Death of American Virtue - Ken Gormley [396]
The Clinton White House recognized that it was now “fighting for survival.” Clinton’s handlers made accommodations whenever possible to those whose support he relied upon to survive. If the president needed to suffer through extra rubber-chicken dinners to help allies in Congress, he did it. If he needed to eat crow along with the meal, so that voters could hear repentance in his voice, Bill Clinton served it up. His political advisers openly began entering into Faustian bargains with Democrats and friendly Republicans on the Hill. “Things that were important to them—that were even inside the realm of being plausibly reasonable—we would honor,” explained one staffer. “If that meant five extra photos or if that meant two extra speakers or if that meant putting someone in a car [with the president], the answer was, we would try to do it rather than not do it.”
In the Senate, Democratic Leader Tom Daschle was returning Bill Clinton’s calls again, but the senator’s reports from the trenches were guarded. Daschle told the president that a trial in the Senate easily could be fatal: “I was concerned that a number of [Democratic senators] would bolt,” Daschle later explained. “Many of them came into my office to express grave concern and some doubt that they could be supportive.”
It was in this highly volatile setting that Hustler magazine publisher Larry Flynt ran a full-page ad in the Washington Post, offering a bounty of a million dollars for anyone who could supply “documentary evidence of illicit sexual relations” involving any member of Congress, preferably of the Republican stripe.
Seated in his golden wheelchair inside the posh offices of his publishing empire in Beverly Hills, the self-styled “smut peddler who cares” later explained his goal. “People on Capitol Hill were trying to get Bill Clinton for the same thing they were doing,” Flynt said in a slurred voice. “Hypocrisy never wins.” Weeks earlier, Flynt had submitted an initial version of his advertisement to the Washington Post, only to have it returned as “inappropriate.” Flynt immediately scribbled a note to Katharine Graham, the Post publisher who had become an icon during Watergate for standing behind journalists Woodward and Bernstein in defending free press. Flynt wrote: “How in the hell can you in good conscience and your newspaper—a beacon of democracy—refuse to run an ad like this? It is a matter of free speech.” In short order, the Hustler publisher received a note back from Graham: “Mr. Flynt. Will you please resubmit?”
Flynt later made clear that he had no contact with the White House before taking this step. The Hustler multimillionaire, who had been paralyzed after having been shot outside a Georgia court house during an obscenity trial in 1978, said in a low voice, “I’m a realist. I know there is no upside to a politician rubbing elbows with me. I’m a pornographer. I didn’t want to hurt Bill Clinton; I wanted to help him.” Yet Flynt clucked his tongue with satisfaction at the outcome. “What I wasn’t prepared for,” he said in a garbled voice, “was as much information as I got out of that ad.”
Republican members of Congress, meanwhile, were trekking over to the Ford Office Building to inspect secret evidence alleging that Clinton had attempted to rape a woman named Juanita Broaddrick—Jane Doe No. 5—in one of the most explosive new allegations yet unveiled. Broaddrick had initially denied any sexual involvement with Clinton when questioned by Paula Jones’s lawyers. Recently, however, she had recanted to FBI agents dispatched by Starr’s office, asserting that then-Attorney General Bill Clinton had sexually assaulted her in a Little Rock hotel room in the 1970s. The Broaddrick matter fell outside Ken Starr’s jurisdiction; for that reason, it had languished. Yet this material had been thrown into OIC’s evidence boxes that had been shuttled over to Congress. Suddenly, a steady stream of congressmen, mostly Republican, were digging into this