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Friday, Jul 10, 2009
Christopher Hitchens called me "cousin" and proclaimed that "we love each other." Then he turned on me in a last-minute gambit to convict the president. Part 5 of "The Clinton Wars."
May 9, 2003 | On January 26, after being named as a witness by the House Managers in the upcoming Senate trial, I began preparing by reading through every published article from January and February 1998 that I could find in the databases on Monica Lewinsky as a "stalker" and writing a memo for my own and the White House lawyers:
"There is no evidence whatsoever that the White House was directing or involved in any campaign against her. The evidence, however, does prove that the description of her as a 'stalker,' 'a clutch,' and 'obsessed' was commonly used by the media, her former lover, her friends, and her attorney. This was deliberately overlooked by the Republicans, as they sought to cast a false light on the White House. It is clear that they decided they would not present articles that showed others describing Lewinsky in the terms the Republicans insist came from the White House. They could make their accusation only by distorting the stream of media reportage. Yet they still failed to produce any evidence."
The House Managers were counting on the scary persona of me that they had created. How wicked was I? It was hard to tell. A week earlier, the Reverend Jerry Falwell announced, "Who will the Antichrist be?... Of course he'll be Jewish... If he's going to be the counterfeit of Christ, he has to be Jewish. The only thing we know is he must be male and Jewish."
I fitted their stereotypes. They didn't know me, but from every reasonable surmise, they could observe that I was Eastern educated, a 1960s graduate, from the liberal media, Jewish, intellectual -- and they believed I was guilty of practicing black political arts against them. For all they knew Drudge was right about me -- and the Wall Street Journal, too. Why shouldn't they believe all those newspaper articles?
- - - - - - - - - - - -
In the meantime, the first witness was called. Monica Lewinsky was questioned on February 1 in her Mayflower Hotel suite by one of the House Managers, Congressman Ed Bryant, one of the "revolutionaries" from the Gingrich "class of 1994." But Lewinsky's testimony did not go as the impeachment team had hoped. Monica Lewinsky befuddled these conservative, provincial, middleaged Republicans. She had confused Ken Starr and most of the men in Starr's office, too. They had not believed her when she said there were no crimes, which was why they had rejected her first proffer. An articulate young woman of her worldly sophistication was beyond their comprehension or ability to acknowledge. For them, there were only two types of women, good and bad. If she had done "bad" things, she must be a victim. She couldn't have willingly, eagerly been a sexual partner or sexual equal. The House Managers presented themselves as her rescuers, her big brothers, saving her from a wolfishness she could not possibly understand. They were unprepared for the actual Monica Lewinsky.
"Do you still have feelings for the president?" asked Bryant.
"I have mixed feelings."
"What, uh-maybe you could tell us a little bit more about what those mixed feelings are."
"I think what you need to know is that my grand-jury testimony is truthful irrespective of whatever those mixed feelings are in my testimony today." Lewinsky wasn't about to yield any ground. She was self-possessed, matter-of-fact, dismissive, and protective of her complex emotions about Clinton. Bryant rehearsed her previous testimony, gaining nothing. In fact, she was less ambiguous in supporting Clinton's version of events than she had been in her grand-jury deposition.
"Did the president ever tell you, caution you, that you had to tell the truth in an affidavit?"
"Not that I recall."
"It would have been against his interest in that lawsuit for you to have told the truth, would it not?"
"I'm not really comfortable -- I mean, I can tell you what would have been in my best interest, but I-"
"But you didn't file the affidavit for your best interest, did you?"
"Uh, actually, I did."
Bryant was flummoxed by this answer, which he had not expected. For all intents and purposes, she had destroyed his performance. Almost as if dazed, he wandered into the brambles of the Paula Jones case, setting himself up for Lewinsky subtly to chastise him for his questions and to deliver another unanticipated response that made it clear she did not share the Managers' general view that Clinton was a sexual predator.
"You believe the president's version of the Paula Jones incident?"
"Is that relevant to-"
"I -- I just asked you the question."
"I don't believe Paula Jones's version of the story."
"Okay, good. That's a fair answer."
Bryant then tangled himself in a semantic quarrel that was not simply about words. The dispute was really about Lewinsky's notion of her relationship with Clinton. She challenged their presumption of its being somehow dirty. And Bryant had no idea how to defend his lascivious, condemnatory point of view.
"Let me shift gears just a minute and ask you about -- and I'm going to be delicate about this because I'm conscious of people here in the room and my -- my own personal concerns -- but I want to refer you to the first so-called salacious occasion, and I'm not going to get into the details. I'm not-"
"Can -- can we -- can you call it something else?"
"Okay."
"I mean, this is -- this is my relationship -- "
"What would you like to call it?"
"It was my first encounter with the president, so I don't really see it as my first salacious -- that's not what this was."
"Well, that's kind of been the word that's been picked up all around. So -- "
"Right."
"-- let's say on this first -- "
"Encounter, maybe?"
"Encounter, okay."
Gingerly, Bryant tried to get Lewinsky to describe herself as a sexual victim, a passive partner to the Big Bad Wolf. He stammered, "Okay. Did-did-did you come on to the president, and did he never touch you physically?"
"I guess those are two separate questions, right?" she swatted back.
"Yes, they are."
"Did I come on to him? Maybe on some occasions."
Bryant now sprang the "stalker" line on her. In the House Managers' version, there was a perfidious scheme concocted by the president and his henchman (me) to obstruct justice by tarnishing her reputation. Here was their chance to get Lewinsky to confirm their account.
"Regarding stalking, you never stalked the president; is that correct?"
"I don't believe so."
"Okay. You and the president had an emotional relationship as well as a physical one; is that right?"
"That's how I'd characterize it."
"Okay. He never rebuffed you?"
"I think that gets into some of the intimate details of -- no, then, that's not true. There were occasions when he did."
With one more question, Bryant was done.
For the House Managers, Lewinsky had been worse than a hostile witness. She had been in control throughout and had undermined their case in every way. She had refuted their premises of Clinton's criminality almost offhandedly. And she had asserted her sexuality unabashedly and unapologetically. But her self-descriptions floated by them, for they were incapable of seeing her as she was. They continued to project their one-dimensional, dirty-minded fantasy of her.
They had struck out with Lewinsky, as they would with their second witness, Vernon Jordan. When the videotape of Monica Lewinsky's testimony was played to the Senate on February 6, Senator Fred Thompson, Republican of Tennessee, walked out in disgust in the middle of Bryant's questions, muttering, "I can't take it anymore."
I was all they had left.
- - - - - - - - - - - -
On February 3, I awoke in the darkness. I turned on the lights in my kitchen to make coffee and looked out the window to see a horde of paparazzi. My home had become the site of a media encampment. Trucks with satellite dishes filled the street. While the coffee brewed, I took my dog, Wiley, into the backyard, and a dozen paparazzi started jumping the fence. Flashes went off as they snapped pictures. Wiley and I beat a hasty retreat into the house. In a short while, my wife Jackie and I walked to our car as klieg lights shone on us and photographers shot away.
From the White House we and my lawyers took a car to the Capitol. Lanny Breuer and two other White House counsels, Michelle Peterson and Max Stier, followed. The Capitol police escorted me inside to be met by the Senate sergeant-at-arms, who asked me if I wished to walk past the gathered press corps, an offer I declined. I wanted to do everything I could to minimize the significance of my appearance.
I was taken to the top floor in an elevator, guarded by police. The deposition was conducted in a sealed, windowless room usually used for intelligence briefings and called the "tin can." Two senators, one Democrat and one Republican, had been named as "judges" -- Senator John Edwards, Democrat of North Carolina, a former trial lawyer, and Senator Arlen Specter, Republican of Pennsylvania, a former district attorney. Rep. James Rogan, who was to interrogate me, was joined at the last minute by Rep. Lindsey Graham -- a ploy designed, as they later explained to reporters, to ruffle me.
Rogan and Graham came in. Rogan headed straight for me and extended his hand. I shook it. "If there's anyone here who wants to be here less than you, it's me," he said. "Oh," I replied. "That's right," he said, "I'm, we're, on the wrong side of history." I made a point of shaking Graham's hand.
Then we assumed our stations. I sat at the center of a semicircular table, flanked by my lawyers. To the left were the judges, Specter and Edwards. At a table across from me to my left sat Rogan and Graham; next to them sat Lanny Breuer and Michelle Peterson. The others constituted the audience, including Jackie.
I stood, raised my right hand, and was sworn in. Rogan's questioning was straightforward, professional, and narrow. His goal was to get me to restate my grand-jury testimony, particularly the part of it that dealt with my conversation about Lewinsky with the president on January 21, 1998. Whatever I was saying, I did my best not to reveal my emotions. I kept my hands in front of me on the table, holding a pen, and didn't gesticulate if I could help it. My responses were flat, direct, and unembellished.
"After you were subpoenaed but before you testified before the federal grand jury, did the president ever say that he did not want you to mislead the grand jury with a false statement?"
"No. We didn't have any subsequent conversation about this matter."
"So it would be fair also to say that after you were subpoenaed but before you testified before the federal grand jury, the president never told you that he was not being truthful with you in that January 21st conversation about Monica Lewinsky?"
"He never spoke to me about that at all."
"The president never instructed you before your testimony before the grand jury not to relay his false account of his relationship with Monica Lewinsky?"
"We didn't speak about anything."
Rogan passed the baton to Graham, whose manner and skill could not have been in sharper contrast to his colleague's. He ran his hand through his lanky hair repeatedly, jiggled his leg under the table, and read from an array of disorganized notes, some of which he pulled from his pockets and unfolded.
He began by asking, "Knowing what you know now, do you believe the president lied to you about his relationship with Ms. Lewinsky?"
"I do."
He seemed genuinely surprised. "I appreciate your honesty," he said. But of course, Clinton had lied to the entire nation about Monica Lewinsky at the same time. My admission was unexceptional, I thought, and moreover, the question had no bearing on the articles of perjury or obstruction of justice before the Senate.
Graham worked his way to heart of his theory: that top White House aides, including me, were behind a secret campaign to smear Lewinsky as "an untrustworthy climber obsessed with the president," in the words of one article produced by Graham. In response to his questions, I denied that I was the source for these Lewinsky-as-stalker stories in the press.
My answers made several clear-cut lines of demarcation: I had not mentioned to anyone except my lawyers, my wife, and the White House counsel that the president had told me anything about Lewinsky. I had an obligation to honor the confidentiality of my working relationship with him. However, although I did talk about the published news stories on Lewinsky with many people -- from my family to dozens of journalists -- I was not a source for anything in them. The whole impeachment and Senate trial came down to a false hypothesis about the gossip trail on Lewinsky, and this had no bearing whatsoever on the articles of impeachment. The concoction was Graham's hobby horse, all that was left in the House Managers' stable.
"You don't know how all this information came out?" asked Graham. "You have no knowledge of it at all: about her being a stalker, her being obsessed with the president... You had no knowledge of how that all happened in the press?"
"I have an idea how it started in the press."
"Well, please share that with us," said Graham expectantly.
"I believe it started on January 21st with the publication of an article in Newsweek by Michael Isikoff that was posted on the World Wide Web and faxed around to everyone in the news media, in Washington, New York, everywhere, and in the White House. And in that article, Michael Isikoff reported the contents of what became known as the 'Talking Points.' And there was a mystery at the time about who wrote the Talking Points. We know subsequently that Monica Lewinsky wrote the Talking Points. And in that document, the author of the Talking Points advises Linda Tripp that she might refer to someone who was stalking the 'P,' meaning the president, and after that story appeared, I believe there were a flood of stories and discussions about this, starting on 'Nightline' that very night and 'Nightline' the next night and so on. And that's my understanding from observing the media of how this started."
When I finished there was a moment of silence. Senator John Edwards, former trial lawyer, was grinning from ear to ear. Isikoff, in fact, had put his story of Lewinsky as "stalker" in circulation before I met with the president that evening. And undoubtedly he had been handed the Talking Points by the Independent Counsel. Kenneth W. Starr therefore was the ultimate source of the "stalker" story.
Minutes later, the deposition was over. Before I could rise from my seat, Graham leaped up and rushed over to shake my hand. "Listen," he said, leaning in, "when this is over, when you're going to introduce a patients' bill of rights, would you let me be the cosponsor?" I nodded, stunned at his sudden transition from inquisitor to implorer, but said nothing. "Just think about it." He bounded over to shake hands with Jackie. "I'm sorry," he told her. "I just don't know what to say."
Was it all an elaborate prank? Rogan came over to shake hands, too.
"I found him to be a gentleman, and I hope he felt the same way about us," Rogan remarked about me in the next day's New York Times. A handwritten note from him was carried to me at the White House by messenger: "I wish my involvement in the trial was as positive for my image as yours apparently has become! No ambiguity was meant by my description." Senator Specter wrote in his memoir, "Sidney Blumenthal was not as billed."
