All Too Human: A Political Education

by George Stephanopoulos

  A few weeks later, Richard Nixon died. On the morning of the funeral, I went to the Oval with Clinton's new communications director, Don Baer, for a final review of Clinton's eulogy. The draft was OK, but one line made me squirm. The president wanted to conclude his remarks by declaring that “the day of judging Richard Nixon based on one part of his life alone has finally come to a close.”

  It was a generous line — too generous, I feared. For Bill Clinton to issue such a new and sweeping, if only rhetorical, presidential pardon of Nixon would be both presumptuous and provocative. Nixon-hating liberals (who already felt betrayed by Clinton) would see the gesture as a hollow pitch to appease the right wing and would feel that only Nixon's victims — the “enemies,” the Cambodians, the framers of the Constitution — had the right to forgive him. Clinton-hating conservatives (who would never trust Clinton, no matter what he said) would suspect that it was a self-referential plea for personal absolution, a slick maneuver aimed at closing off criticism of Clinton's own conduct. To the punditocracy, this would be the line that launched a thousand columns comparing the characters of Clinton and Nixon. Although the comment might possibly have passed without notice, the risk wasn't worth the reward.

  But how do you tell your boss that he's insufficiently self-aware, or too altruistic for his own good? Very carefully. I didn't mention the misguided comparisons that Clinton critics were making between Whitewater and Watergate — that would just rile him up. Instead I wondered aloud if we were going a “little too far. I know what you're trying to say, but people might misinterpret what you mean,” I suggested. “What if we soften it a bit by saying, ‘May the day of judging Richard Nixon based on one part of his life alone finally come to a close’?” By transforming the draft sentence from a presidential directive into a personal wish, I thought we could preserve the spirit of Clinton's expression without provoking a partisan backlash.

  “Yeah, that's good,” Clinton said, getting it immediately. Seeing and hearing a liberal like me make this suggestion reminded him of the many people who harbored such strong feelings about Nixon. As I walked Clinton out to the South Lawn, he reminisced about running for Congress in the wake of Nixon's 1974 resignation. Clinton was defeated in that Democratic year, and he never forgot the words of an old man on the campaign trail who was more prescient than the polls: “You're not going to make it, son,” predicted the codger. “Hammerschmidt [the Republican incumbent] doesn't have enough stink of Nixon on him to lose.”

  The taint of scandal hadn't stuck to me either. But two days later, on Friday, April 29, Clinton called me into the Oval to ask about a rumor he'd picked up on the way back from San Clemente. “I don't have any inside information,” he told me. “But you're not worried about getting indicted, are you?”

  I was now. Clinton picked up lots of information from lots of different places. Sometimes the message was garbled because of his poor hearing; sometimes he couldn't read the notes he had scribbled to himself for follow-up later. But if this rumor was even close to right, I couldn't just blow it off. Excusing yourself from a personal audience with the president of the United States isn't easy, but right then, the only person in the world I really wanted to talk to was my lawyer.

  After checking with “sources close to the independent counsel,” Stan called back with reassurance and a reminder not to believe everything I heard. That same afternoon, however, a long-running rumor was confirmed. Mike Isikoff of the Post called to tell me that after months of speculation, Paula Jones had finally decided to file a sexual harassment suit against Clinton. “Do you have any comment?” That was Clinton's call. I checked with him in the Oval Office study.

  “Mr. President, I've got some good news and some bad news: The good news is that we heard from the Fiske people that the indictment story is bullshit,” I said. “But the bad news is that Paula filed.”

  “Well,” he said, a resigned smile on his face. “I guess I'd rather be sued than have you indicted.”

  I could've hugged him, but neither one of us could have imagined how fateful Ms. Jones's decision would turn out to be.

  When the American Spectator's “Troopergate” story was published in December 1993, the details about a woman named Paula who wanted to be Governor Clinton's “girlfriend” hadn't made a particular impression on me. Set against the potentially more serious charge that President Clinton may have offered the troopers federal jobs in return for their silence, it seemed inconsequential. Even if it was true, who cared if Clinton made a pass at a young woman when he was governor? Only on February 11, 1994, when Paula Jones disputed the account and accused Clinton of sexual harassment, did I begin to pay attention.

  Paula leveled her charge from the epicenter of anti-Clintonism — the annual convention of the Conservative Political Action Committee. No network covered the performance live, but from every report that reached my desk, it sounded like a farcical turn on the original Gennifer Flowers circus — minus the incriminating tapes. Though I didn't relish reliving that experience, I couldn't have scripted it better for us. The whole scene screamed “setup job.” Paula's chief handler, Cliff Jackson, had been making a cottage industry out of attacking Clinton ever since his involvement with the draft story in 1991. We also heard that Paula had put out feelers for book and movie deals, and that a lawyer close to her had even approached associates of Clinton to ask about a job. By now, I had more experience than I ever would have imagined with situations like this — and it looked and smelled like the kind of “cash for trash” transaction we had beaten back before.

  The president's initial reaction reinforced my instincts. When I went to the Oval to get his response, he said he didn't remember her: “What does she look like?” he asked. As difficult as it may be to believe, I was convinced. I had seen Clinton dissemble in the past, but this time he seemed genuine. There was no nervous chatter; he didn't overexplain; he didn't recount a rehearsed story at high speed; and, unusual for him when under siege, he even joked about the trooper angle: “I may be a fat old man now, but in my younger days I never needed any help getting women.” I left the Oval believing that he might have met Paula, possibly even flirted with her. But I was also convinced that he didn't harass her, and that she was remembering whatever consensual encounter they had as a crime in order to make a buck.

  My belief in Clinton, coupled with contempt for his enemies, was motivation enough to mount his defense. Paula's cause was being promoted by the same people who were trying to block everything we believed in. They were threatening to sue Clinton not because they had a strong case, but because that was the “hook” they needed to get press attention and drag Clinton through the mud. I also still believed that the president deserved some statute of limitations on past conduct that wasn't criminal. It's just not fair for him to be treated this way. No other president has ever had to put up with as much crap as they throw at him. Even if you believe the worst about him, her story's just not credible. He's not a predator; he'd never pull down his pants unless he knew what was coming next. Armed with my arguments, I went to work.

  My goal was to put Paula Jones in the same category as Connie Hamzy — women whose stories were so suspect that their accounts shouldn't be dignified by the media. Most important, I wanted to keep reports of Paula's press conference off television. So I made my case directly to Tim Russert at NBC, Dotty Lynch of CBS, and Tom Johnson, the president of CNN. It wasn't a hard sell, and ABC was even less inclined to sensationalize a supposed sex scandal because of their twenty-two-minute Whitewater extravaganza the night before. Although we couldn't quash all coverage, our goal was to bury a one-day story inside the Saturday newspapers. Asked to comment, I called the performance a “cheap political fund-raising trick.”

  Initially, the strategy was effective. The coverage was relatively scanty and slanted our way. But a few days later, Ann Devroy called to say we had a problem with the Post. “Downie thinks it's like a Packwood problem,” she said, which was a statement with two meanings: first, tha
t executive editor Leonard Downie felt an obligation to investigate the womanizing charges against Clinton because the Post had pursued similar allegations against former Republican senator Bob Packwood. Second, Downie thought it was legitimate to look into the Paula Jones episode on the grounds that it may have been part of a pattern of compulsive sexual behavior that still defined Clinton's character. When I reported the conversation to Clinton, he was dripping with contempt: “This is sick, man.”

  According to Ann, the story was being debated intensively inside the Post. Not every editor agreed that the Jones episode was relevant to Clinton's presidency or that there was sufficient rationale to pursue the story. Ann reported that there was a “real back and forth,” among her, Downie, the editors Bob Kaiser, Bob Barnes, and Karen Deyoung, and the reporter who was pushing hardest to get Paula's story (his story) into the paper, Mike Isikoff. Ann also said (ironically, I thought) that she and Karen Deyoung were the “most dubious” about the story. The other editors didn't think it was ready for the paper, but they were more inclined to give it major treatment if it checked out. “Isikoff,” she added, “totally believes this.” After talking to Ann, I knew that the only way to kill the story was to convince Downie that it wasn't credible or relevant to Clinton's conduct in the Oval Office.

  But first I had to talk to Isikoff, because he was the beat reporter. Before I called him, Bruce Lindsey and I compiled all of the facts — even reviewing Clinton's May 8, 1991, gubernatorial schedule to see if we could prove that Clinton could not have met with Paula when she said. It appeared that Clinton had left the Excelsior Hotel by the time of the claimed encounter, but the people accompanying Clinton that day said he had made an unscheduled afternoon return. We didn't have our silver bullet. But even if we couldn't convincingly disprove her claim, it still came down to a “he said, she said.” “Doesn't the president of the United States deserve the benefit of the doubt?” I asked. Isikoff didn't think so, and we squared off over the validity of various contemporaneous accounts. But it was a dialogue of the deaf: I believed Clinton; he believed Jones.

  But the most credible testimony came from Danny Ferguson, the trooper alleged to have escorted Paula to Clinton's courtesy suite. Betsey Wright was in contact with him, and what he was saying was problematic for both sides. Ferguson told Betsey that yes, he had indeed introduced Jones to Clinton, but that Jones was ecstatic after the brief meeting and wanted to be Clinton's girlfriend. That made me more skeptical of Clinton's claim that he “didn't remember” being in a room with Paula, but it also disputed Jones's claim that Clinton had harassed her. An additional tidbit helped us: Betsey told me that Paula had approached Ferguson after the publication of the Spectator story and asked, “Do you think I can get some money out of this deal?”

  So the situation was messier than I first hoped, and I was angry about the fact that Clinton had let me go through the charade of trying to prove he wasn't in the room when in all probability he was. It reminded me of one of the worst moments of the 1992 campaign — the day during April's New York primary when we had to deal with Clinton's draft-induction notice from 1969. Ever since New Hampshire, we'd been denying that Clinton had ever been drafted, but when John King of the Associated Press handed me a copy of Clinton's draft notice, I was shaken. How can this be? How come Clinton didn't tell us? “I forgot about it,” Clinton had said then. By the time the draft notice reached him at Oxford, he explained, his local draft board had told him to ignore it, so he did.

  Forgetting about getting drafted was a hard story to swallow, and now I was more skeptical on this story. But I still believed that his amnesia was closer to the truth than her allegation, that Clinton's private behavior as governor wasn't necessarily relevant to his performance as president, and that it wasn't fair to treat a flirtation as if it were a felony. That was the core of the argument I would make to Downie.

  On February 17, we met over crab cakes in the dining room of the Jefferson Hotel. On the understanding that everything I said would be off the record, I came prepared with notes sketched on a long yellow pad — a political brief for why the Post shouldn't run the story. Despite the sordid subject matter, I felt like a man on a noble mission. Not only was I serving my boss, but I was also taking a stand against the tabloid culture. I imagined myself in the tradition of presidential advisers called to solemn deliberations with barons of the fourth estate over how to balance the public's right to know with the president's responsibility to govern.

  I began by flattering the Post, emphasizing that our extraordinary efforts to keep Paula's account out of the paper demonstrated our respect for the Post and our belief that whatever appeared on its pages would rightfully be taken seriously by the rest of the world. Then I turned to Paula's credibility. Her three years of silence, her refusal to rule out book and movie royalties, and her association with CPAC, I argued, all called her story into question. People who worked with her in Arkansas, I added, had also told Isikoff that she was an unreliable employee who seemed to have a crush on Clinton.

  Next, I served as Clinton's character witness. I told Downie about the moment when I had told the president about Paula's press conference. When I mentioned her name, I recounted, Clinton had drawn a blank, and he didn't seem to be faking when he claimed that he didn't remember meeting her. Omitting my subsequent doubts, I added that I had seen Clinton fudge before and had believed him this time. Then I went even further, saying that even if you believed that Clinton was a womanizer, it wasn't credible that he had acted this way with this woman at this time. That's just not his style, I said. Why I thought I knew that is hard for me to figure out now, but it made sense then.

  I also tried to use Ferguson's testimony to our advantage. Sure, he puts Clinton in the room with Jones, I argued, but you can't take half his story and throw away the rest. If you believe Ferguson, then you also should believe that Paula Jones didn't feel harassed at the time. And if you believe that, then you have no justification for printing her charges three years after the fact, when she has dozens of reasons to embellish her story. Assume Ferguson's story is true: The fact that Clinton flirted with someone when he was governor of Arkansas does not belong on the front page of the Post. By printing Paula's charges against a sitting president, no matter how many qualifiers are hidden beneath the headline, the Post is reaching a provisional judgment. You're telling the world, I concluded, that her story is true — and we're put in the nearly impossible position of having to prove a negative.

  Downie hardly said a word. Polite but imponderable, he heard me out, asked a few questions, took some notes, and thanked me for my time. He was doing his job, and I was doing mine. And though I don't know what role our conversation played in the decision, I was proud of the fact that Isikoffs account didn't appear in the Post until May 4, the day after President Clinton retained attorney Bob Bennett to represent him in the impending civil suit of Jones v. Clinton.

  With the statute of limitations for Jones's legal claim set to expire at the end of the week, Bennett had first tried to negotiate a preemptive settlement with Jones's lawyers. In the initial phone call, Jones's lead attorney, Gil Davis, took a hard line, saying that Ms. Jones was all but certain to file suit and that she was “prepared to discuss the president's private parts.” But when the settlement talks heated up on the afternoon of May 5, Bennett camped out in my office so that he could personally consult with Clinton on the final details.

  The president was in the Oval, working the phones for the House vote on an assault weapons ban. Despite intense lobbying by the National Rifle Association, we were within a few votes of victory, and Clinton was doing all he could to put it over the top. I shuttled between the two sets of phone calls, but I should have known after our cliff-hanger victory on assault weapons that Paula Jones would surely file suit. In Clinton's world, good news rarely arrived without a shady companion.

  Early in the afternoon, Bennett thought he could buy more time. He called Davis from my easy chair and said that he couldn't
“get an answer by today. It's a busy day at the White House, and this is not a decision I can make.” The offer Jones had on the table was for the president to read a public statement confirming that they had met and apologizing for any defamatory statements about Ms. Jones from him or his staff. Although it would later seem like a small price to pay, at the time it appeared unacceptable. We couldn't agree to subject the president to such a public spectacle over an incident he had denied. In addition, the Jones attorneys were asking us to sign a “tolling agreement.” That meant we would agree to suspend the statute of limitations for Jones's sexual harassment claim, and they would reserve the right to file a lawsuit at any time. That was a nonstarter for us; if we agreed to a settlement, it had to be final. We couldn't run the risk that as Clinton's reelection campaign approached, they would concoct a reason to refile the lawsuit.

  In his conversations with Davis, Bennett used me as a foil. He said that the president's “political advisers will go nuts” about any settlement, and that we were adamant about holding the line on a public apology by the president. Davis responded with a joke: “You know about the Stephanopoulos bond, don't you? It doesn't mature.” It rankled me a little, but I was happy to play bad cop. The president adamantly denied harassing Jones. I believed him, and with reelection only two years away, I thought it was perilous to admit to a boorish act like that, especially if it wouldn't eliminate the threat of a lawsuit. But Bennett and I did draft a counterproposal that he read to Davis over the phone:

  I have no recollection of meeting Paula Jones on May 8, 1991, at the Excelsior Hotel. It is entirely possible that I did meet with her on that date.

  If such a meeting occurred, neither she nor I did or said anything of a sexual nature. I regret the untrue assertions which may have been made about her.