-year-old Broaddrick is, as the Journal's Rabinowitz writes, "a woman
of accomplishment, prosperous, successful in her field, serious; a woman
seeking no profit, no book, no lawsuit." She is no one James Carville can
casually smear as trailer trash, but a nurse who built up a company of five
nursing homes in Arkansas.
Moreover, Broaddrick was a reluctant witness, keeping her story secret for
two decades. When a former friend, Phillip Yoakum, tried to persuade her to
tell the story through Clinton's political nemesis Sheffield Nelson, she
refused. When Yoakum tipped off Paula Jones's lawyers to Broaddrick, she
still refused to cooperate with them. Broaddrick even went so far as to deny
the allegations in an affidavit, the draft form of which was most helpfully
supplied to her lawyer by a Clinton lawyer.
And Broaddrick's account is highly specific, filled with small, precise points
of recollection that do not seem the sort of details someone would make up.
She remembers that she met Clinton when he made a gubernatorial
campaign visit to her nursing home, and that he invited her to drop by
campaign headquarters in Little Rock. She and a friend decided to take up
Clinton's offer when they went to the capital for a conference at the
Camelot Inn sponsored by the American College of Nursing Home
Administrators. "We were excited," she said. "We were going to pick up all
that neat stuff, T-shirts, buttons."
She remembers also that Clinton suggested instead that they meet in the
Camelot Inn's coffee shop. And that she agreed. And that he then called her
from the hotel lobby with another suggestion: The lobby was too crowded,
too many reporters bothering him; how about coffee in her room? "Stupid
me, I ordered coffee to the room," Broaddrick said.
She remembers what Clinton did in the moments before he suddenly kissed
her: He pointed out the window at a dilapidated old prison and told her that
when he was governor he would fix that up. Does that little detail not sound
very, very much like our Bill?
Moreover, Broaddrick's account is supported by the account of a friend and
fellow nurse, Norma Rogers, who told the Journal that she found Broaddrick
in her hotel room shortly after the alleged assault "in a state of shock -- lips
swollen to double their size, mouth discolored from the biting, her pantyhose
torn in the crotch." It is also supported by her then-boyfriend (now-husband),
David Broaddrick, who says his wife reluctantly told him of the assault soon
afterward.
But above all, Broaddrick's story is believable because of its wretched
familiarity. When Paula Jones first charged that Clinton had lured her to a
hotel room in Little Rock, exposed himself to her and groped her, some
Clinton defenders said the charge didn't fit their man's MO. He was a
Lothario, but not a pig or a brute. But then came Monica Lewinsky, with her
recounting of the most piggish behavior -- of a boss who obliged her to
sexually service him while he chatted on the phone. And then came
Kathleen Willey with her story of the most brutish behavior -- of Clinton
suddenly mauling her during an Oval Office job-seeking visit. What
Broaddrick says Clinton did does indeed fit what we know of our suspect's
MO.
David Kendall, Clinton's attorney, promptly dismissed the Broaddrick
accusation as "absolutely false." But he didn't say how he knew it to be
false. In fact, he cannot know this. At best, he can know that Clinton says
the accusation is false. And what is that worth?
But Kendall of course doesn't really care whether Broaddrick's story is true
or not. He doesn't really care whether the president is a rapist or not. He
doesn't really care, because he figures you don't really care either -- at least,
not enough to do anything about it.
Michael Kelly is the editor of National Journal. |
