Death of American Virtue - Ken Gormley [301]
Sol Wisenberg, one of Starr’s prosecutors who argued most strenuously to squash the immunity deal, was convinced that a little tough love was necessary: “I really think Monica is the kind of person that you simply cannot treat nicely,” he later explained. In Wisenberg’s view, this investigation had to be handled like a case against the mob: “There is a certain kind of person who is common, and it’s a female, in these investigations,” Wisenberg said. “You see them in white collar, and you see them in drug investigations. Basically, if you want to think of the Clinton White House as an organized-crime ring, and Clinton is the head of it, [Lewinsky] is the kind of person who, in a drug or white-collar crime ring, is a female and a relatively minor person substantively, but maybe has a relationship with a top person. They are incredibly loyal to the leader of the gang, and they only understand force.… They only understand harsh treatment. Sometimes, even that’s not enough.”
Wisenberg concluded, “Monica just happened to be the type who, if we had ever early on arrested her ass, I think she would have broken and told us everything, which she never really [did]. And that was the problem. We displayed incredible weakness that night [at the Ritz-Carlton], and we let ourselves be manipulated.”
Accepting this weak immunity deal crafted by Emmick and Udolf, the hardliners believed, would make OIC a laughingstock and allow Lewinsky (and Bill Clinton) to skate away like free birds. Wisenberg, who was famous for sprinkling expletives throughout his everyday vocabulary, concluded that Ginsburg had gone “batsh——t crazy” with his media blitz. “And that’s when the White House starts declaring war and we go f——ing crazy,” he said, recalling the sequence of events. “We just f——ing wet our pants. I couldn’t f——ing believe it. We’re having staff meetings every f——ing minute.” At one such meeting, Wisenberg finally stood up and quoted Stonewall Jackson: “Never take counsel of your fears,” he said, sprinkling in his own modern vernacular: “What the f——are we doing?”
Wisenberg next threw around his briefcase and promised to resign if Ken Starr capitulated on this point. If Monica Lewinsky was not required to give them the full story as Queen for a Day, he declared, then “[I want] to keep a deal from going down.”
Emmick and Udolf were aghast. They had given their word. Starr had authorized them to cut a deal. In the world of criminal lawyering, one’s word meant everything. Monica was already in California preparing for OIC’s first interview session. Even if she was giving them “ninety percent of the truth,” their reaction was, “So what?” That’s what witnesses did. Witnesses hid facts, and skillful prosecutors extracted more of the truth. “Sometimes, cooperators will only give you sixty percent and you try to pull teeth and get it up to seventy,” Emmick said, summarizing his logic. “We were pretty sure we could get it up to ninety.”
If any battle within his office caused Starr to be tugged in opposite directions, it was this one. Emmick was on leave as chief of the Public Corruption Section in the U.S. Attorney’s office in Los Angeles. Udolf was legendary in Miami “for locking up corrupt mayors.” Both of these lawyers were highly experienced. Starr worried to himself, “My goodness, these