A Vast Conspiracy

by Jeffrey Toobin

  If Bittman’s bad morning had been an isolated act of incompetence in an otherwise flawless investigation, it might have loomed smaller than it eventually did. Instead, it established a pattern that Starr’s team would follow straight through the following year—an obsession with meaningless atmospherics and tendentious “signs” to their adversaries, an unhealthy interest in using the media to send messages, and a predilection for canine zeal over solid prosecutorial judgment. As Starr himself often pointed out, he relied on what he called his staff of “career prosecutors.” But the ones Starr listened to were the country-club tough guys (and the whole staff was, almost without exception, guys) like Bittman, whose faux sophistication led them all to oblivion.

  Indeed, for all the attention they lavished on the media, Starr’s staff couldn’t even manage the easy stuff. For Currie’s grand jury appearance on January 27, the prosecutors had arranged for Currie and Larry Wechsler to enter the courthouse through a side door so they would not have to battle their way through the unruly crowd of photographers by the main entrance. But Starr’s team made no provision for Currie’s departure, so she and her lawyer had to run that gauntlet on their way home. The resulting photographs of Currie in that maelstrom became a lasting metaphor for an excessive and blundering investigation (and press corps). Sooner rather than later, there would be other such symbols, too.

  15

  “Words of Assent”

  In the days after Bill Ginsburg settled in Washington to begin representing Monica Lewinsky, he had a single priority: to keep his client from killing herself.

  Lewinsky had been confronted by Starr’s investigators on Friday, January 16, at the Ritz-Carlton, and Ginsburg had arrived to join her the following day. In those first few days, Ginsburg saw his role as as much family friend as lawyer. The lawyer regarded himself, in essence, as Bernie Lewinsky’s proxy, and as Monica began to tell him the story of her relationship, Ginsburg grew furious at the president. Ginsburg had known Monica as a child, and he still thought of her that way. It revolted him that Clinton, in his view, had taken advantage of her. Still, in the matter of a few days, Starr’s prosecutors managed to redirect Ginsburg’s fury away from their chief target, the president, and toward the Office of Independent Counsel.

  For their part, in those last few days before Lewinsky’s name became public, Monica and her mother, Marcia Lewis, lived in a kind of suspended animation at their apartment in the Watergate complex. Their place was already in desolate shape. Marcia had more or less moved to New York, to live with her fiancé, a wealthy former broadcasting executive named Peter Straus. And Monica was well along in her packing for her own move to the city, where she would be starting her job with Revlon. Now, with the threat of arrest hanging over at least Monica and perhaps Marcia as well, the two women kept the doors locked and shades drawn, fearful that the Starr forces would descend at any moment. They ate little and spoke softly, to avoid the listening devices that they assumed had been installed. For several days, Marcia even saved the household trash, as a gesture to persuade the FBI that they had not tried to destroy any evidence.

  When Ginsburg first went to the Starr office, on Saturday night, January 17, the prosecutors—on this day, Jackie Bennett, Bob Bittman, and Mike Emmick—still wanted Lewinsky to make controlled phone calls to their targets. Ginsburg said no—such betrayals were un-American, he asserted. Besides, he thought that in Monica’s precarious mental state, the prospect of becoming an undercover operative was simply too overwhelming. Ginsburg promised that his client would tell prosecutors everything she knew, but she wouldn’t go to work for them. At this point, Ginsburg wanted to see Clinton exposed—as a “misogynist,” even as a “molester.” But the prosecutors were greedy. They wanted Monica first to enter a guilty plea in connection with the filing of her affidavit in the Jones case and then to testify against the president. The prosecutors said that if Monica cooperated with them after her plea, they would make a motion to the sentencing judge that would virtually guarantee her no jail time. Ginsburg was bewildered. Who ever heard of prosecuting a twenty-four-year-old for lying about an affair?

  After his meeting with the prosecutors, Monica and Marcia picked up Ginsburg at the independent counsel offices, and together they drove to the Ritz-Carlton. An excitable trio in the best of circumstances, Ginsburg, Lewinsky, and Lewis spent the rest of the evening—indeed, much of the following week—in a prolonged bout of group hysteria.

  Ginsburg had known Monica’s version of her relationship with the president only since earlier that day—that they had had a consensual sexual affair since November 1995. However, in the car to the hotel, Ginsburg declared he was going to denounce Clinton as a child molester. In other words, even after the prosecutors’ initial round of threats, Ginsburg was still more angry at Clinton than Starr. But Monica, ever protective of what she called, in her Senate testimony, “my relationship,” bellowed, “That’s not true!” For the moment, Ginsburg backed off his threat, but his anger at the president remained.

  When Lewinsky, Lewis, and Ginsburg reached the hotel, they commandeered a conference room. Lewinsky and her mother remembered that Ginsburg said they had only two options—for Monica to make the controlled phone calls to Currie, Jordan, and perhaps the president, or for Monica to face trial and possible jail. Ginsburg told them that the trial alone would cost Monica’s father half a million dollars in legal fees and possibly bankrupt his practice. Ginsburg asserted that he presented a third possibility to Lewinsky, that he would keep fighting for immunity, but conceded that things looked pretty dire at this point. Soon, both women were wailing, and Ginsburg was screaming—at them, at the Starr forces, at the president, at the heavens. Monica said she couldn’t take it anymore and asked to be checked into a psychiatric hospital. Instead, the two women returned to their darkened, box-strewn apartment at the Watergate.

  Realizing he was in over his head, Ginsburg placed a late-night phone call to an old acquaintance, Nathaniel Speights, an experienced, if low-profile, Washington criminal lawyer, to assist him with the legal work. In their dealings with the OIC over the next several months, Nate Speights would play the good (or at least the sane) cop to Ginsburg’s erratic bad guy.

  On Sunday, Ginsburg and Monica spent most of the day at Speights’s house, in Chevy Chase, and Lewinsky gave another operatic rendition of her relationship. The first thing Speights did was rule out a plea deal. Few people were ever prosecuted for filing a false affidavit in a civil case, and the lawyer saw many avenues of defense if Lewinsky actually was charged. Besides, Speights could see that the prosecutors were bluffing. They needed Monica more than she needed them. Starr needed her testimony to prosecute the people he really wanted—Clinton, Jordan, Currie, anyone connected to the White House. Speights called Mike Emmick at the OIC to say that if his office was considering prosecuting Monica, they could forget about any kind of cooperation. He wanted immunity for her or there would be no further discussions. Emmick called back and said that immunity was a possibility, but they needed to hear more of Monica’s story before they made a decision. He invited the three of them—Ginsburg, Speights, and Lewinsky—to the independent counsel offices the following day, January 19.

  On that next morning—which was the Martin Luther King holiday—Lewinsky’s day began with Betty Currie’s series of messages to her pager: “Please call Kay re: family emergency,” “Please call, have good news,” and so on. Vernon Jordan and Frank Carter called, too. At her lawyers’ insistence, Lewinsky returned none of the calls. Then, rattled by the pages, the phone calls, everything, Lewinsky was summoned by her lawyers to join them for the day’s negotiating session at the Starr suite.

  Ginsburg spent most of the day shuttling between two conference rooms—one with the prosecutors and the other with a weeping, writhing Monica Lewinsky. Ginsburg and Speights wouldn’t let the prosecutors speak directly to Lewinsky, but she was answering their questions, through the lawyers. The awkward setup was what lawyers call a proffer session,
in which a witness previews what he or she will say if the prosecutors grant immunity. Her message to the prosecutors would never change over the following year. Yes, she had had a sexual relationship with the president. No, Clinton had not asked her to lie or otherwise obstruct justice. The three-way conversation was tedious, but the prosecutors were getting some answers to their questions.

  In the middle of this back-and-forth, on Monday afternoon, the prosecutors were called away to study some important news that had just arrived: the Drudge Report, which contained the first public reference to Lewinsky’s name. “It’s too late now,” Jackie Bennett announced. “She’s radioactive.” Suddenly Monica’s value as a covert operative dropped to zero. The disclosure soured an already testy mood.

  Still, even with Lewinsky’s undercover work off the table, Ginsburg and Speights felt they were approaching a deal. It was hard to tell. For one thing, though Starr himself was present in the office suite, he refused to participate in the negotiations. When Ginsburg left the conference room to talk to Monica, prosecutors Bennett, Emmick, and Bittman would consult with Starr. (Ginsburg met Starr only when they found themselves in adjoining urinals in the men’s room.) The setup displayed Starr’s lack of confidence in his own judgment. He decided everything after consulting with his full complement of prosecutors, so no one person could say for sure what the Starr team even wanted from Monica. Once Speights showed up, the guilty plea was off the table. But the prosecutors were making noises about offering limited-use immunity, not the broader, transactional grant of immunity; about forcing Monica to take a lie detector test; about examining her face to face, rather than through attorneys. Finally, Ginsburg asked for a dinner break for his exhausted and overwrought client. They’d go to the Hard Rock Café, across the street, eat dinner, then call to see whether the Starr team were ready to resume negotiations.

  After Ginsburg, Speights, and Lewinsky finished their burgers, they called over to the office, only to be told to call back later. Two hours passed. Finally, Jackie Bennett told them to return and announced that he had toughened the conditions for a deal. She needed to come in and make an oral proffer, known as a “Queen for a Day” arrangement. If the prosecutors believed her story, they would give her limited-use immunity, not the broader transactional immunity being sought for her.

  Ginsburg said no to the oral proffer. For one thing, he didn’t trust the Starr people. He thought Monica would tell them everything they needed to know, and then they would turn on her and prosecute her anyway. Something like this had happened to Webb Hubbell in the Whitewater cases, and he didn’t want to take that risk. More important, though, Ginsburg wouldn’t agree to an oral proffer because he didn’t think Monica was in any mental state to deal directly with the prosecutors. He was in the process of arranging psychiatric care and medication for her. A confrontation with prosecutors might push her over the edge.

  At first, Bennett was just patronizing. “It would be malpractice if we entered into an immunity agreement without talking to her first,” he said.

  Malpractice—this was Ginsburg’s turf. And he knew that in technical legal terms, government lawyers had no clients. He removed his glasses and shot back, “So who the fuck is going to sue you?”

  Bennett tried another tack. He said there was information on the Tripp tapes that suggested that Monica’s mother, Marcia Lewis, might have been party to Monica’s scheme to obstruct justice.

  “Bullshit,” said Ginsburg. “You have nothing on her.”

  The conversation went on along these lines for some time, until the dispute between the two men was distilled into a single issue. Bennett demanded an oral proffer before they gave Monica immunity. Ginsburg wanted the immunity deal before she said anything to them. Finally, at around ten-thirty on Monday night, Bennett tried one last gambit to shake up the Lewinsky team.

  “I’d like you to accept service of a subpoena for her mother,” said Bennett, handing Ginsburg the document summoning Marcia Lewis to the grand jury. Reluctantly, Ginsburg accepted it.

  Moments later, with nothing resolved, Ginsburg collected Monica to leave. As Monica tried to walk to the elevator with Ginsburg and Speights, she fell to the floor, weeping and wailing. The two lawyers almost had to carry her out of the office.

  Still, for Monica Lewinsky, Monday was pretty good compared to Tuesday, to say nothing of Wednesday.

  During the negotiations on Monday, Ginsburg and Speights had agreed to allow Starr’s investigators to search Monica’s apartment at the Watergate the following day. (It wasn’t much of a concession, because Starr could have obtained a search warrant with little difficulty.) But in the chaotic conclusion to Monday’s events, Emmick thought that Ginsburg had withdrawn permission for the search. So Emmick was surprised to get a grumpy phone call from Ginsburg the next morning. Where are the agents? he asked. Why aren’t they doing their search? In this way the OIC learned that Ginsburg was willing to allow the agents in Lewinsky’s apartment at the Watergate and that her lawyers wanted to continue negotiations.

  When the agents finally arrived at Lewinsky’s apartment, one of them called Speights to ask about some pictures and photographs that they had been led to believe were on the walls. Now, it appeared, there were only blank spaces. Where were the pictures?

  As patiently as he could, Speights asked the agent whether he saw any cardboard boxes directly below the spaces on the wall. Did you look in the boxes? Speights asked.

  No, the agent hadn’t gotten around to it.

  You’re searching the apartment and you haven’t looked in the moving boxes? Speights was incredulous.

  The agents did rouse themselves to look through the boxes, and they also collected Lewinsky’s computer and most of her dresses. They were, of course, looking for the semen-stained dress that Tripp had told them about, but it had been moved earlier to Monica’s mother’s new apartment, in New York. All in all, then, the search yielded little useful evidence, but it left Lewinsky with almost nothing to wear.

  In any event, the true life-changing event for Lewinsky took place on Wednesday, January 21, when she confronted a double blow. First, of course, she remained a suspect in a criminal investigation. But the big news on Wednesday was that her name had finally surfaced in the mainstream press, and she became the object of the most intense media surveillance since O. J. Simpson’s Bronco ride across Southern California. For the next several months, camera crews established round-the-clock surveillance in front of her building in the Watergate complex. (One day, Monica’s next-door neighbor, former senator Bob Dole, brought doughnuts to the crews.)

  The public disclosure of Monica’s name transformed Ginsburg’s behavior, and even his personality. At this point, Ginsburg shut down virtually all contact between Monica and the outside world. He basically forbade his client to speak with anyone except her mother. He even directed his friend Bernie to cease speaking to his daughter for the time being. Monica moved upstairs to the fifth floor of the Watergate, where Marcia’s mother had an apartment, and she began spending virtually all of her time staring at her own image on the television and relying on her attorney to keep her apprised of her fate. Outside of her mother, her lawyer, and her newly recruited team of psychiatrists, Lewinsky had almost no contact with the world.

  In one sense, Ginsburg was just being cautious. As the subpoena to Marcia Lewis illustrated, the prosecutors were obviously willing to question those closest to Lewinsky in order to build their case. Limiting contact with Monica restricted the amount of evidence that could be assembled against her. But the move was also a power play. Ginsburg quickly developed a taste for being the center of attention, and his exclusive access to his client guaranteed him a ready audience whenever he wanted one. His first public comment on the case suggested that his anger at Clinton still trumped his distaste for Starr. “If the president of the United States did this—and I’m not saying he did—with this young lady, I think he’s a misogynist,” Ginsburg told the press on the day the story broke. “If h
e didn’t, then I think Ken Starr and his crew have ravaged the life of a youngster.” Since Ginsburg at that point knew that Clinton “did this”—that is, conducted the affair with Lewinsky—Ginsburg did regard the president as a misogynist. But the Office of Independent Counsel was taking steps to make sure that their putative star witness, and her lawyer, would transform their allegiances.

  It is no exaggeration to say that the next two weeks determined the fate of Bill Clinton’s presidency, and the critical behind-the-scenes drama of that period was the negotiation between William Ginsburg and the Office of Independent Counsel. The president himself raised the stakes to this level with his finger-wagging denial of January 26. In the clearest, most emphatic way, Clinton denied that he had had “sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky.” Ginsburg’s client could give the testimony—and provide the physical evidence—that would prove definitively that the president had lied. Could Ginsburg and Starr cut a deal that would let the prosecutor make his case?

  Starr’s team convened on this and other issues twice a day, at eight in the morning and five in the afternoon. Dozens of people—prosecutors, agents, paralegals, as many as fifty of them at a time—would gather around the large conference table to chew over the matters before the office. (Often, Starr’s team of a dozen or more people in Little Rock would join in the conversations by speakerphone.) Starr believed in giving everyone a chance to talk, and the result was a maddeningly slow way to do business. But the group dynamics had a substantive impact, too. Over and over, Starr spoke of the need for “toughness,” and he relished those comments that called for confrontation and conflict. The independent counsel not only recognized that he lacked experience but hated that the public saw him as a fleshy, Milquetoast kind of person. One day he mentioned how angry he was that some of his adversaries in Little Rock were spreading the false rumor that he was having an affair on his visits there; what really teed him off was that everyone—everyone!—thought the rumor was inconceivable.