Death of American Virtue - Ken Gormley [243]
Bennett sat down and looked over this young woman—her spandex workout pants, her unkempt hair, her legs akimbo as she sat on the chair beside the bed. The top prosecutor raised an eyebrow. His candid opinion was that “she was a mess.” It was now nearly five o’clock in the afternoon. OIC still hadn’t “signed her up,” which troubled Bennett. He told Monica, “We just need to make a decision here.” When the woman began another round of crying and again asked to talk to her mother, Bennett’s face grew dark. “We’re not going to sugarcoat it, Monica,” he said in a deep voice. “This is serious.” Monica later asserted that Bennett added gruffly, “Look, Monica, you’re smart, you’re twenty-four years old—you don’t need to call your mommy.” She also contended the prosecutor threatened to prosecute her mother “for actions you [described] on the tapes.” Bennett disagreed: “I don’t remember it that way. But I did say words to the effect, ‘Look, you’re an adult. You’re a grown-up. You did this. Your mother didn’t do this. You’ve got to deal with this.…’” Bennett would add, “What has been referred to in portraying me as this bully is still substantively correct. I mean, that is the gist of what I said. ‘You did this; you’re going to have to deal with this.’”
Monica found Bennett to be “condescending.” She was so rattled by his insinuations that her whole family might be in jeopardy that she became even more insistent that she be permitted to call her mother. “I promise I won’t blurt anything. I promise I won’t do anything to compromise [your investigation],” she told Bennett. “But please let me call.” Bennett finally threw up his hands and relented—on condition that the former intern make the call very short. She could let her mother know that she was fine—but that was it. As Monica dialed the number, Agent Fallon sat on the edge of the bed with his hand hovering above the phone, ready to hang up if she tried anything improper. Bennett would later say, “It was silly, but we didn’t trust her. And we were right not to trust her.”
The young woman spoke hurriedly into the receiver. “I can’t talk,” she told her mother. “I’ll call you later.” With that temporary bandage applied, Monica sat back in a chair and crossed her arms. Bennett concluded, “She’s stringing us out at this point.” He got up, shooting a disapproving look at the young woman in purple workout clothes, and walked out the door.
Bennett was not the only one losing his patience. Most of the OIC lawyers and FBI agents had come to the conclusion that Lewinsky was “purposely dragging this out.” She was “stalling for time.” Lewinsky would later respond angrily: “That is absolutely despicable to me. That is so disgusting. I can’t even tell you.” She composed herself as she remembered these events before lashing out further: “It’s appalling to me because I was sitting there and I was thinking about trying to jump out the f——ing window. And it’s like, what’s happening has just changed my life and ruined my life.” She continued for the record: “I wasn’t stalling for time. You have to remember they’re the ones [the OIC prosecutors] who were saying there was a time limit. I had no idea about Michael Isikoff.” On top of that, it was preposterous that she would drag her feet so that she could “stay in the room any longer than necessary.”
Emmick was running out of ideas. He whispered to his fellow prosecutors and FBI agents, “What do we do now?” Monica was getting more insistent, proclaiming, “If you’re not going to let me call my mom [for a longer conversation], I guess I just have to be leaning toward not cooperating.” Finally, Emmick surrendered. He told the young woman that she could go downstairs to make the call on a pay phone (she was positive the hotel phone was bugged) to put an end to this standoff.
Down in the Pentagon City Mall, which was filled with end-of-the-workweek shoppers, Lewinsky searched for a phone as far