Death of American Virtue - Ken Gormley [257]
Jones had told Carpenter-McMillan just before leaving for the deposition, “Suzie, I’m so anxious for this to happen. I’m going to be right there looking at him, and he’s going to have to tell the truth.” The PR consultant remembered wanting to say, “You naive little person. If you think for one minute that lying sleazebag is going to come up and tell the truth, you’re wrong.” In the interest of keeping Jones’s morale up, Carpenter-McMillan instead smiled and told the young woman that she looked great.
At the glittering Skadden Arps offices, the Dallas lawyers hustled Jones past a throng of reporters into a waiting area where Secret Service agents tapped their earpieces, preparing for the arrival of the president. Carpenter-McMillan and Steve Jones were not permitted to enter the deposition room; Susan stayed outside in the cold answering media questions in her short designer skirt. Steve Jones paced the floor of a holding room inside the building, becoming angrier.
Bob Bennett had parked his car and rode over in the presidential limousine with his client. As the limo rolled several blocks to his office, Bennett had no particular reason to worry about today’s deposition. He had run through a dress rehearsal of the questioning with the president multiple times, as recently as that morning. If the Jones lawyers launched into the subject of this new woman his opponents had identified—named Monica Lewinsky—Bennett had an ace up his sleeve: He was carrying an affidavit that would douse that fire.
President Clinton entered the glass double doors of the Skadden Arps conference room, looking sharp and even luminous. On this day, several observers noted, he appeared exceptionally presidential. Clinton worked the crowd, shaking hands and welcoming Judge Susan Webber Wright, his former law student. Next he moved down the line to greet the lawyers, video crew members, and even the stenographer. The president and his lawyer had already decided that he should not shake hands with Paula Jones—this would appear “phony.” When he reached Jim Fisher, who would be posing the questions, Clinton managed to brush right past him. Neither man extended a hand.
Judge Wright looked out of place in her presiding chair. Rather than a robe, she was wearing a navy blue Austin Reed business suit with pleated skirt. Her law clerk chatted briefly with the videographer to make sure that only two copies of the filmed deposition were created—one for each side. These video-cassettes were to be delivered to Judge Wright as “bailee” and placed in her briefcase for safekeeping at the conclusion of the proceedings. There would be no spare copies made; in that fashion, nothing could be leaked.
The president took a seat at one end of the table. On the other side of the court reporter sat Jim Fisher, positioned to look directly into the deponent’s eyes. Fisher would recall—in describing a scene that had previously been illegal to discuss, under Judge Wright’s protective order—that the president looked incredibly “buffed and polished.” The Dallas lawyer would add: “I mean, he looked like he’d been groomed for hours before he came in, and I guess that’s how the president probably always looks.”
Fisher expected Clinton to treat him with “contempt.” To his surprise, the president did not seem to “intimidate me or give me the hairy eyeball or do anything to sort of upset me. I didn’t get that sense at all.”
Yet others present sensed