Death of American Virtue - Ken Gormley [320]
If OIC had hoped to strengthen its hand in this first round of Blind Man’s Bluff poker, it succeeded in spades with Catherine Davis’s testimony. A poised young woman whose husband was employed by Yamamiza Corporation, Davis was openly defensive of Monica and hostile toward Ken Starr. By the end of her testimony, however, Davis had corroborated Monica’s initial story to the Starr prosecutors and then some.
In response to questioning by the hard-driving Wisenberg, Davis confirmed that she had chatted by phone and by e-mail regularly during Monica’s tenure in the White House, and that she knew that her friend had developed a relationship with the president. Monica had told Davis that she and President Clinton spent time in the Oval Office chatting about politics, life, and “emotional matters.” They had talked tearfully about the death of Clinton’s mother, Virginia, after that period of grieving for the president. Monica and Bill Clinton had even spoken, frankly and openly, about the state of the president’s marriage to First Lady Hillary Clinton. According to Monica’s accounts passed along to Davis in their regular discussions in the confessional, the president had freely admitted to marital difficulties but had expressed a desire to reform his rocky relationship with Hillary, declaring that “he was committed to it over time.”
Davis was under oath and therefore could not deny that there was a “physical” dimension to the relationship between Monica Lewinsky and the president. Beginning in late 1995 and lasting through late 1997, Monica had told Davis, the young intern had met with Clinton in a small room adjacent to the Oval Office and described “giving the President oral sex on numerous occasions.” There had also been “kissing, hugging, him touching her breasts,” according to Monica’s love-struck accounts. Monica had even called Davis and played her recordings of the president that she had kept on her answering machine, in which the president could be heard drawling in his smooth Arkansas voice, “Ah, shucks, you’re not there,” or lamenting “Oh, I wanted to talk to you.” It also turned out that Monica and the president frequently spoke by phone after midnight, and the conversations often turned risqué. The light-haired Davis took a sip of water and told the grand jurors, “It was described to me as phone sex.”
OIC also hit the jackpot by confirming a tantalizing fact that had popped up in the Linda Tripp tapes: Monica had indeed worn a dark blue dress that she had bought at the Gap, “short-sleeve, sort of around the knee-ish,” during one of her later encounters with the president. She had confessed to Davis that she believed it was stained with Clinton’s semen. Monica had asked Davis joshingly, “I wonder if he’s going to pay for the dry cleaning?” Davis paused for another sip of water and told the grand jury that she believed the Gap dress was still hanging in a closet, although she wasn’t sure where. This revelation caused Wisenberg’s eyebrows to jump with excitement. It meant physical evidence existed that, if found and tested, could scientifically prove that Bill Clinton had lied through his teeth.
One of the most startling facts that was confirmed by Catherine Davis’s testimony related to the universe of people who knew that Monica was engaging in hanky-panky with the president. It turned out to be larger than expected. Davis rattled off names of others whom she believed Monica had taken into her “confidence” about the affair. They included