Death of American Virtue - Ken Gormley [354]
As Monica and her lawyers headed for the airport, the OIC prosecutors joined Starr’s hidden hotel encampment, where they got the Washington office on a speakerphone. Sam Dash declared in a booming voice that Monica’s credibility quotient was high. If she indeed had the dress, Dash and others agreed, why worry about minor details? The dress alone would supply the goods necessary to nail Clinton. OIC had already forced him to agree to appear before the grand jury—a fact that was still not public. Monica’s testimony, even if imperfect, would choke the last false denial from the president’s lips.
That evening, shortly after Monica’s lawyers had driven home from the airport after a long day, Starr called Stein and stated cheerfully, “You have a deal.”
Monica would later note that if Starr’s lawyers had come to her initially in a way that was “appropriate” and “sounded normal to me,” allowing her to call a lawyer and without threatening that she needed to “wear a wire,” she would have probably agreed to the same deal six months earlier.
INSIDE Plato Cacheris’s office the next day—on July 28—Monica Lewinsky signed an immunity agreement with OIC, her hand shaking as she affixed her signature to the document. Under the terms of this deal, Lewinsky agreed to cooperate fully and to allow OIC lawyers to debrief her. She also agreed to testify truthfully in the grand jury and in other “judicial or congressional proceedings.” Assuming Monica stuck to her end of the bargain, OIC pledged not to prosecute her or her parents “for any crimes committed prior to the date of this Agreement arising out of the investigations within the jurisdiction of the OIC.” To avoid a repeat of the previous debacle involving the questionable “authority” of Emmick and Udolf to consummate a binding immunity deal, this document was signed personally by “Kenneth W. Starr.”
Monica Lewinsky recalled that as she put down the pen, she was overcome by a wave of unsettling emotions. “I had mixed feelings about even getting immunity when I got it,” she said. “It was hard. It was difficult. It’s like I had to put myself and my family [first]—I had to do what was best for me. But it was hard to know that I was betraying somebody. It was hard to do. Even after I knew this person had trashed me and abandoned me and everything else.”
Lewinsky now asked to be excused, walked into the bathroom in her attorney’s office, and broke down crying. As Cacheris recalled, “I think it was all just emotion, but bottom line, she was happy. I mean after all this time … eight months’ anxiety over what was going to happen to her. Basically, you can understand her being emotional.”
Cacheris instructed his client, before she left: “Just bring everything that you have [relating to Bill Clinton], including the dress, and bring it to my office.”
So Monica arrived at her lawyer’s building the next day carrying a shopping bag filled with items. These were immediately handed over to Mike Emmick and an FBI agent, who were present for the exchange. In a handwritten inventory marked “Federal Bureau of Investigation,” Monica listed approximately thirteen articles that bore some connection to her relationship with Bill Clinton. These included “stuffed animal from black dog,” “white canvass bag w/ black dog on it,” “Book: Leaves of Grass,” “brown marble bear sculpture,” “Rockettes Christmas blanket (1997),” and “GAP dress size 12, dark blue.” The latter item was wrapped in plastic and folded neatly in the bag, as if on its way to the cleaners.
The whereabouts of the dress had been one of the great puzzles of OIC’s half-year chase of Lewinsky. Sources now confirm that the garment had been quietly moved to the New York apartment rented by Monica’s mother and then transported back to Washington shortly before the immunity