Death of American Virtue - Ken Gormley [342]
Starr personally telephoned Director Lew Merletti to vent his frustration: “You guys knew nothing that was of any substance whatsoever,” the special prosecutor protested. “Why didn’t you tell me? You’ve wasted my time fighting on all of this.”
Merletti was tempted to slam the phone down. Instead, he set his jaw and stared at a poster hanging in his office. It displayed an unfurling American flag with the agency’s motto blazoned across it: “Worthy of Trust and Confidence.” The head of the Secret Service replied, “You didn’t understand. We were standing on principle.”
Now, as the walls seemed to be crumbling down in every direction, Starr received a fax from Eric Holder at the Justice Department and was nearly knocked out of his chair. Holder had faxed a draft pleading that the attorney general planned to file with Judge Johnson, proposing that the Justice Department investigate a laundry list of allegations involving prosecutorial misconduct by Starr’s office—accusations that had been lodged by an assortment of complainants.
“I think he [Holder] meant to do us harm,” Starr said later, sharing his most private thoughts. “I felt that he was a Rasputin who was pulling the strings and controlling the department’s tactics. And felt that he was being very clever, when in fact, it was becoming increasingly known throughout the city what he was up to. ‘He was too clever by half,’ as Churchill would say.”
Starr called Holder and lashed out, admonishing the deputy attorney general that if he filed this pleading in the context of the current hostile climate, it could destroy OIC’s investigation. If that happened, Starr warned, the blood of his entire prosecutorial staff would be on Janet Reno’s hands. Holder backed off, agreeing to postpone any investigation of Starr’s office—for the moment.
By mid-summer of 1998, Starr’s operation seemed to be hanging by a thread. Although Starr was prepared to defy Judge Johnson’s rule-to-show-cause order, he understood that such an act of defiance could give Attorney General Reno the excuse she needed to “fire him immediately.” With both Starr’s job and his investigation in serious jeopardy, his prosecutors determined that there were only two people who could pull OIC out of the fire by conclusively making the case against the president.
These two people, they agreed behind closed doors, were Monica Lewinsky and William Jefferson Clinton.
CHAPTER
41
MONICA’S TRUTH
Linda Tripp, reporting to the grand jury room on the last day of June, provided the best hope to Ken Starr’s prosecutors that, finally, they might emerge victorious at the conclusion of their draining investigation.
Literary agent/gossip queen Lucianne Goldberg appeared on Larry King Live, exuding confidence that Tripp would provide the missing evidence necessary to show that President Bill Clinton had lied with impunity. Goldberg, who proudly took credit for coaxing Tripp to tape her conversations with Monica Lewinsky, told the talk-show host that twenty or so cassette tapes would confirm everything Tripp had told Starr’s prosecutors. When King asked the flamboyant literary agent how she knew that this wasn’t simply a case of “a young girl living out a fantasy, lying to a friend,” Goldberg replied with a cagey smile, “You can’t lie contemporaneously for 20 hours.… Remember, these tapes were made after the president basically ditched this girl.”
Larry King, jutting a thumb under his trademark suspenders, asked whether taping a friend constituted an act of betrayal: “[Doesn’t] twenty hours seem a bit much? It seems like someone was enjoying this.” Nine out of ten Americans