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By Root 1966 0

his notes and swung by Bruce Udolf’s office. Udolf had volunteered to ride over with him to the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in the Pentagon City complex, where the FBI had set up its base of operations. The two lawyers took their time summoning an elevator and hailing a cab on the street level. As the cab pulled away, Emmick stared out the window, feeling as if he had been dropped into a fish tank. He told his partner that they needed to be “really, really, really, really” careful that they did everything by the book. They couldn’t be accused of any ethical impropriety “because this is going to be scrutinized out the wazoo by everybody under the sun.” They would have to act like two well-scrubbed altar boys. “We have to be the nicest people in town,” Emmick said to his partner, laughing uncomfortably.

As the cab sped toward the Pentagon City Mall, the two prosecutors settled back into their seats and nodded to each other. On this point, they were in “complete agreement.”

LINDA Tripp had called Monica Lewinsky on her cell phone that morning with news that sounded too good to be true. She had told her young former coworker that she planned to meet with her new attorney later that day to draft an affidavit for the Jones case and that this would resolve all their problems. Tripp said that she would like to meet with Monica to talk about specifics—what should she say in this affidavit to be most effective? Monica had become “somewhat distrustful” of Tripp. Yet now there seemed to be a ray of hope; maybe her older friend would actually keep mum about her affair with Clinton—finally, a break! Monica had just finished working out at the gym and was “doing errands.” Tripp had called to say she was running late; the meeting time had been pushed back to 12:45. As Tripp rode down the escalator and the two women walked toward one another, each displayed a smile hiding an ongoing plan to deceive the other.

Tripp, dressed in a sober brown business suit, glanced nervously over her shoulder as she greeted Monica. Two men wearing dark suits immediately appeared and flashed badges, identifying themselves as FBI agents. One agent told the former intern in a firm voice that they had been authorized by the attorney general “to investigate crimes committed in relation to the Paula Jones lawsuit.” The other agent added, according to Lewinsky’s account, “Ma’am, you are in serious trouble.”

Linda Tripp tried to give Monica a half-hug. She said in a throaty voice, “Monica, this is for your own good. Just listen to them. They did the same thing to me.”

Monica burst into tears. The agents—Steve Irons and Pat Fallon—said something like, “We just want to talk to you. You are free to leave when you want.” There was a brief exchange in which Monica uttered something about talking to her attorney. To this, the agents replied, “That’s fine. But if you do that, you may not be able to help yourself so much.” They suggested that Lewinsky accompany them upstairs. They had secured a quiet room in the Ritz-Carlton Hotel, where she could evaluate whether to cooperate with OIC before doing anything rash.

Years later, although discussing this topic “opened the wound up” again, Monica explained why she went along with the FBI. First, she recalled, she did not feel that she had any options: “When I said that I wasn’t going to talk to them without my attorney they said that was fine … [but] I wouldn’t be able to help myself as much. To somebody who doesn’t know very much about the law, the implication there is that it’s not a good idea to have a lawyer there.”

Additionally, Lewinsky concluded that she might be able to protect the president, if she heard these people out and reasoned with them. She later acknowledged, with a hitch of reluctance, “For me, who was also crazy in love, trying to protect somebody, I had this unrealistic notion of, well, ‘Okay, I have to go in there and I have to find out what’s going on. I have to fix this.’ Which somehow, of course, was impossible.”

The FBI had set up its operations inside two adjoining rooms in the Ritz-Carlton. Mike Emmick