Death of American Virtue - Ken Gormley [368]
As the team of Starr prosecutors climbed into their dark sedans accompanied by a detail of U.S. Marshals, setting off for the White House at 12:15 P.M. on August 17 to elicit the sworn testimony of President Bill Clinton, Ken Starr tried to remain calm and reflective. To his prosecutors, he quoted a passage from the King James version of the Bible as a reminder that they should stay focused on their responsibilities and duties, rather than fret about matters beyond their control. “Sufficient unto the day,” Starr recited, “is the evil thereof.”
TOP military and national security advisers were competing with President Clinton’s lawyers and political advisers for his time, huddling in West Wing conference rooms to address the worsening situation in Afghanistan, in the wake of deadly American embassy bombings in Tanzania and Kenya. Osama bin Laden, who was taking credit for those attacks, was only part of their problem. The White House staff was equally skittish about the president’s raising his right hand, with Ken Starr in the room, and testifying under oath. “One was we don’t know what the real facts were,” said one adviser. “And two, we thought there was probably more going on there [with Monica Lewinsky] than what [the president] had indicated.”
David Kendall was in an especially awkward position. As a lawyer, he represented both Bill and Hillary Clinton in a personal capacity. He was duty-bound to use his professional skills for both husband and wife with equal vigor. It was conceivable that the couple could split as a result of this trauma to their marriage. He could not allow either client to be hurt under his watch.
So Kendall enlisted his law partner Bob Barnett, who had handled business matters for the Clintons, to prepare Hillary for the bad news on the Friday before the testimony: “What if there’s more to this than you know?” Barnett had asked gently. The next morning, with nowhere left to hide, Bill Clinton woke up his wife and—pacing back and forth beside their bed in the family quarters of the White House—confessed that “the situation was much more serious” than he had admitted previously. When he appeared before the grand jury, he intended to testify “that there had been an inappropriate intimacy.” According to Hillary Clinton’s later account, she could “hardly breathe.” She began crying and yelling, “What do you mean? What are you saying? Why did you lie to me?”
The only thing that Bill Clinton, penitent husband, could keep repeating, like a mortal sinner who had finally been caught and now begged for absolution, was, “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I was trying to protect you and Chelsea.” Hillary Clinton would later describe her emotional turmoil: “I was dumbfounded, heartbroken and outraged.”
Despite rampant speculation in the press that the First Lady must have known about, and condoned, Bill’s sexual flings with Monica Lewinsky and others, there is no direct evidence to support this theory. One close friend of the Clintons would later say that it was “absolutely, unequivocally” true that Hillary did not know of her husband’s sexual affair with Lewinsky until the weekend before the grand jury testimony. The First Lady certainly knew that “there was an intern who was smitten by the president,” and that her roving-eyed husband “may have indulged” this young woman by flirting inappropriately. Yet Bill Clinton was famous for putting his arm around women and exuding a warmth that “gets misread by people.” It was potentially harmless.
Still, nobody was suggesting that Bill Clinton was an altar boy. One high-level adviser who asked not to be identified recalled riding with both Clintons in the presidential limousine during an official trip, and Bill “ogling” a busty young woman in her early thirties who was standing on the sidewalk. Hillary observed her husband’s line of vision and interrupted: “Oh, Bill, you always