Death of American Virtue - Ken Gormley [323]
In a final blow, the Republican judge had turned to the issue of “other women”—including the former intern Monica Lewinsky—and declared that the entire body of evidence relating to other females was irrelevant in this federal lawsuit. Judge Wright wrote tersely: “Whether other women may have been subject to workplace harassment, and whether such evidence has allegedly been suppressed, does not change the fact that plaintiff has failed to demonstrate that she (Paula Jones) has a case worthy of submitting to a jury.”
President Clinton, on a six-nation diplomatic tour of Africa, received word of the judge’s decision from his lawyer Bob Bennett. At first, Bennett had worried this might be an April Fool’s joke—he had gone as far as to call Judge Wright’s chambers to confirm that the opinion was genuine. Shortly after the order was verified, a worldwide broadcast showed President Clinton in Senegal, smoking a cigar and beating an African drum in celebration. (Accompanying the president on the Africa trip were First Lady Hillary Clinton and secretary Betty Currie; skeptical Starr prosecutors called it the “ten-million-dollar-witness tampering trip.”)
A teary-eyed Paula Jones, meanwhile, vowed to appeal, sobbing to reporters, “I believe what Mr. Clinton did to me was wrong, and the law protects women who are subjected to that kind of abuse of power.”
Ken Starr told reporters that this major setback in the Jones case did not mean an end to his own investigation. “You cannot defile the temple of justice,” Starr stated with his lips pursed. The real question that he needed to resolve in his investigation, said the independent counsel, was, “Were crimes committed?”
Although a casual observer might have assumed that the death of the Jones case would mean the extinguishment of any criminal actions relating to Bill Clinton’s testimony in that proceeding, the lawyers on both sides understood that Judge Wright had deftly left that issue in play. In an earlier decision in which she had excluded all evidence relating to Monica Lewinsky, Judge Wright had dropped a footnote stressing that her ruling “should [not] be construed as indicating how the Court would rule on such matters were the Lewinsky evidence being considered for admission at any trial.” Even though the media failed to pick up this clue, the lawyers understood that the judge had not eliminated the possibility that Clinton’s testimony still might constitute a “material misstatement” that constituted perjury.
President Clinton would later admit that he was neither surprised, nor particularly reassured, by Judge Wright’s ruling. “She knew from the get-go—she’s a smart person—that there was nothing in this lawsuit. And I was relieved that she did it,” he explained. “I was glad, you know, but not particularly surprised. Because the most important thing from the Republican point of view was the deposition and their leaking it. And then getting Starr involved in it.”
Mail poured into the federal court house in Little Rock, as citizens expressed radically different views concerning Judge Wright’s decision. Vivian Van Cura from Ohio wrote: “I actually prayed that you’d dismiss that suit. Any decent woman would not go to a hotel room of a man by herself. Sleep well!!” Donna Korbel of Florida chimed in: “I want to applaud your just decision in the Paula Jones case. Now what can be done about Ken Starr? Enough is enough—wasted time and wasted money!”
Other letters took Judge Wright to task for her decision. Howard Shoemaker of Nebraska declared that if Clinton had made this sort of inappropriate advance toward his wife or daughters,