Death of American Virtue - Ken Gormley [274]
Those present discerned that a fissure was also developing within the ranks of the OIC prosecutors. Mike Emmick and Bruce Udolf were content to take whatever they could get from Lewinsky—for them, a written or oral proffer was unnecessary. As these two soft-liners saw it, Lewinsky was a small fish whom they had no real interest in prosecuting. On a scale of one to ten, she was a “one.” Giving this young woman an immunity bath without detailed assurances seemed like a low-risk proposition. “So how much would we be giving up?” Emmick asked, discussing the question years later. “So to speak, how much are you paying for the pig? Whether it’s hidden in the poke or not.”
Jackie Bennett, however, was not budging. He did not suffer fools lightly, and he now viewed Ginsburg as Bozo the Clown disguised in lawyer’s clothing. Bennett was in charge of the biggest case of his career; he wasn’t going to let some “crap proceedings” directed by a swimming-pool lawyer from Beverly Hills foul it up. If Lewinsky had to be charged by a grand jury and prosecuted so that OIC could extract the truth from her, so be it.
The OIC prosecutors relocated down the hallway to Bennett’s office to have it out. Ken Starr was summoned to join them. Quickly the meeting degenerated into “a very heated shouting match.” Bennett slammed his fist on his desk and thundered, “It smells bad to me. It smells like they’re trying to get us to take a pig in a poke without a good understanding. And she’s not really answering questions.” Udolf repeated, in an equally loud voice, that he knew a good polygraph person in Miami. They could fly this guy up in a matter of hours to hook up a quick lie-detector test on Lewinsky if Bennett was worried that the information the former intern was providing might be bogus.
Starr, who always favored putting civility first, suggested getting Hickman Ewing on the speakerphone so that he could weigh in from Little Rock. “This is a process,” he stated cheerfully. “We’re supposed to be colleagues.”
Bennett shouted, “There’s no way! We don’t have time to brief Hickman on this issue. Ginsburg is right down the hall. The answer is ‘no.’ We need a decision.”
Just then, the OIC team heard a “stage whisper.” Emmick stuck his head outside the door, only to find Ginsburg conversing with Speights, apparently eavesdropping. Recalled Bennett, still angry at the memory, “He had been standing outside listening to us.” To Bennett, the California lawyer appeared “like the cat that’s eaten the canary.” He had now seen that Starr’s team was deeply divided; he was eager to use this to his advantage.
In the conference room, with Ginsburg and Speights back at the negotiating table, Jackie Bennett slapped a printout of the latest Drudge Report on the table. It gave extensive details relating to the emerging presidential sex scandal, mentioning Monica Lewinsky by name. Ginsburg’s client, declared Bennett, was now “radioactive.” This genie could not be put back in the bottle. The chance for “undercover worked or taped phone calls” quickly was going up in smoke. The value of Lewinsky’s cooperation “was [becoming] diminished.”
The climate in the conference room had changed from lukewarm to chilly. Bennett now leaned forward and told Ginsburg that if he wanted a deal, Lewinsky would have to make a complete oral proffer—known in prosecutors’ parlance as a “Queen for a Day” arrangement. If the information she provided was useful enough, Starr’s prosecutors would consider giving her limited “use immunity.” The sweeping sort of transactional immunity that Ginsburg and Speights had wanted was officially off the table.
Ginsburg unloaded a string of expletives