Death of American Virtue - Ken Gormley [296]
It hadn’t helped, he hastened to add, that the White House ruffians had piled atop him during the Pepperdine debacle and rubbed dirt in his face. They were trying to “spin” the story that Starr’s criminal probe was dead; they were openly “declaring victory.” They were bragging that he had turned tail and returned to his post as independent counsel only because “the master right-wing conspiracy wouldn’t allow [Starr] to leave.” As Starr saw it, the White House PR hit squad had not helped its cause by taunting him and demeaning his investigation, shortly before the Lewinsky case was dropped on his doorstep.
Starr also had become convinced that the Justice Department (particularly Deputy Attorney General Eric Holder) was engaged in a smear campaign, dishing out dirt to the press “on background,” and “trying to poison the well” in order to besmirch Starr and his dedicated prosecutors.
Starr wasn’t about to be intimidated. He and his prosecutors had “come through the perfect storm, and we were still afloat.” With the White House engaged in a “coordinated effort to kill me politically and at the national level,” the independent counsel felt his only choice was to march forward and to deploy all troops at his command.
Alice Starr sat for interviews with Ladies’ Home Journal and several other publications, doing her best to help her husband. Unfortunately, each glossy article seemed to give her comments an unflattering slant, so she canceled the rest of her media appointments. “I didn’t want to start a political war of my own,” Alice later explained. Their son, Randy, was in college at Duke. Daughter Carolyn was a senior in high school. Their youngest, Cynthia, was only thirteen; they could not risk allowing this scandal to scar the children. Alice instead remained “very, very busy” at work, keeping her chin up.
Years later, Alice Starr confessed that the most maddening aspect of this post-Monica vilification of her husband was that Bill Clinton was the person who had acted immorally and lied about it. Yet Ken somehow was being painted as the evildoer. From the moment Clinton had shaken his finger and adamantly denied a relationship with “that woman,” Alice said, she “knew that Bill was lying.” At the same time, “I expected him to lie about it.… Wouldn’t you expect someone who’s having an affair with a young intern to lie about it?”
The real tragedy, Alice thought, was that Bill Clinton could have headed off his day of reckoning by doing the right thing and confessing guilt. “If people are honest, people are so forgiving,” she said. “Had Bill Clinton been honest to begin with, I just know he would not have been in any trouble at all. That’s the motto in our family: ‘Please be truthful.’ That’s the best way.”
With respect to the First Lady who had rushed to the president’s defense, Alice Starr felt a certain amount of sympathy—but not much. “I probably reacted more to Hillary than I did to Bill,” she said. Chalking it up to “women’s intuition,” Alice did not buy the story that Hillary was totally in the dark about Bill’s indiscretions. “I mean, almost every book you have ever read about their relationship, she is [certainly aware] that he’s had many, many other affairs,” said Alice. “And that’s their marriage. That’s fine if she wants to accept that. But to deny it,