The "big" one that got away

It was the time of Gingrich's ascendance to power. After years as a backbencher, he had led the Republicans to a historic election victory that wrested control of the House from the Democrats for the first time in four decades. Newt was riding high and talking the family values talk.

Democratic aides on Capitol Hill, who long had traded in gossip about Gingrich's extramarital recreations, were beside themselves with anger. From such sources, I received a number of leads and tales. My favorite was from an aide who swore she had once spotted Gingrich's pale-green Mustang bouncing up and down in an underground House parking garage, with the windows all fogged up -- signs that not-so-conservative behavior may have been occurring within.

The aide said she had tried to peer through the condensation to determine with whom Gingrich was rocking and rolling, but that she just couldn't get a clear-enough view.

After all, it could have been his wife.

In any event, the most prevalent rumor concerned the supposed relationship between Gingrich and Bisek, 23 years his junior. A close friend of mine told me that Bisek had talked openly to a co-worker about her affair with Newt. But the co-worker turned out to be a loyal Republican who would not talk to me.

Hill aides further reported that Bisek and Gingrich routinely had breakfast together at the Supreme Court cafeteria. That seemed plausible enough, since Gingrich's Capitol Hill apartment was right across the street from the Court, in the same building, in fact, as my office.

Chasing after any politician's personal life raised awkward questions for me -- this was before Monicagate -- but it seemed justified in this case if the leading family-values campaigner was in fact nothing more than a rank hypocrite.

But how do you prove a sexual affair between two adults? Reporters cannot subpoena dresses and compel DNA submissions. Even if you catch sight of the two together -- say, at breakfast in the Supreme Court cafeteria -- what is that supposed to mean?

As I pondered how to proceed, I was contacted by the producer of a tabloid television show who had heard what I was up to; he offered to set up a stakeout in front of Gingrich's apartment. For a week, the show's staff watched for Bisek coming or going, especially at odd times like late at night and early in the morning.

Yet there was no sign of her. My guess at the time was that Gingrich, just weeks away from being handed the speaker's gavel, realized he was under intense scrutiny, and may therefore have been acting with more caution than previously had seemed necessary to him.

The show's correspondent finally managed to obtain some video footage of Bisek as she left her own condominium in northern Virginia one day, but that hardly made for a story. Not to worry, however; he would find an excuse to air the video soon enough, even though our mutual effort to nail down the affair was turning into a bust.

Soon, Gingrich was sworn in as speaker. None of the reporters chasing the story, including me, wrote about the Gingrich-Bisek affair. But whenever I saw his wife, Marianne, in our building I felt sorry for her. If I -- and practically everyone else in Washington -- had heard of the liaison, I had to assume that she had, too.

Months later, in a Vanity Fair profile of Gingrich, Gail Sheehy partly outed Bisek as Gingrich's "frequent breakfast companion." This was, I believe, the first public mention of their relationship. The Vanity Fair piece, in turn, gave the tabloid TV show cause to air its "exclusive" video tape of Bisek leaving her apartment.

Clearly, Sheehy had heard the same rumors I had, and also couldn't prove them. But she had devised a clever way to transmit the information to her readers. It was a pretty unfair hit on Newt, though, when so little evidence was available to substantiate the insinuation, even if it may now appear to have been true.

A couple of weeks ago, on July 29, Gingrich filed divorce papers to end his second marriage, but "congressional sources" told the New York Post that the Bisek affair was not the reason for his breakup with Marianne.

Still, the Post also reported that Gingrich has been taking Bisek to dinner with friends. It seems that the Gingrich secret that "everybody" in Washington once knew to be true is finally about to be shared with the public at large.

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