Tick... Tick... Tick... (24 page)

By the time Willey sat down for an interview with Ed Bradley for the March
15
,
1998
, broadcast of
60 Minutes,
there were differences—some subtle, some significant—between what she was now charging and how others described her response to the incident at the time. Willey had alleged (in her deposition in the Paula Jones case against the president) that Clinton had made sexual advances toward her in the Oval Office; however, one of her corroborating witnesses—a former friend named Julie Steele—had since claimed in an affidavit that Willey asked her to lie to a
Newsweek
reporter about having been upset over the presidential encounter, which had taken place in the Oval Office in late
1993
. Likewise, Linda Tripp had told
Newsweek
that Willey was “joyful” after her private encounter with Clinton. The president had denied any inappropriate behavior during his meeting with Willey.

All that paled by comparison to the fact that Willey would be the first woman to go public in an interview format with allegations against Clinton. Radutzky had met with Willey's attorney several times in advance of the session, and once with Willey herself, before Bradley arrived in Virginia to do the interview in a hotel suite on the Thursday before broadcast.

In
17
years at
60 Minutes,
Bradley had become a master of this kind of interview. He knew how to use his body language and empathetic demeanor to coax answers from nervous or reluctant subjects. He had a way of putting people at ease if he needed to, or on edge if that was required. In this case, he wanted to relax Willey so that she would tell her story in the most dramatic possible way. This was not, he felt, an occasion for confrontation or tough questions.

 

B
RADLEY
: And what happened next?

W
ILLEY
: Well, he—he said that he would do everything that he could to—to—to—help, and w—I turned around, and out of the—out of the office, and he followed me to—I thought he was going to open the door to the—to the Oval Office. And right as we got to the door, he stopped me and gave me a big hug and said that he was very sorry that this was happening to me. And I—I had no problem with that because when I saw—every time I saw him, he would hug me. He used—just does that—is like that.

And I remember I had—still had this coffee cup in my hand, and it was kind of in between us and I didn't want it to spill on him or me, and it just was this—it was just very strange. And he—he took the coffee cup out of my hand and he put it on a bookshelf and—and he—this hug t—lasted a little longer than I thought necessary, but at the same time—I mean, I was not concerned about it.

B
RADLEY
: Mm-hmm.

W
ILLEY
: And then he—then he—and then he kissed me on—on my mouth, and—and he pulled me closer to him. And I remember thinking—I just remember thinking, “What in the world is he doing?” I—it—I just thought, “What is he doing?” And I—I pushed back away from him, and he—he—he—he—he's a big man. And he—he had his arms—they were tight around me, and he—he—he—he touched me.

B
RADLEY
: Touched you how?

W
ILLEY
: Well, he—he—he touched my breast with his hand, and I—I—I—I was—I—I was just startled. I was—I—I—w— j—was just . . .

B
RADLEY
: Thi—this wasn't an accidental, grazing touch?

W
ILLEY
: No, no. And then he—he whispered—he—he w—he said in—in my ear, he said, “I've—I've wanted to do this ever since I laid eyes on you.”

 

After going over several more intimate details of their encounter—including Bradley nonchalantly asking Willey of the president of the United States, “Was he aroused?”—Bradley probed briefly into the nature of her response.

 

B
RADLEY
: Did you feel intimidated?

W
ILLEY
: I didn't feel intimidated. I just felt overpowered.

B
RADLEY
: Did you ever say, “Stop. No. Get away from me”?

W
ILLEY
: I just—I—I pushed him away. I pushed him away and—and I said, “I think I—I'd better go.”

 

After that, Bradley established with Willey that the story she'd just told was the same as the testimony she'd given to the grand jury, under oath.

Bradley then briefly referred to the reversal of position by her former friend Julie Steele, who now denied Willey's account of her having told Steele of Clinton's unwanted advances at the time—and claimed that Willey had been pressuring her to lie to a
Newsweek
reporter. Willey's explanation of the Tripp description of her as “joyful”: “I think when I am in—if I get into a very tense—tense situation I try to—fall back on my sense of humor. I think when I said, ‘You are not going to believe this one,' maybe she took that as joyful.”

Toward the end, Bradley gently inquired as to Willey's motives for going public with her accusations.

 

B
RADLEY
: You—you were a reluctant witness. You didn't want your story to go public.

W
ILLEY
: No.

B
RADLEY
: Why not?

W
ILLEY
: I just knew that it was a bad story. It was just horrible—ha—horrible behavior on the part of the president, and I did not think it was my place to make it public knowledge.

B
RADLEY
: You didn't walk away. You didn't lodge a complaint anywhere.

W
ILLEY
: No. That's right. That was the choice I made. . . .

B
RADLEY
(voice-over)
: Then why did she decide now to go public?

W
ILLEY
: I just think that it's time to tell this story. I think that there—too many lies are being told, too many lives are being ruined, and I—I think it's time for the truth to come out.

 

That apparently satisfied Bradley's curiosity on Willey's motives.

The president's lawyer, Bennett, had declined to be interviewed for the story. But on Saturday he changed his mind: the White House contacted
60 Minutes
and asked for unedited time on the show to refute Willey's comments, or the chance to review her comments in advance. Instead Bennett was invited to a CBS studio in Washington, where he was interviewed by Bradley via satellite.

Bennett was apparently unfamiliar with the setup and didn't know where to look; producers told him to look away from the camera, as though Bradley were in the room with him. (Bradley never disclosed on the air that it was a satellite interview.) As a result, he appeared on camera to be uncomfortable—and to some observers dishonest. CBS News president Heyward later acknowledged to a reporter that the piece should have clearly disclosed Bennett's location. Bennett told Bradley, in the limited time he was allotted, that the president “hugged” Willey and that “he may have given her a kiss on the forehead.”

 

B
RADLEY
(voice-over)
: Mr. Bennett concedes that Kathleen Willey is not part of what he calls the “get-Clinton” crowd. And like all lawyers, he's confident his client will be vindicated.

B
ENNETT
: My client is the president. He says it didn't happen. I believe the president, okay? I believe him. The day is going to come, Ed, either because Judge Wright throws the Paula Jones case out, as I hope and believe she may, or a jury of—of twelve people—not Ed Bradley, not Bob Bennett—are going to sit there and listen to all of the evidence and decide who is or is not telling the truth.

 

The next day, the White House released to reporters a series of friendly letters written by Willey to Clinton after the alleged harassment incident, some of them seeking a job and one that referred to herself as his “number one fan.” It was also revealed that Willey's lawyer had been pursuing a $
100
,
000
book deal, raising the possibility that her motivations may not have been so pure as she represented them to Bradley and
60 Minutes.
Critics attacked the interview for being too soft; Hewitt's pleasure at scoring a coup was diminished by the media's response, not all of it positive.
60 Minutes
denied knowledge of the letters or the book deal, and Phil Scheffler, the show's executive editor, later publicly attacked Bennett for holding back information about the letters during his
60 Minutes
interview. According to a
60 Minutes
insider, Radutzky called Willey directly and asked her bluntly why she had failed to disclose the letters to him in advance of the interview. (The source said she claimed to Radutzky that she didn't think they were of any significance.)

But one subsequent press account suggested that
60 Minutes,
in its zeal to get Willey onto the air, might have intentionally overlooked information. At the very least, the team's feelings about the piece went from pride over the scoop to slight embarrassment at having perhaps rushed the interview onto the show without enough reporting.

Howard Kurtz, the media writer for the
Washington Post,
reported in a
Brill's Content
article in August
1998
that according to an unnamed Willey associate, “Willey told a
60 Minutes
producer about letters she had written to the White House seeking a job.” Kurtz's source insisted that the producer never followed up on that knowledge—“directly contradicting statements by
60 Minutes
executives that the program knew nothing of the letters.” A
60 Minutes
source told Kurtz that producers didn't want to dig too deeply into Willey's credibility, for fear of alienating her and losing the interview. “When you're trying to convince somebody to spill their guts on the air,” a
60 Minutes
staffer told Kurtz, “you don't want them hearing from the neighbors.”

In a letter to the editor of
Brill's Content
published in September
1998
, Hewitt ridiculed Kurtz for his use of unnamed sources. He condescended and blustered—“As a newcomer to investigative journalism,” he wrote, “perhaps you wouldn't mind a tip or two from an old-timer about the business you have just embarked upon”—but did not take issue with the substance of Kurtz's reporting, that
60 Minutes
had advance knowledge of the Willey letters or that the show went easy on Willey so as not to lose the interview.

Even Andy Rooney—who had declared on
60 Minutes
on the night of the interview that Bradley “did a good job”—later backed off that assertion in an on-air commentary after reading hundreds of letters from viewers. “If you think it fell short of
60 Minutes
standards,” Rooney told the show's audience, “you may be right.”

 

By the time Hewitt approached Candice Bergen to join the
60 Minutes
staff in
1998
, she had firmly established herself as a prominent contributor to a highly rated network newsmagazine called
FYI.
Unfortunately, the show—and her journalism experience—was fictional. Bergen's journalism experience was limited to what she got playing a character by the name of Murphy Brown—a hugely famous and highly endearing character, but nevertheless the creation of sitcom writers in Hollywood. At the beginning of her career as an actress, she had briefly flirted with photojournalism, but after a
1970
s audition for Hewitt, she never produced a
60 Minutes
segment—or any news segment at all, for that matter.

Murphy Brown had gone off CBS that spring after
10
seasons, but not before creating controversies that had blurred the line between fiction and reality. Vice President Dan Quayle had inserted her into the political debate in
1996
by attacking the character for being a single mother. Other social issues, like breast cancer, were raised on the show and thus in the national conversation. But was this enough to justify the elevation of Bergen to the status of real-life
60 Minutes
correspondent? Hewitt thought enough of the idea to call Grace Diekhaus, a former longtime producer for
60 Minutes
now living in Los Angeles, and ask her to meet with Bergen to discuss the possibility.