Death of American Virtue - Ken Gormley [286]
Despite these seemingly compelling pieces of precedent, Merletti described his reception by Independent Counsel Ken Starr as one of chilly disinterest. “And I mean he [Starr] couldn’t have cared less. I didn’t even think he was really paying attention to what I was saying.” As Merletti recalled the scene, Starr seemed downright impatient for him to finish the assassination presentation. They sat in the OIC conference room, staring at each other. “I perceived him as very aloof, very detached from what I was saying,” Merletti recalled. His impression of the special prosecutor was: “He’s not listening—he’s not going to be objective toward us at all.”
Starr would later defend himself, saying that he viewed this as a clear-cut constitutional issue. As sympathetic as he might have been to the Secret Service’s plight, he said, there was nothing in the Constitution that shielded these agents from answering questions, under oath, in front of his grand jury, if they possessed evidence of possible criminal wrongdoing by the president. The notion that Secret Service agents were entitled to some amorphous “protective function privilege,” which was spelled out nowhere in the Constitution or in the laws of Congress, Starr felt, “bordered on a frivolous position.” The independent counsel held no ill feelings toward Merletti. The presidential scandal of the century had blown up on Merletti’s watch, and it was understandable that Merletti would try to defuse it. Yet Starr believed that—as both a constitutional and legal matter—Merletti’s “praetorian guard approach” lacked merit.
Lew Merletti, on the other hand, did not discern that he was dealing with a neutral, dispassionate special prosecutor. “He could not have been more dismissive of what I had to say,” Merletti would counter.
It seemed that Starr had a motive—namely, to extract certain sensational information that he believed Director Merletti was holding back. Merletti recalled, “When I finished, he [Starr] immediately wanted to know if agents were at the family theater in the White House. If they were posted there, and the president was inside, could they see inside?” Merletti instantly deduced that someone had given OIC a tip “that the president was in the family theater and the First Lady walked in on him and Monica Lewinsky.” Merletti added, “It turned out to be false—[like] the vast majority of information he was given.”
“It was their little version of Deep Throat—that’s what they were hoping for,” concluded Merletti as he walked out the door. “That they were getting Deep Throat information and that the Secret Service was witness to all this stuff.”
So Merletti called every former USSS director who was still alive and able to travel, as well as every former special agent in charge of the PPD, and convened an extraordinary meeting at his offices in Washington. The purpose of the meeting was to communicate: “I seek your advice. Tell me what to do.”
This remarkable assemblage took place within days of new reports trickling into the media that Secret Service agents had witnessed other salacious events and might be called soon to testify. With directors and heads of the PPD dating back to the Eisenhower administration seated around him at the conference room table in Secret Service headquarters at 1800 G Street, Merletti asked for guidance.
From every former USSS official on every side of Lew Merletti, the advice was the same. As one former director told Merletti, pointing to the chair at the head of the table, “You are the one who sits in that chair. When we sat there, we stood on these exact same principles. We were just never challenged on it.”
“You’d better fight this,” another said. “That is your responsibility—to fight