Death of American Virtue - Ken Gormley [382]
Monica Lewinsky, meanwhile, was appearing before the grand jury for her final session. Foreperson Freda Alexander, departing from protocol, issued a sympathetic farewell on behalf of all twenty-three grand jurors: “We wanted to offer you a bouquet of good wishes that includes luck, success, happiness and blessings.”
Days later, the former intern was being dragged through the wringer again, this time being grilled by two female prosecutors from Ken Starr’s office. In a “privileged and confidential” memo to his file, Plato Cacheris recorded that he had received a call from Monica’s father, who had asked him to implore the OIC prosecutors not to force Monica to answer “explicit questions.” The lawyer had passed along this plea, but it had been ignored. OIC “needed to get [Monica] under oath” with respect to each “sexual encounter” with the president, Starr’s people had told Cacheris, no matter how awkward or intimate the questioning became.
In private, President Bill Clinton commented to an aide that he was “appalled” at how roughly the Starr prosecutors were treating Monica. He also noted “how [well] she seemed to be holding up under it” and how she “was not basically cracking.”
OIC, in the meantime, was busy trying to finish its report on the Lewinsky affair while simultaneously keeping a tiny flame flickering under the Whitewater probe. It was a tricky predicament. After four years of investigating Whitewater, Starr’s office was now preparing a report for Congress that had nothing to do with the topic it was originally hired to investigate. One internal memo suggested adding language in the introduction of the report that said: “We will transmit a narrative and report to Congress (relating to Whitewater) at a later time.” In this way, OIC could string out the nearly kaput Whitewater matter and place maximum emphasis on the red-hot Lewinsky investigation.
It seemed like an opportune time to roll out the report. Information had begun flying over the transom, suggesting that the Clinton presidency might be teetering on the edge of collapse. A confidential memo in Ken Starr’s file noted that FBI agent Steve Irons had notified the office that a “source” informed him that Judge Susan Webber Wright “believes that Clinton made a fool of her” by his lying in the Jones deposition. The same source told the FBI that “as of 5:00 Eastern time on 9/3, there was a rumor that Al Gore’s inner circle has been told to prepare for a transition.”
OIC returned Lewinsky’s passport, allowing her to travel beyond the U.S. borders, but only on condition that she make herself available “on a day’s notice.” The Starr prosecutors alluded darkly to the fact that they were finalizing a confidential report to Congress, for which they might need additional information.
The draft referral to Congress had actually been in the works since March. At that time, Ken Starr had assigned a team of his top writers to begin summarizing the evidence against the president, even before Monica Lewinsky had agreed to cooperate. The writers had scrapped OIC’s earlier 100-page referral relating to Whitewater and started afresh. Their new work quickly ballooned in length to 250 pages. Stephen Bates, one of OIC’s scriveners, later recalled that they were deluged with a “great fire hose flow” of incriminating grand jury interviews and FBI reports, which they began funneling into a single document encapsulating all “potentially impeachable acts.”
There had always been an assumption that OIC would produce some report