Death of American Virtue - Ken Gormley [297]
It was especially unacceptable to Alice that Hillary Clinton would accuse Ken of engaging in a “vast right-wing conspiracy” to bring down the president. In fact, Alice found it downright insulting. Ken had hired Democrats for top posts in his office. He had spent his career trying to act professionally and without partisanship. “We don’t run around in a circle of any vast right-wing conspirators,” Alice insisted, struggling to keep her voice measured. “We have dear friends [including both Democrats and Republicans] from the children’s school or from church or whatever. But neither of us are into a right-wing conspiracy and never have been. And Ken never, ever met with people who conspired about anything.”
At their split-level home on a cul-de-sac in McLean, in a neighborhood that did not flaunt its affluence, the Starr family did its best to maintain its equilibrium. At night, during the height of the Lewinsky hubbub, the whole family waited for Ken to come home (if it wasn’t past bedtime) so they could sit down for dinner together. Ken’s favorite dish was “Mexican Mess,” something Alice whipped up “where I sort of combined everything including the kitchen sink. It’s actually Barbara Bush’s recipe … you know, guacamole and Tostitos and cheese and lettuce and tomato and all. That’s what Ken really loves.”
Ken would put down his briefcase wearily and tell his family, “This is not pleasant, this is going to be a rough patch, but we’ve just got to maintain our spirits and keep on trucking.” Happily for the Starrs, they had an enormous amount of support from the community and from their church. Friends would call and say “telephone hugs,” which for Ken was “a very nice term and apt.”
The besieged independent counsel generally avoided watching television so that he was not demoralized by the round-the-clock attacks on him. Alice would sneak into the family room to watch Geraldo, a talk show on which host Geraldo Rivera constantly “castigated” Starr. The minute she even mentioned the latest scandal-related news, her husband would raise his hand and say, “I don’t want to hear about it.” The television would be turned off, and the discussion would cease. Alice said, “And that was about as impatient as [Ken] gets.”
Although Ken was being skewered in the media and savaged by the White House, Alice accepted this burden with silent resignation. Her husband’s job, she told the children, was “basically to get the truth out and the facts, wherever that led him.” If it led into the White House, she said, that was not their father’s cross to bear. Rather, the responsibility had to be borne by the president sworn to uphold the law, who had set these destructive events into motion.
ON January 29, Judge Susan Webber Wright ruled that all evidence related to the Lewinsky matter was inadmissible in the Paula Jones case. Any “probative” value of the Lewinsky-related evidence, Judge Wright ruled, was outweighed by the “possibility of prejudice.”
A Republican from Arkansas, Judge Wright was no great fan of Bill Clinton, but she thought this new Monica Lewinsky investigation smelled to high heaven of politics. The Lewinsky testimony represented a barely relevant speck of evidence in a sexual harassment lawsuit that was already on shaky ground. The president may have lied in his deposition—and if he did, she would need to deal with that appropriately. But the Jones litigation had nothing to do with Clinton’s consensual fling with an intern in the White House. The judge was having no part of it.
When Monica Lewinsky learned of Judge Wright’s ruling while watching television inside her darkened Watergate condo, she remembered feeling a jolt of hope. “I was elated,” she recalled. “Elated! I just thought ‘Oh, does this mean it’s all over?’”
But Ken Starr’s prosecution steamed forward, even after Monica’s situation was disentangled from the Paula Jones litigation. And Monica, in the following weeks, sank into a deep depression.
Although this part of the story would remain a carefully guarded secret, interviews