Death of American Virtue - Ken Gormley [239]
The agents began whispering, “They’re coming, they’re coming!” Peering through the doorway, Emmick could see several dark-suited FBI agents huddled around a young woman, approximately five feet six and wearing black spandex pants. He purposely had reviewed grainy surveillance pictures of Lewinsky that the FBI had taken during her lunch with Tripp, so that he would not look surprised when he met her.
The FBI agents escorted the young woman inside, sitting her down on a chair. Emmick noticed that among the entourage that had entered was Linda Tripp. He cursed to himself: What in God’s name was Tripp doing here? This wasn’t part of the plan he had mapped out. The prosecutor did some “deep-breathing exercises.” He wanted to make sure that he set “the right tone, the right mood.” Dressed in a trim blue suit, Emmick strode into the adjoining room. He remembered sensing that the scene felt wrong. FBI agents were flanking the black-haired young woman, as if “somebody has been brought in for an audience with the king.” This was not, he recalled thinking, “the perception that I wanted, at all.”
The immediate reaction of the OIC prosecutor, as he walked up to the twenty-three-year-old woman, was one of astonishment. She appeared, in her black spandex exercise pants and oversized fleece sweatshirt, as if she had just finished “working out” at the gym. She wore no makeup, her jet black hair was untidy and “she looked a little disheveled.” Most of all, it struck Emmick that Lewinsky “looked quite young.” He had certainly been aware of her age, but he wasn’t prepared to see someone who reminded him of a fresh-faced college student. On all counts, the pieces didn’t appear to fit together.
Emmick later would recall, “And one of my reactions was, ‘Gosh, this just doesn’t seem right. How could it be that this is a person who had an affair with the president of the United States?’” In fact, that reaction was so strong that the California prosecutor began to suspect “that she had made it all up.”
Monica Lewinsky, on the other hand, knew the truth and understood that this was a potentially disastrous situation. As Emmick was assessing whether the young woman had fantasized the entire story, Monica was staring at the large sliding glass windows of the tenth-floor hotel room and debating whether to throw herself out onto the pavement below. She opened and closed her fist, trying to assess her options.
It was now time for Emmick to give the speech that he had been preparing for eighteen hours. He sat in the chair across from Lewinsky and began: “My name’s Mike Emmick.… I’m with the Office of Independent Counsel. We’ve been authorized to conduct an investigation of suspected perjury and obstruction of justice in connection with the Paula Jones lawsuit.”
The FBI agents began cutting in with their own commentary. Emmick was floored. He thought the agents would bring the young woman up and leave the speech-making to him. He would “ask for her [Lewinsky’s] cooperation, she was going to say yea or nay, and it was going to be done.” It soon became clear that the FBI agents had a different conception, said Emmick. “They thought it was going to be more agent-centric,” while Emmick believed “it was going to be more attorney-centric.” That, he confessed, “is a sign of bad planning.”
Linda Tripp was still in the room, which was driving Emmick crazy. Monica kept glowering at Tripp as if she were Judas Iscariot, who had betrayed her for a fistful of silver. At one point, Monica stared at Tripp and hissed, “Make her stay and watch. I want