Death of American Virtue - Ken Gormley [499]
Holmes would recall: Wesley Holmes, interview by author.
“Frank, whenever I get”: See, generally, Robert S. Bennett, In the Ring, 250–51. A variety of sources confirmed this account.
Chapter 26: Panic in the Justice Department
the conversation between: Jackie Bennett, interview by author; Schmidt and Weisskopf, Truth at Any Cost, 25.
Jackie Bennett later recalled: Jackie Bennett, interview by author.
lasting no more than: Ibid.; Schmidt and Weisskopf, Truth at Any Cost, 58.
“I’m sitting there fully conscious that”: Jackie Bennett, interview by author.
The Little Rock office: Ibid.
In Bennett’s view: Jackie Bennett, interview by author; Paul Rosenzweig, interview by author.
“I think we need”: Mike Emmick, quoted by Jackie Bennett, interview by author.
He was thoroughly unimpressed: Jackie Bennett, interview by author.
Jackie Bennett and other hard-chargers: Sol Wisenberg, interview by author.
“Nothing we were ever going to do”: Jackie Bennett, interview by author.
“We have a duty”: Schmidt and Weisskopf, Truth at Any Cost, 27.
Starr made sure: Sol Wisenberg, interview by author.
In Starr’s mind: Ken Starr, interview by author.
Linda Tripp had made clear: Ibid.
“That kind of [reflected] how”: Paul Rosenzweig, interview by author.
“moral obligation”: Ken Starr, interview by author.
“We repair frequently”: Paul Rosenzweig, interview by author.
Starr asked Jackie: Jackie Bennett, interview by author.
“We are sort of into”: Jackie Bennett’s side of phone conversation with Eric Holder, 14 Jan. 1998, attached to Robert J. Bittman to David P. Schippers and Abbe D. Lowell, Committee on the Judiciary, 18 Nov. 1998; Jackie Bennett, interview by author.
“I don’t want”: Eric Holder, interview by author.
Bennett ended his one-way conversation by: Jackie Bennett, interview by author.
If he could replay: Ken Starr, interview by author.
Some observers: See, generally, Ken Gormley, “Impeachment and the Independent Counsel: A Dysfunctional Union,” Stanford Law Review 51 (1999): 309.
The three-judge panel: In Re: Madison Guaranty Savings & Loan, Order Appointing Independent Counsel, 5 Aug. 1994. The court wrote: “It is not our intent to impugn the integrity of the Attorney General’s appointee, but rather to reflect the intent of the Act that the actor be protected against perceptions of conflict.”
In one exchange: Linda Tripp and Monica Lewinsky e-mails, 27 Oct. 1997, in Evidentiary Record, vol. 4, part 1, 980.
She wanted Monica to drive: Morton, Monica’s Story, 172–74; Linda Tripp, interview by author.
The first paragraph suggested: “Points to Make in Affidavit” (three-page document), Evidentiary Record, vol. 3, part 1, 1241–43.
Lewinsky insisted: Monica Lewinsky, interview by author, and follow-up interview by author.
“The verbiage was”: Linda Tripp, interview by author.
Yet Tripp never wavered: Ibid. Tripp later revealed that she had confirmed that the Talking Points had been physically typed on Monica’s computer. She discovered this fact “inadvertently” one day, cooling her heels in the OIC offices waiting to meet with Starr’s lawyers. On the desk in front of her were “little pieces of typed stuff” that turned out to be “extractions” from Monica’s computer. Tripp had stretched her neck far enough to see that one document was a copy of the Talking Points. A notation from the FBI on the sheet indicated that it had come from Monica’s computer. Said Tripp: “I didn’t move from my chair, but I could see.” In Tripp’s mind, this only buttressed her theory that the document “was dictated.” Tripp concluded, “She can tell you that [she wrote them] until she’s blue in the face. And if you’d spent a year and a half doing the editing for her writing, you would know that [she is not telling the truth].”
a lengthy scholarly article: Monica Lewinsky, interview by author. The paper to which Lewinsky was referring had been sent to her lawyer and kept in storage. See Willard Fox and John F. X. Gillis, Point “Talking Points” Abstract, June 5, 1998, Monica Lewinsky papers. Under oath, Monica repeated her assertion