Linda Tripp was frightened and angered by Bennett's cutting remark about her, taking it as a veiled warning that she could lose her Pentagon job. (Some of her friends felt she was also excited by the attention focused on her in Newsweek.) Tripp's fury in turn scared Monica Lewinsky, who worried that her friend would someday make good on a muttered threat to "write a tell-all book" about the Clinton White House. Linda would never reveal her relationship with the president, would she? Lewinsky asked. "Of course not," Tripp replied. Together, they decided that Tripp should send a letter to the magazine correcting any impression that she was a disloyal employee.

That letter, which Tripp allowed both Lewinsky and Isikoff to edit, noted that the reporter had showed up in her office uninvited by her. "I was compelled to respond when he asserted that Ms. Willey had given him my name as a purported contemporaneous witness who could corroborate her new claim of 'harassment' or 'inappropriate behavior' on the part of the president." That charge was "completely inaccurate," she wrote. Moreover, "her version in 1993 and her version in 1997 were wholly inconsistent." As for "the comment made by the president's attorney about me, which appeared in the same article, I am acutely disappointed that my integrity has been questioned."

The letter didn't run, and Isikoff later dismissed it as "quibbling." Certainly it would have amplified questions and facts about Willey that Newsweek had chosen to downplay. And what no one seemed to notice then was the letter's blunt confirmation that this supposedly silent, reluctant witness had been guiding Isikoff all along. In addition to protecting Willey's fragile credibility, the suppression of Tripp's letter allowed the double game being played by the Richmond widow and her lawyer to continue. The uproar over Kathleen Willey eventually died down long enough for the lawyers on both sides of Jones v. Clinton to resume their negotiations. Within a couple of weeks, they had reached an understanding. If Jones would forgo an explicit apology, Clinton (or his legal fund and insurance policies) would pay her $700,000 -- the full amount her lawsuit had originally demanded. Furthermore, the defendant would issue a statement that she had engaged in no "sexual or improper conduct" at the Excelsior Hotel that day, and would express regret at the damage Jones had suffered to her character and reputation.

Not only did Davis and Cammarata regard this outcome as a "complete victory" on the merits for Jones, but they knew that the president never would offer a humbling statement along with the money. They also knew, as they indicated to her, that their client had a terribly weak case.

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