Death of American Virtue - Ken Gormley [365]
Now, ten days before the president’s scheduled grand jury testimony, this whole scene enraged Merletti. The FBI had somehow become attached at the hip to Starr’s operation, when “what they should have been investigating was terrorism.” That agency’s obsession with Monica Lewinsky and Paula Jones and “Jane Does” in Arkansas was “diverting us terribly,” Merletti felt. To add insult to injury, Starr’s office was fueling accusations that the Secret Service was covering up for Clinton in the Lewinsky matter. “I couldn’t even travel internationally with the president,” the Secret Service director said. Agent Larry Cockell, who headed the elite Presidential Protection Division, had gone as far as to remove himself from his duties in the White House. Now that his identity had been leaked as one of the agents Starr’s office was pursuing, his face was being splashed across newspapers and television screens all over America. Cockell’s job depended upon anonymity. Starr’s quest to get him under oath had put him, and those he guarded, at risk.
BOB Bittman was frustrated. President Clinton seemed to be “mirroring our investigation.” Clinton knew, before the next morning’s breakfast, what his witnesses were saying in the grand jury. So the young OIC deputy decided to set a definite date for Clinton to appear in front of the grand jury, “earlier rather than later.” The only way to corner a greased pig, the stocky deputy concluded, was to back him into the pen.
Ideally, Bittman wanted Clinton to testify for two days; yet Kendall shaved him down to four hours. The Starr deputy also capitulated by allowing the testimony to take place in the White House, with Clinton’s lawyer present, rather than inside the unfriendly grand jury room—another big win for the president. The grand jurors would watch via live feed from a remote location; this was ideal for the Clinton team. Finally, Kendall convinced Bittman to withdraw the subpoena so that the president’s appearance would be purely “voluntary.” The White House had pressed hard for this last concession: It meant that if Clinton refused to answer any questions, Starr’s prosecutors would be required to go to court for a formal subpoena, allowing the president’s defenders to buy more time.
Bittman had hung tough on at least one issue—that he would be permitted to videotape the testimony. The White House feared that if it allowed Starr’s rogue team to film the “voluntary” appearance by the president, the prosecutors “were going to screw us” by “giving it to Congress and releasing it.” Kendall tried a dozen maneuvers to abort the videotaping, even inviting the grand jurors to come to the White House to observe the questioning in person. Yet Bittman wouldn’t budge. He knew that if the grand jurors traipsed into the executive mansion, Clinton would end up giving them a tour of the White House and handing out boxes of presidential M&M’s until they were thoroughly charmed. So Bittman used his only piece of leverage: One grand juror, it turned out, was unavailable on the date in question. Bittman insisted that Kendall permit him to preserve the testimony on film, for the benefit of that absent juror. This demand was nonnegotiable.
In this type of high-stakes negotiation, one took what one could get. Kendall surrendered.
Interviews now reveal that a number of advisers had counseled President Clinton not to appear at all. They had urged him to “take the Fifth,” invoking his constitutional right against self-incrimination. The law required Starr to prove his case. If Monica Lewinsky’s blue dress had no DNA matter on it, they argued, OIC would be up the creek without a paddle.
One plan was for Clinton to “reluctantly” invoke the Fifth Amendment and then lay the blame at the feet of his attorneys by saying, “I have no choice but to follow the advice of my lawyers.” Clinton would take a beating in the media for a few weeks, but the American public would gradually grow weary of the tussle and it would blow over.
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