Drudge's July 4 blind item about Kathleen Willey and the issuance of a subpoena to her had shaken up the president's lawyers, who now pressed for a deal. Then, on July 28, Drudge posted a "World Exclusive" that Gil Davis believes was planted to disrupt the delicate negotiations.

"WILLEY'S DECISION: White House Employee Tells Reporter That President Made Sex Pass," the headline proclaimed. The brief item had just enough detail to infuriate Bennett-and to sharply prod Isikoff, whom Drudge accused of "holding back" the "explosive story." It explained that Willey still refused to go on the record with the "Newsweek ace investigative reporter" about her allegation that Clinton had "fondled" her. In the week that followed, Drudge posted four additional stories. On July 29, he confirmed that Willey had indeed worked in the White House, and added in his own peculiar language that "the President made sexual overtones towards her as she made her request [for a job], according to intelligence familiar with her conversations with a reporter." Two days later, Drudge had the Willey subpoena, as did CBS News and several other news organizations, adding, "If Willey tells lawyers the same story she has told Isikoff-Washington will be rocked." Meanwhile the Web gossip had demoted his new rival to "Newsweek's once ace reporter."

On August 1, Drudge featured Gecker's public announcement that Willey intended to resist the Jones subpoena. In an aside, he attacked Isikoff again, blaming the reporter for the leak of the Willey story and suggesting that the story wouldn't have appeared without Drudge's intervention. He seemed to mock Isikoff for talking too much: "Reporter shares, he likes to have friends on all sides so he'll seem all-knowing for stories that he'll probably never print."

As he scrambled to get into print with the story Drudge had purloined, Isikoff naturally wondered how this disaster had befallen him. Tripp thought he had leaked Willey's name himself, and she wasn't entirely alone in that suspicion. That insinuation enraged Isikoff, who insisted he had told no one but his editors and a couple of trusted colleagues. Maybe, he thought, Drudge had hacked into the magazine's computer system.

Or else someone had gotten impatient waiting for Newsweek to publish the Willey story. Someone with both the inside knowledge and the motive to disrupt a negotiated settlement of Jones v. Clinton. By the time he wrote Uncovering Clinton, Isikoff had deduced the source and motive behind the Jones leaks. In the book he quotes Ann Coulter -- another blonde conservative attorney, media figure and, also like Ingraham, a member of George Conway's circle -- about the dread inspired among Jones's advisers by the prospect of a settlement.

An outspoken enemy of the Clintons who consulted on political strategy with Conway, Coulter admitted that they had given various journalists the story of the "distinguishing characteristic" of Clinton's penis, supposedly observed by Jones when he exposed himself to her in 1991. The reason, as she eventually explained to Isikoff: "We were terrified that Jones would settle. It was contrary to our purpose of bringing down the President." (Later still, in confirming that leak to the Hartford Courant, she remarked that her work with Conway and his colleagues had amounted to "a small, intricately knit right-wing conspiracy -- and I'd like that clarified.")

Coulter claims that she helped Conway and Marcus with legal research in the Jones case, but according to Gil Davis neither he nor Cammarata ever heard of her while they were working on the lawsuit. Both felt that there was no permissible reason for any of the attorneys to have revealed confidential information to Coulter.

Recent Stories