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

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.

THE TALKING POINTS
     
    Most mysterious were the talking points. On Wednesday, January 14, 1998, two days before Starr’s deputies confronted Lewinsky at the Ritz Carlton Hotel—and the day after they had wired Tripp to tape a conversation with Lewinsky—Lewinsky handed Tripp a typed, three-page, single-spaced document titled “Points to Make in an Affidavit.” In addition to advising Tripp to be a “team player,” the document told her exactly how—providing Tripp specific points to make that would benefit Clinton in the sexual harassment suit.
    The proposed “recollections” were not exclusively, nor even primarily, about Lewinsky. They were about Kathleen Willey—whom Tripp was on record as having seen emerging from the Oval Office “disheveled” on the day Willey says she was groped by the president. Tripp was instructed to declare:
    You now do not believe that what [Willey] claimed happened really happened. You now find it completely plausible that she herself smeared her lipstick, untucked blouse, etc. You never saw her go into the Oval Office, or come out of the Oval Office. You have never observed the President behaving inappropriately with anybody.
     
    As to Lewinsky herself, the talking points advised Tripp to denounce Lewinsky as “this huge liar,” and to claim, “I found out she left the WH because she was stalking the P[resident] or something like that.” Finally the talking points requested that Tripp submit her affidavit to “Bennett’s people” for review before turning it over to Jones’s lawyers. Once again, Lewinsky, if not “the Big He,” is caught dead to rights suborning perjury—even if she is “this huge liar.”
    Like Craig Livingstone—the former bar bouncer turned White House director of personnel security who was caught with nine hundred FBI files in the White House—the only explanation for the talking points is that they materialized out of thin air.
    If Lewinsky did type the talking points—and phrases like “this huge liar” suggest that possibility—there is little doubt that she was coached by someone, presumably a lawyer. The points read like a valley girl’s transcription of a lawyer’s advice. Most implausibly, the talking points concern a certain “Jane Doe” in the Jones case who would not be at the top of Lewinsky’s concerns. Willey was of great concern to Clinton; Lewinsky was mainly concerned with getting a job in New York and preventing “the Big Creep” from finding out that she had been talking about their “affair.” The request to let “Bennett’s people” review the final declaration doesn’t make any sense coming from Lewinsky. By all accounts, Monica was primarily interested in Monica.
    The leading candidates for talking points coach are Vernon Jordan, Clinton aide Bruce Lindsey, and of course the only person who would personally benefit from Tripp’s suborned perjury—Clinton himself. 12 Lewinsky reportedly loathed Lindsey, and Jordan reportedly is not an idiot. Of the three, Clinton is the only one known to have left messages on Lewinsky’s home answering machine.
    Though it seems incredible that the president of the United States would be coaching a twenty-four-year-old former intern on how to tamper with a witness, it is also incredible that the president of the United States would be getting oral sex from a twenty-something intern, sending her love tokens, and leaving messages on her answering machine.
    Moreover, according to news accounts of Lewinsky’s proffer, Clinton was the one