Death of American Virtue - Ken Gormley [121]
Paula then looked off camera and burst out laughing, saying, “It has pissed you off.”
Steve Jones now swaggered on camera, wearing tight jeans with no belt and a tapered dress shirt with thick blue stripes. His beard was neatly trimmed, his hair combed back to perfection. The husband of the plaintiff slid one arm around Paula, with one thumb stuck in his pocket, appearing much like a B movie actor, precisely what he aspired to be. As he kissed Paula, Steve tugged at the top of his wife’s dress to straighten it.
“I’m showing naked here,” Paula giggled. “He’s trying to undress me on TV!”
After five attempts to film this scene, with repeated calls of “Action!” the silver-haired producer stepped onto his own set, helping to choreograph Steve kissing Paula on the top of her head. Finally, Steve executed the kiss, commenting in a macho-sounding voice: “I’d like to take this a few steps further.” Now he scowled into the camera: “I think Bill Clinton is perverted, I think he needs some deep psychological help, I really do.” After railing at the Washington Post for printing nothing even after he and Paula had given an “exclusive” to Michael Isikoff, Paula’s husband ranted: “It really infuriates me. I thought they only censored things in third world countries, I can’t understand it. It’s very flustrating [sic].”
Steve Jones flexed his muscles like a bodybuilder before launching into an attack on the editors of the Washington Post and the entire women’s rights movement. “I’ll tell you what their position is.” He jabbed a finger toward the camera, like a man who was going off the deep end: “Their position is under the left foot of Bill Clinton, that’s where they are. And every once in a while they’ll creep their hands out from under his foot and give it a spit shine, that’s how I feel about it. Only…” At this point, Steve Jones appeared as if he had been overcome by wild emotions and was ready for a physical brawl. He growled, “I’m sorry, that’s about all I have to say about it.”
With that, the film session came to a close.
Every lawsuit contains black, white, and shades of gray. Whatever the truth of the events involving Paula Jones and then-Governor Bill Clinton in the Excelsior Hotel, this raw film footage in the hands of the president’s lawyer, if it had been shown to a jury, would have made an already tough case much tougher. The Matrisciana footage was disastrous, especially because it represented Paula’s own account, captured vividly on film, close in time to the actual events, that did little to advance her cause. It revealed a woman who was actively trying to sell her story to the national press. It also displayed a Paula Jones who was decidedly irreverent and did not appear traumatized. Equally as damaging, the role of her husband, Steve—who was captured on film nudging and prodding his wife forward—which made him appear like an angry would-be actor who wanted to punch the president’s lights out, in part because Clinton had made a pass at his then fiancée and in part because he simply hated Clinton’s guts.
Bob Bennett put this film under lock and key, preserving it as a surprise piece of evidence. He knew that it would have the effect of lighting a stink bomb in front of any judge and jurors. As Bennett later explained: “When the jury watched her doing this, what would they see? A troubled person? Someone traumatized? I didn’t see that at all. I saw someone reading a script. Someone who’s had an opportunity to earn some dough. Her husband, Steve, looked like someone trying to get a Hollywood movie job.”
Danny Traylor, Paula’s first attorney, would later admit that he was initially unaware of the damaging footage. He had seen only one brief snippet of The Clinton Chronicles, the far-out film that featured allegations that Clinton had ordered people killed in Arkansas and had run drugs to fund his political addiction. “I was shocked,