Death of American Virtue - Ken Gormley [361]
The Internet had allowed an ordinary person like him—a person equipped with nothing more than a local phone connection—to catch a mendacious president in the act. It allowed everyday citizens sitting at PCs in their homes to help reshape America, for the better. Said Drudge, before stepping down from the Press Club microphone to return to his apartment, where he would troll for new scandals and sensationalistic stories, “Let the future begin!”
WITHOUT the Internet, it is doubtful that the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal would have launched itself in the national media and seized the public’s attention. Plato Cacheris was receiving so many letters and e-mails addressed to Monica Lewinsky that he bundled them up and dumped them in boxes so that his client would not read them. Some messages were supportive, yet many were downright disturbing. Cacheris was especially shocked that individuals could sit at their computer keyboards and type out obscene messages to a twentysomething young woman whose world had just collapsed. “I didn’t think it was necessary for her to receive these messages,” Cacheris said in a stern monotone. One relatively mild posting on Lewinsky’s “Fan Club” Web site ranted: “Monica is nothing but a 2 bit BIMBO.… Anyone who puts a valentine message in a news paper [sic] on her own free will for a married man has got tom [sic] be a sicko stalking bimbo. That’s Monica, her and her mother belong together, like 2 peas in a pod.”
On the “Hillary Rodham Clinton Defense Forum” Web site, commentators blustered and offered prophecies about the likely ending to this sordid drama. John Potts wrote from an unidentified location to Mrs. Clinton: “I am amazed that you are still with Bill. He has rubbed your face in the dirt and all you do is smile.… Well Little Lady, you are getting exactly as you deserve. Have a great time at the impeachment.”
Another unnamed author posted a message on the Web, declaring that Hillary and Bill “are the most corrupt couple ever to hold power in our nation’s history.” The writer predicted ominously: “Impeachment is right around the corner.”
CHAPTER
43
A WALK IN THE WOODS
As Monica Lewinsky suffered the mortification of being “debriefed” by OIC prosecutors before her date with the grand jury, she found herself eating peanut M&M’s and feeling stressed out. It was a period of growing apprehension. Her greatest fear, as she recalled, was that “I would misstep and I would lose my immunity. And then I would be extra screwed. Because I had given them this information, so they could then use it against me.” Monica understood—in theory—that providing truthful testimony to the grand jury would be her ticket to freedom. Still, from her candid perspective, “nothing else in the process had been fair.”
Mike Emmick, the man who had coordinated the “sting” at the Ritz-Carlton, was the lead questioner at the grand jury. Karen Immergut, one of the few women on the OIC team, was selected to handle the more personal aspects of the sessions. The Starr lawyers sought to convey a tone of reasonable accommodation, as a panel of twenty-three men and women of mixed racial and ethnic backgrounds, designated Grand Jury 97–2, assembled in the federal court house on Constitution Avenue.
Each grand juror was handed a copy of the same typed definition of sexual relations that had been used in the Paula Jones deposition. Karen Immergut quickly got to the nitty-gritty. “When you described that you had other physical intimacy during your contact with the President on November 15, 1995,” she asked Lewinsky, “did that include sexual relations within the definition that I’ve just read to you?”
“Yes, it does,” Monica replied. Within minutes, the witness had just confirmed that as she interpreted it, the president of the United States had lied under oath.
OIC proceeded to coax out of Lewinsky the most complete picture she would ever share about her relationship with Bill Clinton. The former intern told the grand jurors of numerous gifts she had