Death of American Virtue - Ken Gormley [215]
With the early winter skies growing darker and chillier in Pine Bluff, Judge Susan Webber Wright shook the sleeves of her robe, flipping closed a file of pleadings and motions. She stared down at the lawyers on both sides, a look of judicial despair creeping over her face as if she was staring into a dark, dangerous black hole. “We’re going forward,” the judge said with an involuntary grimace.
WES Holmes quietly caught a plane to Washington several days before the deposition. Over the past week, he and his Dallas partners had been in communication with Linda Tripp and her new lawyer, Jim Moody. The Dallas lawyers were now convinced that the information from Tripp—if they could get it—might be their ace in the hole. For one thing, if Holmes could get his hands on the tapes that Tripp had been rambling about, these might be used to catch Clinton by surprise. They could actually play the tapes at Clinton’s deposition—that would certainly blow the president’s mind.
Holmes would recall, of his voyage across the United States during this unusual week, that it was as if he had been thrust into a madcap adventure movie: “We were very clearly led to believe that they would get us a tape. So my job was to get up there, to try to interview Linda, and to get those tapes, and prepare for the deposition in that way.”
In the White House, Bob Bennett seemed satisfied that he had done his due diligence. Those close to him observed that he had checked out the Jones witness list for any possible land mines, and had concluded that the Clinton team was safe. Specifically, when it came to Jane Doe No. 6, aka Monica “Lewisky” (her last name was misspelled on the typed witness list), sources inside the White House apparently told Bennett that this young lady posed no problem. “She was a receptionist. Sort of a gopher. She was no longer there,” is what sources had conveyed to Bennett. “We should not even be remotely concerned about her.”
As part of his preparation, Bennett had even gone looking for the elusive Ms. “Lewisky,” discovering, in the process, that her name was Lewinsky and that Frank Carter represented her. When Bennett called Carter, a professional acquaintance for many years, Carter reported that as best as he could tell, this young woman had done nothing more than drop off a few slices of pizza for the president. He had drafted an affidavit to that effect, and his client had confirmed it point by point. Carter told Bennett, “Bob, I’ve been through this twice with her.”
Bennett interrupted: “Frank, whenever I get an affidavit, I like to know what wasn’t put in the affidavit.” Bennett probed directly: “Was there a kiss or a hug?” Carter dismissed this with a laugh. “Bob,” he said, “there is nothing there.”
If Carter had said, “Bob, I can’t disclose anything to you—but be careful,” it might have prodded Bennett to take a different course in handling the Lewinsky allegations. However, Carter’s professional integrity was unassailable. His strong assurances provided a solid basis for Bennett to conclude that the Jones lawyers were barking up the wrong tree.
Bennett had additional reasons to feel confident. He had just taken Paula Jones’s deposition in Arkansas on November 12, finally getting a crack at the plaintiff and wading into the subject of her own sex life. Jones had repeatedly claimed that she “wasn’t that kind of girl,” going as far as to assert in her complaint that Clinton’s conduct had caused her trauma and emotional distress. She had put the issue into play. At the deposition, Bennett swiftly had drawn blood by getting into Jones’s sexual activities—including oral sex—with older men from a very young age. “If someone has done these things for years,” he had conveyed to the judge, “it is hard to see how it could cause emotional distress, the single incident she was talking about, even if you assumed it happened.”
Judge Wright agreed that what