Death of American Virtue - Ken Gormley [220]
Some observers would take a stronger (and less charitable) position, contending that Starr was the last person in the world who should have taken over the Monica Lewinsky investigation. It was problematic enough that Starr had played a role, albeit limited, in the Paula Jones saga, prior to his appointment as independent counsel. He had appeared on national television arguing that Jones could sue the president; he had consulted directly with Jones’s lawyer Gil Davis; he had planned to file an amicus brief in the Jones case on behalf of the conservative Independent Women’s Forum. When it came to the Whitewater case, Starr had been clean as a hound’s tooth at the time of his appointment. Not so with the Lewinsky matter, which was inextricably intertwined with the Paula Jones case. The three-judge panel, when it had replaced Robert Fiske with Ken Starr, had done so on the grounds that Fiske (because he had been appointed by Clinton’s attorney general) was no longer perceived to be entirely neutral. Now, some whispered, the court should have heeded its own warning. The independent counsel law was all about appearances. Whatever his glittering credentials and whatever the unfairness of prior attacks on him as Whitewater prosecutor, Ken Starr was arguably the last person in the world suited for this explosive new Lewinsky assignment. By January 1998, when Linda Tripp came knocking on OIC’s door, a significant portion of the American public—rightly or wrongly—viewed Starr as a zealot on a mission to bring down the president and First Lady. Even if those assessments were unfair and unfounded, the perception of neutrality—on which the whole concept of the independent counsel law rested—was wholly lacking when it came to this particular assignment.
Earlier that same day, when Starr and Bennett had watched the First Lady and her lawyers seated at the deposition, feeling almost sorry for them, they had been able to see only half the picture. Mrs. Clinton and the White House lawyers, Starr and Bennett had correctly observed, were totally unaware that a train bearing the name Monica Lewinsky was barreling down the track, ready to plow into them with full force. What Starr and Bennett did not appreciate until much later, however, was that a second locomotive was heading down the same track at full speed, with their own names puffing out of its smokestack in bold, black letters.
MONICA Lewinsky was busy finalizing a set of “Talking Points” for Linda Tripp, hoping to keep Tripp from blowing her cover. By this point, Tripp and Lewinsky thoroughly distrusted each other. Their e-mails, previously playful and laden with ribald humor, were now stark and accusatory.
In one exchange before Christmas, after Monica forwarded her erstwhile friend a joke about “sexual morality,” Tripp had lashed into the young former intern: “From now on, leave me alone,” Tripp wrote. “Don’t bother me with all your ranting and raving and analyzing of the situation [with Clinton]. And don’t accuse me of somehow ‘skewing’ the truth.… Share this sick situation with one of your other friends, because, frankly, I’m past nauseated about the whole thing. LRT.”
Lewinsky shot back a response of her own: “That’s fine with me, Linda. I will respect that. I would only like to ask that I have your assurance everything I have shared with you remains between us. You have given me your word before, but that was when we were on good terms. Can I still trust that?”
The precise origin of the infamous Talking Points, which Monica handed to Linda Tripp during their car ride on Wednesday, January 14, remains shrouded in mystery. What is now evident,