Death of American Virtue - Ken Gormley [188]
When Bennett motioned for Rosenzweig to enter, the younger lawyer plopped down on a chair. He recounted the story that Jerome Marcus had passed along the previous afternoon, repeating the key points of “president, sex, Jones trial, lying, jobs for silence.” Somehow, it sounded less believable as he summarized the intelligence. “I don’t play telephone very well,” Rosenzweig admitted later. He was skeptical, himself, about the whole account. Still, he didn’t dismiss it outright. “To be honest with you, yes, I guess I was a little intrigued.”
Bennett seemed captivated by the story. He was particularly “interested and intrigued by the Vernon Jordan connection.” The deputy independent counsel immediately told Rosenzweig that “he would have to talk to Ken about it,” a task that was complicated because Starr was in Colorado at an American Bar Association conference.
Years later, stung by the criticism his entire office had endured, Rosenzweig emphasized that Jackie Bennett did not process the information as a crazed partisan might. “It’s not like he started foaming at the mouth and [giving] high fives, saying, ‘We got the bastard now,’” Rosenzweig said. “He didn’t do anything like that. He asked me some questions about whether or not I trusted my friend and whether I thought it was a good tip.” Rosenzweig told the burly deputy, “I’m sure my friend believes it. He wouldn’t be bringing me something that he thought was untrue.” Rosenzweig added that, like the substance of any tip, “it could be mistaken.”
Bennett remained focused on Rosenzweig’s mention that Vernon Jordan had allegedly been involved in buying the intern’s silence. He noted that this sounded strikingly similar to another lead OIC was investigating—that Jordan had been to funneling consulting work to Webster Hubbell to keep him silent on Whitewater/Madison matters. OIC was even looking at evidence that Hillary Clinton herself and other prominent players in the White House had been involved in lining up “consulting work” for Hubbell, helping to “take care” of him financially just as he was about to go to prison. There seemed to be a discernible pattern.
The senior deputy finally said, “Well, it will have to come in the front door.”
Bennett knew very little about the Paula Jones case, other than what he had read in the newspapers. He certainly understood that “it wasn’t our deal.” He also was aware, from press accounts, that in several days, the president would be testifying in the Jones case. A front-page article in the Washington Post had just reported that Judge Susan Webber Wright had scheduled Clinton’s deposition for Saturday, January 17—barely a week away. Bennett put two and two together: Rosenzweig’s friends were somehow knee-deep in the Jones skirmishing—it didn’t take a Ph.D. to figure that out. Still, that was a secondary issue. The bigger news was that Vernon Jordan was potentially trading jobs for silence. “We were convinced that Webb Hubbell had gotten hush money at that point in time,” said Bennett. “And we thought he had concealed it from us.” Now here was Jordan, one of the president’s closest friends in Washington, potentially aiding and abetting a former White House intern so that she would lie in the Jones case, and securing her a job in return. The “same fact pattern” seemed to be repeating itself.
Bennett called John Bates, his predecessor in the D.C. office, and asked if they could meet immediately. Bates had recently left Starr’s team to join the Miller & Chevalier firm in Washington. Bennett considered Bates a lawyer with “great judgment” and somebody he could trust. They met for Cokes in a little restaurant halfway between their offices. Bates, a clear-eyed man with chiseled features and a thoughtful face, listened to Bennett’s whispered summary of the information. “Be careful, because of the sex angle,” Bates immediately warned Bennett. He had been the prosecutor stuck with answering a blizzard of media