Death of American Virtue - Ken Gormley [501]
“I’m sorry to leave”: Stephen Bates to OIC File, 15 Jan. 1998, 3.
Ken Starr huddled: Ken Starr, interview by author.
Starr argued: Kenneth W. Starr to Janet Reno, 15 Jan. 1998, attached to L. Anthony Sutin, Acting Assistant Attorney General, to Honorable John Conyers, Jr., Committee on the Judiciary, 16 Nov. 1998.
Chapter 27: Vanity to Prayer
Eric Holder had resisted: Eric Holder, interview by author; Janet Reno, interview by author.
Reno had just returned: Janet Reno, interview by author.
“The burdens of office”: The precise quote from Stevenson, delivered on July 26, 1952, in accepting the Democratic nomination for president in 1952, was: “The burdens [of the presidency] stagger the imagination. Its potential for good or evil now and in the years of our lives smothers exultation and converts vanity to prayer” (Richard Dowis, The Lost Art of the Great Speech, 192).
Bittman paged Pam Craig: Pam Roller Craig, interview by author.
Janet Reno convened: Kevin Ohlson, interview by author.
She folded her arms: Eric Holder, interview by author.
This story could blow: Kevin Ohlson, interview by author.
Eric Holder was thinking: Eric Holder, interview by author.
Just one month before the Lewinsky-Tripp: “The Decision Is Mine,” NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, PBS, 2 Dec. 1997; Robert Suro, “Reno Decides Against Independent Counsel to Probe Clinton, Gore,” Washington Post, 3 Dec. 1997, A1.
“damned if I did”: Janet Reno, interview by author.
Just as OIC prosecutors rightly concluded: Kevin Ohlson, interview by author.
“I loved a guy like”: Ben Bradlee, interview by author.
Michael Isikoff would later: Michael Isikoff, interview by author, December 29, 2009. For a fuller account of Isikoff ’s complicated position as a journalist, see Uncovering Clinton, 356–58.
Lucianne Goldberg: Lucianne Goldberg, interview by author; Lucianne Goldberg, “Spikey’s Hypocrisy,” Slate, 31 Mar. 1999. Isikoff himself has expressed ambivalence about his own role, once he was “sucked into the story,” and acknowledged that “legitimate journalistic issues linger” in that regard (Uncovering Clinton, 356).
The argument that Linda Tripp: Starr later reiterated this argument: “She [Linda Tripp] had a record with us. We knew her. We felt she was highly intelligent, extremely knowledgeable, quite well informed, and was, from all that appeared, trying to be helpful.… And she was very much in our minds because we spent a lot of time worrying about the state of mind of Vincent Foster, Jr.” (Ken Starr, interview by author).
Tripp herself would later acknowledge: Linda Tripp, interview by author.
“something more of”: Paul Rosenzweig, interview by author.
“I made that a big deal”: Linda Tripp, interview by author.
as demonstrated by: For information on the Vernon Jordan issue, Final Report In Re: Madison Guaranty Savings & Loan Association, Regarding Monica Lewinsky and Others, Robert W. Ray, Independent Counsel. Washington DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 2002, 28–29, 34 n. 113.
Especially alarming: Ken Starr, interview by author. Although Starr did not know about this link, Jackie Bennett certainly did.
Holder and others felt: Eric Holder, interview by author.
“I never had”: Sol Wisenberg, interview by author.
As one senior DOJ lawyer: A number of Justice Department lawyers, commenting off the record on this moment when the Starr investigation slid off the track, would express their views that a little prosecutorial diplomacy also might have gone a long way. Some government attorneys, speaking anonymously, said that a seasoned prosecutor might have quietly conveyed the message to White House counsel: “There are rumors flying around that certain witnesses might give untruthful testimony at the Paula Jones depositions concerning the nature of the relationship between the president and a former intern named Monica Lewinsky. We certainly hope that doesn’t happen.” That sort of gentle slap