A Woman in Charge (83 page)

During the evening, Bill huddled with Democratic congressman Jim Moran of Virginia, away from the others. Bill convinced him that he had not had sex with Lewinsky, as the congressman dutifully told the press. Bill also pulled aside Senator Robert Torricelli of New Jersey, and asked him whether he'd be able “to fulfill my term as president.” “It was clear to me, he was of the judgment it might not be sustainable,” Torricelli said.

Despite Clinton's attempt to convince him there had been no sexual affair with Lewinsky, Torricelli didn't buy it.

The lawyers were opposed to Thomason's suggestion that the president make another public statement about the scandal, but the question seemed to be decided by the deteriorating situation in the press and as expressed in the private comments of members of Congress. The country was transfixed with the details and the characters: Bill, Hillary, Monica, Starr, Vernon Jordan, Betty Currie, Paula Jones, and the women who had set Lewinsky up—the press was reporting—to entrap the president: Lucianne Goldberg, a devout right-wing, Clinton-hating author of trashy novels and a sometime book agent, and Linda Tripp, who had once worked in Vince Foster's office and, after befriending Lewinsky, taped her calls and shared the details with Goldberg.

On ABC's
This Week,
George Will pronounced the Clinton presidency “deader really than Woodrow Wilson's after he had a stroke.” Sam Donaldson, on the same broadcast, said it was not certain that the president would be able to get through the next week without being forced to resign.

Tim Russert, host of
Meet the Press,
put the president's survival odds at 50–50. Matt Drudge, founding editor of his eponymous right-leaning Web site and a guest on the show, said “There is talk all over this town [that] another White House staffer is going to come out from behind the curtains this week…. There are hundreds, hundreds [of other women]according to Miss Lewinsky…. We're in for a huge shock that goes beyond the specific episode. It's a whole psychosis taking place in the White House.” Drudge was the changing face of American journalism, and his appearance on the oldest of the weekly television interview shows confirmed that the country was in some new place now.

It was Super Bowl Sunday. While most of America watched the Denver Broncos beat the Green Bay Packers, FBI agents questioned Ashley Raines, a White House employee and friend of Lewinsky, about what she had heard the president say on the intern's answering machine.

 

T
HE NEXT MORNING,
Hillary and Al Gore were scheduled to preside over a ceremony in the Roosevelt Room to preview a child care program that the president would announce to Congress on Tuesday night. Fifty people were crowded into the room, among them several senators and a phalanx of officials from the Department of Education. After almost an hour of by-the-book speeches and encomiums by the first lady, the vice president, foundation presidents, and local parents and teachers, Gore suddenly said, “I am very pleased to introduce America's true education president and the greatest champion of working parents and working families that the United States of America has ever known: President Bill Clinton.”

The president, after prolonged cheering from the surprised attendees, spoke for ten minutes or so—knowledgeably and compellingly, as ever—about education, and what the administration was doing for children. “Now I have to go back to work on my State of the Union speech,” he said. “I worked on it till pretty late last night.” Then he paused. Neither Harry Thomason, who was monitoring the proceedings on a closed-circuit screen in a West Wing office, nor Hillary was sure what Bill was about to say.

He leaned into the microphone and his voice intensified: “But I want to say one thing to the American people. I want you to listen to me. I'm going to say this again.” He was left-handed, but on this occasion he pointed with his right index finger, jabbing it vigorously four times in front of the cameras as he enunciated what he wanted to get across: “I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky.” He stabbed the lectern with his finger. “I never told anybody to lie, not a single time, never.” Pause. “These allegations are false. Now I need to go back to work for the American people. Thank you.” And he walked off.

 

H
ILLARY
, B
ILL,
and Kendall were on the same strategic page: There would be no compromise, no cease-fire. Blumenthal conducted and collected copious research on almost every aspect of the political, professional, and private lives of Starr, his prosecutors, the Paula Jones gang, the Republicans in Congress who were, already, talking about impeachment, and “the elves,” which was what he called the individual mercenaries of the right (and sympathetic reporters) who fed the vast anti-Clinton conspiracy, as he saw it. Given the frequent hypocrisy, misinformation, disinformation, and conflicts of interest exhibited by the other side, this was an extremely fruitful area of exploration.

It was clear that only Hillary could staunch the hemorrhage at this point, and she had to do it soon.

On Tuesday morning, January 27, Hillary kept her scheduled interview with Matt Lauer on NBC's
Today
show. She had agreed to the interview months before; it was meant to coincide with that evening's State of the Union address. Hillary and Blumenthal had been preparing for almost a week. She was, noted Blumenthal, “the most important person” who hadn't been heard from, except for a few words on a train platform. Vernon Jordan had already plowed some ground for her, on January 22, the day after the original
Washington Post
story. “I want to say to you absolutely and unequivocally that Ms. Lewinsky told me in no uncertain terms that she did not have a sexual relationship with the president,” he read in a statement. “At no time did I ever say, suggest, or intimate to her that she should lie.” It was hard to believe that such a towering figure in Washington as Jordan would get himself mixed up in obstructing justice. If Hillary could cast similar doubt on the notion in terms of her husband, as well as credibly suggest how and why he had gotten innocently involved with Lewinsky in the first place, she might at least stop the precipitous erosion of support for the president and change some of the terms of public debate. “Hillary had to walk a fine line,” noted Blumenthal, appearing neither as “a warrior or a wounded bird.” He suggested she talk about “professional forces at work whose only purpose is to sow division by creating scandal.”

By then, Blumenthal and Hillary had more inside information, from their mole, David Brock. Brock had had dinner with Laura Ingraham, the conservative radio talk-show host, and Alex Azar, a Washington lawyer who had left Starr's staff and now was “part of the clique of elves,” as Blumenthal put it. Azar had supposedly revealed to Brock that he'd learned Starr didn't have a case because the prosecutor's elaborate plan to entrap the president had fallen apart. Brock said Starr had wanted Lewinsky to wear a wire that would enable the FBI to tape Jordan and the president talking together, presumably about getting her a job to keep her quiet about the affair. “Now they think they won't prove the crime. They'll just have an affair story,” Brock had reported. Consequently, Starr now wanted to produce “a public uproar” sufficient to force Clinton from office. The scenario allegedly contemplated by the prosecutor was the same Hillary had presupposed.

Had Hillary and someone like Blumenthal, perhaps, rather than Ira Magaziner, been as resourceful and careful with health care reform as she was with the attempt to identify and expose the vast right-wing conspiracy, history might have been quite different.

Sitting across from Lauer in a pants suit, gesturing emphatically, hair perfectly coiffed, Hillary unflinchingly defended her husband. After a few pleasantries, Lauer got down to it.

“There has been one question on the minds of people in this country, Mrs. Clinton, lately, and that is, What is the exact nature of the relationship between your husband and Monica Lewinsky? Has he described that relationship in detail to you?” Lauer asked.

“Well, we've talked at great length, and I think as this matter unfolds, the entire country will have more information. But we're right in the middle of a rather vigorous feeding frenzy right now. And people are saying all kinds of things, and putting out rumor and innuendo. And I have learned over the last many years, being involved in politics, and especially since my husband first started running for president, that the best thing to do in these cases is just to be patient, take a deep breath, and the truth will come out. But there's nothing we can do to fight this firestorm of allegations that are out there.”

Lauer wanted more specific information about what the relationship
was
between Lewinsky and the president. “He has described to the American people what this relationship was not in his words…. Has he described to you what it was?”

“Yes,” Hillary said. “And we'll find that out as time goes by, Matt. But I think the important thing now is to stand as firmly as I can and say that, you know, the president has denied these allegations on all counts, unequivocally. And we'll see how this plays out. I guess everybody says to me, how can you be so calm? Or how can you just, you know, look like you're not upset? And I guess I've just been through it so many times. I mean, Bill and I have been accused of everything, including murder, by some of the very same people who are behind these allegations. So from my perspective, this is part of the continuing political campaign against my husband.”

Lauer explained to the first lady that there had been reports that she had taken over the White House defense against the charges and that she was Bill's “chief defender.”

“Well, I certainly am going to defend my husband,” Hillary said. “And I'm certainly going to offer advice. But I am by no means running any kind of strategy or being his chief defender. He's got very capable lawyers and very capable people inside the White House, and a lot of very good friends outside the White House.”

James Carville had said “this is war between the president and Kenneth Starr,” noted Lauer. “You have said, I understand, to some close friends that this is the last great battle and that one side or the other is going down here.”

“Well, I don't know if I've been that dramatic,” said Hillary, “…but I do believe that this is a battle. I mean, look at the very people who are involved in this. They have popped up in other settings. This is—the great story here for anybody willing to find it and write about it and explain it is this vast right-wing conspiracy that has been conspiring against my husband since the day he announced for president. A few journalists have kind of caught on to it and explained it. But it has not yet been fully revealed to the American public. And actually, you know, in a bizarre sort of way, this may do it.”

Hillary and Blumenthal had been rehearsing the conspiracy comments right up until about ten minutes before the show. Blumenthal had given Hillary the perfect story line. There was plentiful truth in what Hillary was saying, if you just forgot about the sex part. The legal risks remained, but Hillary was successfully, confidently, presenting a plausible alternative narrative to Starr's unrelenting attempts to establish that her husband was a degenerate, and therefore not entitled to hold the office of the presidency.

Hillary said her husband had been wounded by his own generosity, his desire to help people in need: “I've seen [Bill] take his tie off and hand it to somebody,” Hillary responded to Lauer's question about whether it was possible that her husband had given gifts to Monica Lewinsky. “I have known my husband for more than twenty-five years, and we've been married for twenty-two years. And the one thing I always kid him about is that he never meets a stranger. He is kind. He is friendly. He tries to help people who need help, who ask for help. So I think that everybody ought to just stop a minute here and think about what we're doing. And it's not just what we're doing in terms of making these accusations against my husband. But I'm very concerned about the tactics being used and the kind of intense political agenda at work here.”

In the White House, Hillary's mother and brothers and their wives, as well as Roger Clinton and some family friends, were in the Solarium watching the first lady's appearance. Dorothy was proud that her daughter was displaying a “You tell them!” attitude, as she had in punching out the neighborhood bully when she was a child. The family members watched the replays all afternoon and flipped through the channels to evaluate the news coverage. “Everyone was yelling at the television,” remembered Dorothy's daughter-in-law Nicole Boxer. But there was also discussion and some speculation about how Bill had gotten into such a situation. “We had the TV on and everyone was sitting around on the couches, and just venting and getting it out and going over scenarios [of ] How could this happen?” said Boxer. “And with every new report, we all were making commentary…. ‘Oh, we can defend against this.' And at some point I decided to say that I know he didn't do it…but if he did, he should admit it…. And as soon as I get these words out of my mouth, Roger flies off the couch at me with his finger in my face and says, ‘How dare you? He didn't do it. You're crazy!…What do you know?'” Nobody intervened, said Boxer, and she began to cry while the president's brother went on to rant at her. Eventually, Dorothy consoled her.

Hillary's brothers believed the Lewinsky allegations were perhaps true; they had assumed for years that their brother-in-law's wandering ways with women had not ceased altogether when he became president. They kept the opinion to themselves and their wives.

Later that afternoon, Hillary returned to the White House and headed to the Solarium. Harry Thomason was among those gathered who cheered her arrival. “I guess that will teach them to fuck with us,” said Hillary.