Death of American Virtue - Ken Gormley [299]
On February 1, Monica was shuttled to the Cosmos Club. Here, she sat down, at Bill Ginsburg’s instruction, and wrote out a handwritten proffer designed to strike a deal with the Office of Independent Counsel. This straightforward ten-page account, printed neatly on ruled paper, spelled out Monica’s own version of her wrecked relationship with President Clinton, giving Starr’s prosecutors (Ginsburg thought) everything they could possibly want. “Ms. Lewinsky had an intimate and emotional relationship with President Clinton beginning in 1995,” she wrote. “At various times between 1995 and 1997, Ms. Lewinsky and the President had physically intimate contact. This included oral sex, but excluded intercourse.”
Monica explained how Betty Currie served as the chief go-between for her meetings with the president, and how Vernon Jordan helped steer her toward attorney Frank Carter after she was subpoenaed in the Jones case. All of this was precisely what the Starr prosecutors wanted. It probably would have assured Monica a swift immunity deal—were it not for Monica’s disclaimer, which wrecked the deal as far as OIC was concerned. “Neither the Pres. nor Mr. Jordan (or anyone on their behalf) asked or encouraged Ms. L to lie,” she wrote. “Ms. L was comfortable signing the affidavit with regard to the ‘sexual relationship’ because she could justify to herself that she and the Pres. did not have sexual intercourse.”
Mike Emmick and Bruce Udolf, the leading doves in the OIC hawk-nest, were still heading up negotiations with Ginsburg. In an effort to salvage the immunity deal, they asked Monica to address directly the issue of the president’s encouraging her to lie about the relationship. The former intern thus added language that was at least mildly damaging to Bill Clinton: “At some point in the relationship between Ms. L and the President, the President told Ms. L to deny a relationship, if ever asked about it. He also said something to the effect of if the two people who are involved say it didn’t happen, it didn’t happen.” Yet Monica cut the legs out from under any possible obstruction of justice charge by adding that the president had urged her to deny the relationship before she was a potential witness in the Jones case. By implication, she was declaring that Clinton’s motives had nothing to do with causing her to lie in the legal proceedings.
Many prosecutors in Starr’s office remained certain that the former intern was hiding key facts. People like Jackie Bennett and Bob Bittman, it seemed, had convinced themselves that Clinton and Jordan had said to her, “‘Look, kid. If you shut up and you sign this affidavit, we’ll get you a job.’” “The proffer didn’t say that,” Monica later emphasized, because it hadn’t happened.
Udolf and Emmick agreed that “there does not seem to be any purpose in prosecuting this woman.” So they telephoned Bill Ginsburg and told him, “I think we have a deal.” They asked Bob Bittman to fax a three-page immunity agreement to Ginsburg, which he did on February 2. Ginsburg promptly signed the document, obtained Monica’s signature, and returned it forty-eight hours later. There were two final signature lines that needed to be filled in: one for Emmick and one for Udolf.
The avuncular Mr. Ginsburg called his client and declared triumphantly, “You have a deal.” Hearing those words, Monica packed her bags and flew to Beverly Hills, to be with her father. “So yes,” she recalled later, “I went to California thinking I had a deal.” Both Emmick and Udolf would later confirm that they, too, believed they had entered into a binding agreement with Lewinsky. Back at the office, however, there was a growing sentiment that OIC was being sold down the river by two Democratic-leaning, weak-willed turncoats.