High Crimes and Misdemeanors: The Case Against Bill Clinton Read Online Free PDF Page A

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, citing: 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