by Ann Coulter
He had a master’s precision of knowing just when to lie outright, and when to dissemble.
Not only did Jones’s lawyers know about Lewinsky, they knew about the Workers And Visitors Entrance System (WAVES) logs maintained by the Secret Service that document the precise time and general purpose of all visits by outsiders to the White House. Lewinsky had visited Clinton at the White House more than three dozen times since leaving her White House employ, including on December 28, 1997—about ten days after she had been officially subpoenaed in the Jones case.
The only cover for these meetings was that Lewinsky would list Betty Currie, the president’s secretary, as the person she was visiting. Apparently, this had not thrown Jones’s lawyers off the scent.
Q: [H]as it ever happened that a White House record was created that reflected that Betty Currie was meeting with Monica Lewinsky when in fact you were meeting with Monica Lewinsky?
A: Not to my knowledge.4
The next day, Clinton personally called Currie to the White House for an emergency coaching session on what her recollections about Lewinsky’s visits should be.
The White House would later refuse to turn over the WAVES logs to an eager press, though it had done so the year before during congressional probes of Clinton fund-raising practices.5 Eventually, Jones’s attorneys would subpoena the WAVES logs.
Despite the White House’s dogged attempts to portray the Monica scandal as “only about sex,” the looming question for both Jones’s lawyers and Clinton himself during the deposition was clearly whether the president had obstructed justice in the Jones case by trying to prevent Jones’s lawyers from finding out about Lewinsky—such as during that December 28 meeting in the White House.
Indeed, one of the strangest aspects of the president’s deposition was that Judge Wright and Bob Bennett were required to ask Clinton to speak up whenever the questions veered toward the possibility that he had suborned Lewinsky’s perjury. The most booming glad-hander ever to occupy the Oval Office had suddenly lost his voice. And he started talking like George Bush. As the questions went from whether the president had discussed Lewinsky’s testimony with her to whether the president had arranged for the U.N. ambassador to get her a job, Clinton’s answers became confused and inaudible. In an especially nice touch, the president stalled for time by repeatedly commenting, “I want to be as accurate as I can.”
Q: Did you ever talk with Monica Lewinsky about the possibility that she might be asked to testify in this case?
A: Bruce Lindsey, I think Bruce Lindsey told me that she was, I think maybe that’s the first person told me she was. I want to be as accurate as I can.
MR. BENNETT: Keep your voice up, Mr. President.
THE WITNESS: Okay.
A: But he may not have, I don’t have a specific memory, but I talked with him about the case on more than one occasion, so he might have said that.
Q: I believe I was starting to ask you a question a moment ago and we got sidetracked. Have you ever talked to Monica Lewinsky about the possibility that she might be asked to testify in this lawsuit?
A: I’m not sure, and I’ll tell you why I’m not sure. It seems to me the, the, the,—I want to be as accurate as I can here. Seems to me the last time she was there to see Betty before Christmas we were joking about how you-all with the help of the Rutherford Institute, were going to call every woman I’ve ever talked to and I said, you know—
MR. BENNETT: We can’t hear you, Mr. President.
Clinton instinctively reverted to attacking Jones’s lawyers as members of a vast right-wing conspiracy out to get him—“we were joking about how you-all with the help of the Rutherford Institute, were going to call every woman I’ve ever talked to….” In fact, Jones’s lawyers were interested only in calling in every woman Clinton had ever attempted to grope, proposition, or seduce. That group just happened to be strongly correlated with every woman the president had ever talked to.
Q: Is it your understanding that she was offered a job at the U.N.?
A: I know that she interviewed for one. I don’t know if she was offered one or not.
Q: Have you ever talked to Bill Richardson about Monica Lewinsky?
A: No.
Q: What is his title?
A: He’s the Ambassador to the U.N.
JUDGE WRIGHT: I’m sorry, I didn’t hear that.
WITNESS: He’s the Ambassador to the U.N.
Q: Have you ever asked anyone to talk to Bill Richardson about Monica Lewinsky?
A: I believe that, I believe that Monica, what I know about that is I believe Monica asked Betty Currie to ask someone to talk to him, and she talked to him and went to an interview with him. That’s what I believe happened.
Q: And the source of that information is who?
A: Betty. I think that’s what Betty—I think Betty did that. I think Monica talked to Betty about moving to New York, and I, my recollection is that that was the chain of events.
Before the end of his garbled responses on efforts to suborn perjury, the president had finally settled on the fall guy: Betty Currie. “Betty did that” quickly became the leitmotif of Clinton’s deposition.
One of the most amusing exchanges in the entire deposition—in the entire case, really—is when Clinton is asked about the gifts he and Lewinsky exchanged. The Jones lawyers clearly knew a lot more than he thought anyone knew. Feeling the probe go deeper and deeper, the president played the liar’s game of trying to elicit all known facts from his interlocutor before formulating his own “recollection”—
Q: Well, have you ever given any gifts to Monica Lewinsky?
A: I don’t recall. Do you know what they were?
Q: A hat pin?
A: I don’t, I don’t remember. But I certainly, I could have.
Q: A book about Walt Whitman?
A: I give—let me just say, I give people a lot of gifts, and when people are around I give a lot of things I have at the White House away, so I could have given her a gift, but I don’t remember a specific gift.
The story is, upon learning of the Leaves of Grass love token her husband had given to Lewinsky, Mrs. Clinton was finally shocked. She is said to have been aboard an Amtrak train when she first got wind of this part of her better half’s perfidy, and gasped, “He gave me the same book after our second date!”6 (It must be said that the book was the perfect courtship gift for Clinton, combining prurience with personal disclaimers. There are lines like “You settled your head athwart my hips and gently turn’d over upon me,” but also, “Do I contradict? Very well then I contradict myself.”)
And what are all those “things I have at the White House” he’s been giving away? Official portraits? Does he have a lot of dresses and hat pins lying around the White House?
Q: Do you remember giving her an item that had been purchased from The Black Dog store at Martha’s vineyard?
A: I do remember that, because when I went on vacation Betty said that, asked me if I was going to bring some stuff back from The Black Dog, and she said Monica loved, like that stuff and would like to have a a piece of it and I did a lot of Christmas shopping from the Black Dog, and I bought a lot of things for a lot of people, and I gave Betty a couple of the pieces and she gave I think something to Monica and something to some of the other girls who worked in the office. I remember that because Betty mentioned it to me.7
Again, “Betty did that.”
Q: Has Monica Lewinsky ever given you any gifts?
A: Once or twice. I think she’s given me a book or two.
Q: Did she give you a silver cigar box?
A: No.
Q: Did she give you a tie?
A: Yes, she has given me a tie before. I believe that’s right. Now, as I said, let me remind you, normally when I get these ties, I get ties, you know, together, and then they’re given to me later, but I believe that she has given me a tie.8
Q: Did you have an extramarital sexual affair with Monica Lewinsky?
A: No.
Q: If she told someone that she had a sexual affair with you beginning in November of 1995, would that be a lie?
A: It’s certainly not the truth. It would not be the truth.
Q: I think I used the term “sexual affair.” And so the record is completely clear, have you ever had sexual relations with Monica Lewinsky, as that term is defined in Deposition Exhibit 1, as modified by the Court?
A: I have never had sexual relations with Monica Lewinsky. I’ve never had an affair with her.
In response to widespread reports that Clinton believed oral sex did not constitute adultery,9 Jones’s attorney’s had posited a definition of “sexual relations” in Deposition Exhibit 1 broad enough to circumvent the typical Clintonian escape hatch. It was not so broad, however, as to encompass a slap on the buttocks, as James Carville has claimed, unless Carville believes a slap on the buttocks would be capable of “arous[ing] or gratify[ing]” sexual desires. The definition was—(1) contact with the genitalia, anus, groin, breast, inner thigh, or buttocks of any person with an intent to arouse or gratify the sexual desire of any person;
(2) contact between any part of the person’s body or an object and the genitals or anus of another person; or
(3) contact between the genitals or anus of the person and any part of another person’s body.10
No room for weasel words there. Clinton denied under oath that he had engaged in the sexual acts described by Lewinsky in florid detail, on hours of tape—tapes which were at that very moment in the possession of the independent counsel.
When Clinton got back to the White House he canceled dinner plans and called Betty Currie at home to ask her to come to the office the next day, though it was a Sunday and there was no crisis imposing special duties on anyone else. He reportedly ran her through a series of questions and answers about her understanding of his dealings with Lewinsky: “We were never alone, right?” When White House Press Secretary Mike McCurry was later asked to explain this odd behavior, he said the president called Currie in for extra, overtime duty that Sunday because he needed to refresh his recollection. McCurry did not explain why the president needed to refresh his recollection for questions he had already answered under oath on videotape and therefore, as far as he knew then, would never again have to answer.
Prior to the deposition, Clinton had apparently already refreshed his recollection enough to recall things he had forgotten throughout the 1992 campaign. One of the most peculiar exchanges during the deposition was this:
Q: Did you ever have sexual relations with Gennifer Flowers?
A: …The answer to your question… is yes.
Q: On how many occasions?
A: Once.
Q: In what year?
A: 1977.
During the campaign, Clinton had said that Flowers was a “friendly acquaintance,”11 and that “the affair did not happen.”12 On 60 Minutes he affirmed that he was, as the questioner put it, “categorically denying that [he] ever had an affair with Gennifer Flowers,” earnestly insisting, “I have absolutely leveled with the American people.”13 Whoops. Flowers had not only testified under oath about the affair, but had also published a book describing sex with Clinton in immoderate detail.
The odd thing was that Clinton bothered to deviate at all from the “deny, deny, deny” strategy he had outlined for Gennifer Flowers years ago on her tapes. Flowers had made tapes of some of her conversations with then-Governor Clinton that pretty clearly corroborated her claimed affair with him. Presumably, Clinton lawyer Bob Bennett was aware of the Flowers tapes and had sternly advised his client about the penalties for perjury. Clinton had, after all, conceded the authenticity of Flowers’s tapes by apologizing to then-Governor Mario Cuomo of New York for remarks he had made on the tapes—while denying their authenticity as to anything suggesting he had had an affair with Flowers. Clinton can be heard on the tapes remarking that Cuomo “acts like a Mafioso,” and calling him a “mean son of a bitch.” After Flowers released the tapes, Clinton moved quickly to shore up the Italian vote, saying, “If the remarks on the tape left anyone with the impression that I was disrespectful to either Governor Cuomo or Italian-Americans, then I deeply regret it.” (Cuomo initially refused the “if/then” apology.)
Still: “Once”?
Chapter Four
The Monica Story Breaks: Clinton’s Legacy Is Formed
Late on Saturday night, January 17, the day of Clinton’s deposition, Matt Drudge broke the story of the Lewinsky-Tripp tapes in his “Drudge Report” on the Internet in a “World Exclusive.” Three nights later, the Washington Post released the story on its web site, running it as the front-page story of its Wednesday edition. (And Newsweek’s web page included a lengthy section on why their senior editors in New York had spiked Michael Isikoff’s story that Saturday, which would have been the original “World Exclusive” on the Lewinsky matter.)
As each additional fact came out, day after day, and hour after hour, the possibility that there would be an innocent explanation became increasingly remote. All the pieces would fit together only if the true explanation was the one Lewinsky gave on the tapes, rather than the version in her affidavit. Apart from the immortal “kiss it,” the remainder of Clinton’s legacy was formed that week.
On Wednesday, January 21, MacAndrews & Forbes, which owns Revlon, released a statement admitting that Lewinsky had been offered a public-relations job with Revlon on the recommendation of Revlon board member Vernon Jordan. In light of the circumstances, the statement said, they were rescinding the offer. Revlon had extended the offer a few days after receiving a call from Jordan requesting that Lewinsky be made a job offer. Jordan made the call on January 8, the day after Lewinsky had signed the affidavit. Job offer in hand, Lewinsky submitted her signed affidavit to the Jones court on January 16.1
Also the next day, the president, looking very guilty, said “there is no improper relationship.” When asked if there ever was an improper relationship, he replied he would cooperate fully with the investigation. Somehow, that didn’t end the matter.
Again and again he denied that he had used Lewinsky for oral sex, saying, “These allegations are false.” But leaks from Clinton’s deposition had recently established that Clinton had finally come clean about the Flowers affair, which he had also once described as “false.” Clinton’s individualized understandings of words appeared to include interpreting the word “false” to sometimes mean “true.”
On January 26, the day before his State of the Union address, the president went before the cameras from the Roosevelt Room of the White House, with the little woman at his side. He said: “I want to say one thing to the American people. I want you to listen to me. I’m going to say this again. I did not have sexual relations with that woman—Miss Lewinsky.”
That still, somehow, didn’t end things.
The very first news reports on the Lewinsky tapes noted that an important piece of evidence of Lewinsky’s credibility on the tapes would be the WAVES logs kept by the Secret Service. Lewinsky had told Tripp of sex sessions with Clinton since she had left the White House in April 1996. If she was telling the truth, the logs would have to show the former low-level staffer being cleared to enter the White House since April 1996. The White House would have every reason to divulge the logs to the press voluntarily if they were Lewinsky-free. The White House did not release the logs.
Interestingly, according to sources at the White House cited in the Washington Post, the logs were not released this time around because with the Lewinsky matter “the danger is legal and thus far more serious.”2 So while White House flacks fanned out across the nation’s airwaves to insist the investigation was only “about sex,” not obstruction of justice, perjury, suborning perjury, or witness tampering, the White House kept the visitor logs under wraps—because of the legal issues at stake in the Lewinsky matter.
Jones’s lawyers had, however, subpoenaed the Secret Service logs. At first, the administration refused to produce them, cit
ing: executive privilege, the Nixon dodge. The logs were eventually produced. The records showed that Lewinsky had visited the White House thirty-seven times since she began working at the Pentagon. It was later learned that some of Lewinsky’s visits to her pal Betty Currie took place while Currie was on vacation.
Clinton’s former press secretary, Dee Dee Myers, said she hadn’t visited the White House that many times since leaving. “There’s no way to convince the American people that thirty-seven visits to the White House by a former intern is routine. That’s extraordinary… and raises a lot of questions.”3
Soon Clinton’s answers to questions during his deposition came out. Not only had he lied about Gennifer Flowers, but he had also admitted he might have given young Monica a brooch, a dress, a hat pin, a book of poetry, and other assorted items. Giving a single dress to each of the hundreds of female White House interns alone would have been a dazzling financial feat, even for a president who was not simultaneously amassing enormous legal bills.
RECIPE FOR PERJURY
On one small point, Clinton’s deposition testimony contradicted Lewinsky’s sworn affidavit. She had sworn in paragraph 8 of her declaration: “The occasions that I saw the President after I left employment at the White House in April, 1996, were official receptions, formal functions or events related to the U.S. Department of Defense, where I was working at the time. There were other people present on those occasions.”4
