Death of American Virtue - Ken Gormley [235]
Initially, the order that Starr’s team drafted would have given OIC power to investigate all criminal matters relating to “Monica Lewinsky, Vernon Jordan, and others.” They even had kicked around listing President William Jefferson Clinton by name. Lee Radek, however, cautioned against naming the president or anyone directly identified with him, insisting that they do this in the “least inflammatory” fashion possible. The final order faxed to Judge Sentelle simply gave Kenneth Starr permission to investigate possible wrongdoing by “Monica Lewinsky or others.”
Later that day, Judge Sentelle called back to say that although the order was being kept tightly under seal, Starr’s jurisdiction had been expanded. As Jackie Bennett would recall: “By this time, we were well into our preparations for meeting with Monica and confronting her. And trying to enlist her cooperation.”
THE so-called planning stage leading up to the sting of Monica Lewinsky—the biggest moment in the history of the Starr investigation—in fact involved little planning at all. Jackie Bennett, in making his pitch to DOJ, had downplayed the significance of President Clinton’s upcoming deposition in the Jones case. Yet he was acutely aware of that Saturday deadline.
Inside the OIC offices, every lawyer understood that something big was brewing. Bruce Udolf and Mike Emmick, two of the newer additions to the OIC team, volunteered to help “take the president’s deposition on this, or put him in the grand jury.” Jackie Bennett, large and immovable like a house, replied, “Well, get in line. Because everyone around here thinks they should be the one to do it.”
Ironically, Mike Emmick was one of the last OIC prosecutors to find out about Linda Tripp’s astounding story. A graduate of the University of California at Santa Barbara (a school known for its beautiful beaches and sand volleyball), Emmick had come to OIC from the U.S. attorney’s office in Los Angeles, where he was chief of its Public Corruption Section. At Bennett’s request, Emmick had left the sun and surf of the West Coast for a year, to assist OIC in its wrap-up mode.
As others were holding secret meetings about the Tripp revelations, Emmick was turning over the last remaining rocks in the Whitewater case and pondering “how to bring Susan McDougal around.” He was one of the architects of a last-ditch plan dubbed “The Creative Proposal,” which was designed to do the unthinkable and to give Susan McDougal everything she wanted. Before OIC packed up and shut down its operations, the plan was to throw away the rule book and cave in on all the witness’s demands, to see what incriminating evidence she might cough up. OIC hoped to surprise Susan and her lawyer by saying, “We will promise that even if you lie in the grand jury, we won’t prosecute you. We’ll promise that the questioning will be done by persons outside the Independent Counsel’s office.” Emmick, the smooth and handsome prosecutor from California, was viewed as the best person to crack through the walls of resistance that Susan had set up, to give it one last shot.
Emmick had only been drawn into the Lewinsky matter out of sheer curiosity. The whole thing, he recalled, had a “gossipy” feel to it. Even by California standards, the notion of catching the president with a young intern was somewhat far-out. “You don’t really hear of things like that very often in the real world,” he said.
On Thursday night, Emmick had been drifting around the hallway participating in a “migratory meeting” that moved from one doorway to the next. During this bull session, the group concluded that “we really ought to have some sort of an ‘approach’ where we ask her [Lewinsky] if she would be willing