Death of American Virtue - Ken Gormley [381]
Key Democrats in the House and Senate appeared “ready to bolt.” President Bill Clinton, his White House advisers concluded with alarm, had reached a position of “maximum danger.”
In the midst of this pandemonium, another tidal wave slammed the White House. To the horror of those trying to hold the wobbly Clinton administration together, Vice President Al Gore was suddenly the subject of an investigation. In response to increased pressure to determine whether Gore had lied to Justice Department officials when he denied, the previous December, engaging in illegal fund-raising activities during the 1996 reelection campaign, Attorney General Janet Reno finally capitulated. On Wednesday, August 26, while the Clinton family was completing its somber vacation on Martha’s Vineyard, Reno ordered a ninety-day preliminary investigation into whether Gore had lied to federal officials investigating the campaign allegations. Suddenly, it appeared as if the entire Clinton administration might be sunk in the wake of independent counsel tidal wave.
On a secluded and well-appointed dude ranch outside Bozeman, Montana—a destination for world-class fly-fishing near the scenic northwest entrance to Yellowstone National Park—a group of federal judges was attending an elite conference hosted by the conservative Foundation for Research on Economics and the Environment (FREE). One of those participants, Judge David B. Sentelle, exited his cabin dressed in casual garb and cowboy boots, a mobile telephone pressed to his ear. Judge Sentelle, the court of appeals judge who presided over all independent counsel appointments, now pumped his fist into the air and held up the phone triumphantly, announcing to his colleagues in a North Carolina drawl: “They did it! They did it!” A cheer rose up from some judicial colleagues who exchanged “high fives.”
Stated one judge present at the unusual dude ranch assemblage: “Every Republican knew what he was talking about. It was terribly, terribly partisan in a way I had never seen before.” Said the judge, who requested anonymity: “I found it disturbing.”
The New York Times observed that the Clinton White House, already “battered” by Ken Starr’s surprise probe of the Lewinsky matter, was now reeling from the solid blow that had knocked the vice president to the ground. There was new momentum to force Reno to conduct a full-blown investigation of potential campaign law violations by both the president and vice president during the 1996 campaign. The Republican party seemed poised to complete its palace coup and to waltz back into the White House in 2000, with both Clinton and Gore emasculated.
Vice President Gore, vacationing on Hawaii, met with reporters dressed in a flowered aloha shirt, standing resolute against this latest onslaught. Gore had already issued a statement from this island retreat days earlier, when Clinton had first admitted to an inappropriate relationship with an intern nearly the same age as Gore’s own daughter, Karenna. According to those close to the vice president, he had weighed his options carefully before publicly supporting the president. From Oahu, Gore now stated tersely: “I am proud of him, not only because he is a friend, but because he is a person who has the courage to acknowledge mistakes.”
As stunned staffers of both Clinton and Gore hurried back to Washington to confront those dark forces that had seemingly gathered over the executive mansion, a surprise figure emerged, according to those hunkered down in the White House, who saved the Clinton presidency.
That person was Kenneth W. Starr.
PART FIVE
HIGH CRIMES AND MISDEMEANORS
CHAPTER
45
BOMBSHELL REPORT
By early September, an ominous sense hung over the Capitol that a report from the special prosecutor would arrive imminently. Senator Joe Lieberman,