Death of American Virtue - Ken Gormley [255]
Fisher’s law partner, meanwhile, was hitting pay dirt. Less than twenty-four hours before the Saturday deposition, Linda Tripp’s new attorney, Jim Moody, finally contacted Wes Holmes and said, “Okay, come pick me up at five. We’re going to drive out to her house.”
The trip to Columbia, Maryland, was a long one. Moody, it turned out, was blind. As Holmes recalled, “And so I’m literally getting directions from a blind man, and we get lost in Washington, D.C., for forty-five minutes trying to find the loop, because I hadn’t gotten the level of detail of directions that I ended up needing. So we managed to finally stumble and bumble and get out to her house. And I met with her.”
Holmes sat at Linda Tripp’s kitchen table, as the frazzled-looking blond-haired woman stared at him. Unbeknownst to him, Tripp had just been dropped off by FBI agents after having assisted in the sting of Monica Lewinsky. “I remember she was extremely agitated and chain-smoking and acting as if she had been, you know, living on coffee for a couple of days,” Holmes recalled.
The informant began rambling, and “it was hard to keep her on a subject.” Holmes told Tripp, “Look … we got very limited time. What I need is detailed, factual recitals of things that Monica Lewinsky said on the tapes that she and Bill Clinton had done and said together, and gifts that he had given her, or that she had given him.” He needed “specific, factual” information before the sun came up.
Tripp continued to chain-smoke. She seemed unable to focus. At one point, she blurted out, “He gave her a book.”
“Okay,” Holmes pressed. “What was the name of the book?”
“I think that she also said that he gave her candy,” Tripp declared.
“Okay, well, let’s run this book to the ground,” Holmes interrupted. “Then we’ll talk about the candy.”
Little by little, Holmes was able to extract useful nuggets. In the middle of the debriefing, one of Tripp’s colleagues from the Pentagon rang the doorbell, bearing a box of her personal effects “just in case she got fired.” The meeting now began to unravel. Holmes finally blurted out, “Okay, you know, can I have my tape so I can go back and listen to it?”
“Well,” answered Tripp, glaring at him, “we’re not going to give you the tape. I can tell you everything, but I can’t give you the tape.” It was clear Tripp and her lawyer were worried because she had recorded them illegally.
Holmes stared at Moody, who nodded somberly from behind his dark glasses. The Dallas lawyer threw up his hands and groaned. “Well, that’s extremely disappointing,” he said. “I’ve been out here for four days; you’ve been telling me you’d give me a tape, and now you won’t give me a tape.” Yet Holmes was still armed with valuable information.
On the drive back to the district, Moody used his cell phone to call George Conway, one of the elves who was in town to monitor the deposition. Conway had booked a room at the Four Seasons, where he and conservative lawyer-writer Ann Coulter (who had provided occasional assistance to the elves) were enjoying room service and a few drinks. Conway invited Moody and Holmes to join them. In a remarkable gathering of anti-Clinton brain power, the group compared notes. Holmes nearly dropped his glass when he learned of the latest development: “The FBI had picked up Monica Lewinsky”—the sting had occurred that very day. Somehow, Ken Starr was now involved in the case. This was nothing short of astounding. The group hoisted their beers and toasted the wonderful news, saying to Holmes, “Oh, my God, you’re going to depose the president tomorrow. Can you believe it, you know, don’t you wonder what Monica Lewinsky is saying [to the FBI and OIC]? I mean, what if she gives him up? This could be it. He could have to resign over this. Can you believe it?”
At six o’clock the next morning, Wes Holmes rapped lightly on Jim Fisher’s door. Holmes had barely slept. He now awakened his law partner and shared the rich information that Linda Tripp had passed along the previous