In addition to Coulter's boasting, there is documentary evidence that Conway operated in such a way as to frustrate a settlement-even after Davis and Cammarata had resigned from the case. On October 8, 1997, Conway sent a long E-mail message via America Online to Matt Drudge.

"Subject: Your Next Exclusive" is the caption on that message. "Remember me?" it begins. "I'm Laura's friend. We talked once about Kathleen Willey ... This is being given to you, of course, subject to your not disclosing the source." (Conway forwarded the same message to Ingraham the following day.)

The main topic of the October 8 message was not Willey but the "distinguishing characteristic," a matter nearly as sensitive as the Willey allegations. Like Coulter, Conway must have realized that with the leak of its details to Drudge, any further settlement negotiations could again be disrupted.

Davis certainly thought so. "Conway's leaking of this stuff certainly jeopardized a settlement," said Davis after examining the Drudge E-mail in 1999. "I had no concept, no idea that they did or would do such a thing [as to leak Willey's name]."

With his exclusive blown by Drudge, Isikoff moved fast to capitalize on his inside information about the Willey matter. Her lawyer Gecker told him to forget about Willey going on the record, and added that it was "a horrible injustice and invasion of privacy" for the press to explore his client's personal life. Worse still, when Julie Steele returned Isikoff's call on the morning of July 31, she administered a crippling blow to her friend's credibility. According to her sworn affidavit in a lawsuit she filed in 1999 against Newsweek and Isikoff, Steele told the reporter that Willey had asked her to lie about the alleged incident when he first interviewed them both in March 1997. In truth, Willey hadn't "mentioned her so-called encounter with the President in the White House on the day that it had allegedly occurred or at any other time." She apologized to Isikoff for lying and said she didn't want him to have "egg on his face" for publishing her friend's phony story.

Steele contended that he called her back in the afternoon, telling her that their morning interview was going into his story with quotes from her. That stunned Steele, she later said, because he had agreed earlier that their conversation was "off the record." She recalled Isikoff explaining that "there's so much pressure to get this out ... I have to do it." (Isikoff and Newsweek have denied he ever agreed not to quote Steele.)

The following day, Isikoff contacted Tripp to get her version on the record. Meeting in a coffee shop, she told the reporter he could quote her saying that when she ran into Willey that day in the White House, the Richmond widow was "disheveled. Her face was red and her lipstick was off. She was flustered, happy and joyful." She also wanted Isikoff to state that she had come forward "to make it clear that this was not a case of sexual harassment."

Bob Bennett, who had been trying without success to speak with Tripp, wasn't grateful to her for making that distinction. Denying that Clinton did anything "improper" with Willey, he declared that Tripp "is not to be believed."

Isikoff's story, "A Twist in Jones v. Clinton," appeared in the edition of Newsweek dated August 11, which actually came out on August 4. It plumbed the "complicated and murky" background of Willey's accusations, her marriage, and her tenure in the White House. It presented Steele's confirmation and recantation. (However, the Newsweek version is different from the version in Uncovering Clinton. In Newsweek, Steele was said to have admitted actually hearing about the incident from Willey "weeks after it happened." That detail is excised from Isikoff's book.) But what Isikoff omitted entirely from his story were Tripp's allegations that Kathleen Willey was conniving to seduce the president. Almost two years later in his book, Isikoff drops his mask of neutrality long enough to suggest a reason. He states clearly, more than once, that he believes Willey-in part because of an anonymous phone call he got from another woman who told him a similar story about being groped by Clinton.

Recent Stories