The Breach

by Peter Baker

  Chuck Ruff, of course, was another Watergate veteran, having served as the final special prosecutor on crimes emerging from the scandal, but he saw the precedents differently. One issue he was most concerned about was interviewing witnesses in closed-door depositions. Would the presidents counsel be allowed to participate?

  St. Clair made the same request in 1974 and it was denied, Mooney said, referring to Nixons lawyer, James St. Clair. The presidents lawyers would be allowed to question witnesses in public hearings.

  That would moot the presidents rights if all testimony was taken by deposition rather than in open hearings, Ruff complained.

  But witnesses might feel a chilling effect if they saw White House lawyers hovering over them at depositions, Mooney countered.

  And so it went, each side interpreting Watergate to its own favor, embrac ing its lessons when they were useful and dismissing them when they were not. Each camp was using the meeting to set up the other for future advantage. Mooney asked Ruff how they could expedite the process, looking for the White House to agree to stipulate to the record, meaning it would not challenge the facts compiled by Starr. If the president refused, the Republicans could blame any delays in completing the inquiry on him.

  Ruff tried to deflect the issue. The White House favored both fairness and speed, he said. As defense lawyers, they needed to know two thingsthe scope of the charges against their client and the standards for what would be considered an impeachable offense. They needed to know exactly what they were going to be fighting about, Ruff saidjust Lewinsky or other matters as well? They were already seeing the case shift before their eyes, Ruff complained. Starr had listed eleven charges against them, David Schippers, fifteen. Abbe Lowell, the Democratic investigator, summed up the case in four central allegations.

  Which was it to be? Ruff asked. Everything depends on that.

  Our focus now is on the Starr referral and we are not trolling for additional issues, Mooney said. At the same time, he noted, Starr had said more might be coming, and if additional credible information was sent to the committee, it would have to be looked at.

  Ruff pressed. In Watergate, he said, a lot of time was spent gathering information, but they did not change the issues a week at a time. The presidents team needed to know today: Was it defending just the Lewinsky allegations or other issues as well?

  Mooney again would not commit. Our focus is on Lewinsky, but I cant tell you that were limiting the investigation.

  The discussion moved on to standards, which Mooney again brushed off. What the Democrats wanted was unprecedented, he said. There had never been a vote on a precise definition of high crimes and misdemeanors. I dont think we can do this in some kind of advisory opinion, Mooney said.

  We have a real disagreement on this, said Ruff. This is the heart and soul of the matter.

  Greg Craig spoke up, making a formal request for witnesses to testify about standards. Here is our official letter making the request, he said, handing copies out.

  Mooney took the letter but pointed out that Congressman Charles Canadys subcommittee already planned to hold a hearing on standards on November 9. That should deal with the issue adequately. Mooney tried to turn the subject back to more favorable territory: If we need information from the White House or the president, can we call and get it expedited?

  Yes, Ruff answered, they could just call him.

  Do you have any exculpatory material you want to submit? Mooney asked. That was another pointed question: If the White House said no, the Republicans would be able to say that the president did not even have any evidence to contest the charges against him.

  Craig recognized the trapdoor and tried to sidestep it: That depends on what the charges are.

  The meeting broke up cordially with no real resolution of differences, but plenty of political points made. The presidents lawyers had set up the Republicans on the issues of fairness and surprise charges, while the committee staff had set up the defense team on the issues of exculpatory evidence and expediting the inquiry. As they headed out of the room to where the reporters were waiting, the White House lawyers decided Craig would speak for the team. When he got to the microphone, Craig executed the next part of the plan, complaining vigorously that the president was not being treated fairly.

  You cannot investigate conduct without standards, he said. Thats like a game being played with the rules being made by one side as the game goes along. You cant investigate charges without telling who is charged what it is that theyre being charged with. Its like attacking a man who is blindfolded and handcuffed. These are not fair procedures.

  Back in Hydes office, his staff had gathered to fill in the chairman on their meeting when Craigs image came on the television screen. They stopped to listen and were stunned that he came out swinging. They had thought the meeting had turned out amicably, that they had forged the beginning of a constructive working relationship, and yet as soon as it was over, here the White House group was back on the attack. As he watched, Hydes jaw dropped and the cigar fell out of his mouth.

  Whats going on here? he demanded of his staff. I thought you told me the meeting went well.

  Paul McNulty, the committee lawyer who had been tapped to handle public statements during the inquiry, was quickly dispatched to the microphones to rebut Craig. The standard is high crimes and misdemeanors, he said. The real question is what are the facts. McNulty reflected the exasperation of the Republicans: At some point the presidents defenders have got to get away from this partisan attack on process.

  McNulty had not read Bob Bauers memo to Dick Gephardt from six months earlierprocess was exactly what the presidents defenders intended to focus on. For the Republicans, though, the lesson was clear. No matter how friendly White House officials might seem behind closed doors, their public strategy was already setattack the accusers, demonize the investigators, complain about partisanship while doing everything to foment it. As Hyde and his aides brooded about the day, they resolved not to let themselves be caught off guard again.

  With the inquiry now launched, the first stop for congressional investigators was Starrs electronically locked headquarters six blocks from the White House to see what he had not told them. Quite a lot, as it turned out. Rummaging through Starrs file cabinets, the House lawyers discovered interviews with Monica Lewinskys hairdressers, childhood friends, and college lovers. There were files from Kathleen Willeys dentist, her mail carrier, the woman who had bought her house, and the funeral home director who had buried her late husband. Starrs investigators had tracked down Vernon Jordans chauffeur and at least three people who worked at a Parcel Plus store near the Watergate where Lewinsky would go to log on to the Internet. They had scanned Lewinskys library records at the Pentagon (she had checked out just one book) and seemingly quizzed almost everyone who had ever worked at the Clinton White House, including the painters, the custodians, the men who washed the Oval Office windows, and the doorman who talked about the weather with the president in the elevator every day. A presidential valet told them that Clinton kept a box in his bathroom to deposit clothes he wanted to give away.

  None of this Starr had included in the eighteen boxes of evidence he had shipped to Congress that day in September. The congressional investigators were granted access to the secret warrens of Starrs office only after a joint request by Hyde and Conyers. The sheer volume of material collected by the independent counsel was stunning. House investigators counted more than 320 grand jury transcripts or FBI interviews (known by their form numbers as 302s) stored in Starrs office that never made their way to Capitol Hill. There seemed to be virtually no tip, lead, or rumor that had not found its way to the prosecutors, and they had wandered down numerous undisclosed rabbit trails searching for misconduct by Clinton and his allies. The Democratic lawyers finally concluded that Starr must not have sent all this because it would prove to be powerful evidence of how overzealous his pursuit of the president had become. Most of it was extraneous to the case, but the Demo
crats did find a few nuggets they hoped would be useful. For one thing, some executives at the Revlon cosmetics company had testified that Jordan did not pressure them to hire Lewinsky. For another, there were tape recordings surreptitiously made by literary agent Lucianne Goldberg of her telephone conversations with Linda Tripp, a delicious bit of irony that might also help call more attention to the extensive plotting that had gone into setting up Clinton.

  Republicans, however, were most taken by the numerous tentacles of scandal that surrounded the president. Starrs files were a treasure trove for Clinton foes who had long suspected he was a sleazy, lying skirt-chaser using the powers of his office to cover up his indiscretions. Like many FBI raw files, the Starr archive contained untold wild allegations, sometimes based on nothing more than the hearsay claims of third-party witnesses. Much of the most sensational material came from interviews with the Jones attorneys, including the names of twenty-one different women they suspected had had a sexual relationship with Clinton. Number six on their list, of course, was Lewinsky, and information about a half dozen others had previously come out in court papers filed during the Jones case, including Marilyn Jo Jenkins, an Arkansas utility official; Beth Coulson, a former Clinton-appointed state judge; Shelia Davis Lawrence, widow of one of the presidents late ambassadors; and Dolly Kyle Browning, a high school friend of Clintons. Unlike most of the others, who denied any untoward behavior, Browning claimed she had carried on a three-decade, on-and-off affair with Clinton. But many more cases had never been publicly disclosed. One woman was alleged to have been asked by Clinton to give him oral sex in a car while he was the state attorney general (a claim she denied). A former Arkansas state employee said that during a presentation, then-governor Clinton walked behind her and rubbed his pelvis up against her repeatedly. A woman identified as a third cousin of Clintons supposedly told her drug counselor during treatment in Arkansas that she was abused by Clinton when she was baby-sitting at the Governors Mansion in Little Rock. A young woman from Arkansas was even identified as Clintons current girlfriend in Washington.

  Starrs agents showed special interest in the state employee because of her involvement in separate court proceedings. After the woman was placed on a witness list in the Jones lawsuit, according to the files reviewed by the congressional investigators, her case was transferred to a federal judge who once was a partner at a law firm closely associated with Clinton. The judge, according to the papers, ruled against the woman, and Starrs office apparently tried to find out whether there was any connection. The independent counsels files also included a statement by a man who alleged that he knew of another man who, along with Roger Clinton, once threw cocaine intended for Bill Clinton over the fence of the Governors Mansion.

  All of this the congressional investigators from both parties committed to paper, in the form of top secret memos distributed to a few key officials inside the committee. But they were not sure what to make of it. Experienced lawyers and law enforcement agents knew that anyone could make any claim, even the most patently absurd, and it could end up in FBI files. Clearly, Starrs office was a magnet for anyone with a beef against Clinton to phone in some charge or anotherallegations that were duly logged no matter how seemingly implausible. And yet much of this uncorroborated evi dence fit what David Schippers and his GOP investigators saw as a pattern, and they were more willing to suspend their disbelief. When it came to Clinton, truth had already proven stranger than fiction.

  The question became what, if any of this, was relevant and what, if anything, should be done with it. Hyde had made clear he did not want to lead an investigation into Clintons sex life. But Schippers was intrigued. He saw elements of conspiracy and obstruction in the various stories in the Starr files. Curious things seemed to happen to people who might testify to Clintons shenanigans. One woman after another subpoenaed in the Jones suit reported that Clintons lawyers had helped them try to avoid testifying by providing similarly drafted motions to quash the subpoenas. Perhaps, Schippers thought, there was something to this theory that the president engaged in a conspiracy to silence women he had once sought sexually.

  CHAPTER SIX

  We need to purge the poisonsfrom the system

  Newt Gingrich woke up on election day confident that by the time his head next hit the pillow, the Republicans would pick up seats, strengthen their hold on the House, and embolden the drive to impeach the president. After two years of marathon campaigning that had taken him to 237 congressional districts in forty-eight states and helped pump some $66 million into party coffers, Gingrich was certain he had done everything he could to set up his side for significant gains. He headed off with his wife, Marianne, on the morning of Tuesday, November 3, to cast their ballots at the Holy Family Catholic Church, where he brushed off a question about whether he would run for president. Within a few hours, he was on the telephone in a conference call with Republican congressmen around the country, boldly predicting a splendid day and a gain of some twenty seats.

  Few others on that phone call were quite so optimistic. Even before the polls closed, troubling signs appearedreports of high turnout in a Kentucky district that could only mean more Democrats were voting than anticipated, trouble in a Mississippi race that had been expected to be a solid win, panicked calls to party headquarters from Indiana and Illinois. As the sun set over the East Coast, ominous returns started spilling into the Speakers election headquarters in Atlanta. Congressman Jon D. Fox had lost in a suburban Philadelphia district that had swung back and forth between the parties in recent years. So had New Jerseys Michael Pappas, who had once sung the praises of the independent counsel on the House floor with a nursery rhyme that began, Twinkle, twinkle, Kenneth Starr. In North Carolina, the Republican incumbent senator, Lauch Faircloth, a conservative who had made a reputation as a chief Clinton critic, was sinking fast. Another archenemy of the White House, Senator Al DAmato, was taking a nosedive in New York, where Hillary Clinton had campaigned extensively in retribution for his Whitewater hearings.

  More numbers flowed in. Congresswoman Anne Northup was holding her own in Kentucky; that was reassuring. But the Republican candidate who had been expected to pick up the seat of retiring Indiana Democrat Lee Hamilton was flaming out. Another Republican candidate was losing to Tammy Baldwin, an openly lesbian Democrat in Wisconsin. Once-promising races in Michigan were in the tank. Even centrist Republicans were having trouble holding their own. As the clock ticked on, precincts began reporting in from the mountain and Western states. John Ensign, the rising star Republican congressman from Nevada who was supposed to unseat Democratic senator Harry Reid, found himself falling just short.

  Gingrich spent most of the evening huddling with his advisers in a war room in the Atlanta conference center adjoining the hotel where his victory celebration was being held. Around 9:30 P.M., he marched the long halls that led over to the ballroom where his supporters were cheering his own comfortable reelection victory. A sign proclaimed, Its a Brave Newt World.

  Gingrich chose to focus on his own win. This is the earliest night ever, he exulted. Weve had some very long evenings in here. And its so much more fun to be able to claim victory this early and have all evening to party.

  There was no party and little fun at the National Republican Congressional Committee offices back in Washington, however. Members from around the country were calling in a panic. The committee chairman, John Linder, was in Georgia with Gingrich, and so with no one really in charge, his predecessor, Congressman Bill Paxon, tried to organize a response, handing out assignments and calming people down. But the incongruous image of a boisterous Speaker and his crowd celebrating in Georgia while the party appeared to be crashing elsewhere only exacerbated the anxiety. Few were comforted by Gingrichs upbeat assessment in one television interview after another that the Republicans were doing well because they were about to retain their majority for the third election in a row, the first time they had done so in seven decades. By 10:30 P.M., Republicans seemed to be just
breaking even and possibly worse. They could be losing groundand maybe even the majority. Wasnt this the same Speaker who had so brashly promised a twenty-seat Republican gain just a few hours before?

  In Georgia, Gingrich was preparing for a live television interview when his political guru Joe Gaylord kneeled in front of him to give him the latest.

  This is bad, Gaylord said.

  How bad?

  Well, I dont think were going to lose control.

  As the evening wore on, Gingrich, who had started his day so high, began to realize that he would now have to worry about whether he could hang on to his job even if the Republicans did remain in charge. With the opening of the next Congress, the House would vote on its Speaker in what is usually a routine coronation of the candidate selected by the majority party at its own conference. Typically, every member of the majority votes for its candidate once the issue goes to the floor, no matter where he or she stood during internal nomination fights. But if enough Republicans were to defect by voting present or not voting, Gingrich would fall short of a majority and lose. Theoretically, the dissident Republicans could even join forces with Democrats to elect a Speaker more to their liking, presumably a moderate Republican. Or more realistically, just the prospect would force other GOP leaders to revolt before the vote rather than take the chance of such a humiliation. It did not take much to imagine such a scenarioafter all, two years earlier, nine Republicans had refused to support Gingrich on the floor, either voting present or casting ballots for another Republican, leaving the Speaker to squeak by with just three votes to spare.