Death of American Virtue - Ken Gormley [80]
This account of her quick exit turned out to be dramatically at odds with the sworn testimony of Trooper Danny Ferguson, who flatly contradicted Jones’s testimony on several key points.
One fact, however, was not in dispute: The entire sequence of events had spanned only ten or fifteen minutes.
ONE of the principal witnesses corroborating Jones was her coworker. Pam Blackard, who considered herself a friend of Paula’s yet had no particular motive to lie, would recall Paula walking down the corridor toward her, after Paula returned from her meeting with Bill Clinton upstairs in the hotel room. “From far off I could tell there was something different,” Blackard would state under oath. “She was—she just looked different.” Blackard also recalled that Paula “was out of breath.” Pam asked, “What’s wrong?” After sitting down for a minute, Paula answered calmly, “You are not going to believe what happened.” Paula went on to recount that after she had walked into the hotel room, “he [Governor Clinton] pulled her to him and … I believe he hugged her and gave her a kiss.” After that, Paula said, she sat down “and immediately his hand went up her leg and toward her thigh. And she pushed away.” Beyond that, Blackard acknowledged, “I’m not sure what happened.”
According to Blackard’s recollection of their conversation, there was no mention of Clinton exposing himself. Nor was there a specific mention of the governor asking Paula to engage in a sexual act. Yet she did recall that Paula had said, “There’s more. It’s just too upsetting.”
When Pam asked her coworker, “Was he like mean to you?” Paula answered, “No, his mannerism was kind of just calm.”
In terms of Paula’s demeanor, as she packed up to go home after the Governor’s Quality Conference that afternoon, Blackard would testify that Jones was “not crying. Just upset.” As they walked out to their cars, Paula was “quiet. Real quiet.” Paula said, “Please don’t tell anybody.” She went on, “I can’t believe he asked me up there and immediately started to do that.”
During this period, Paula’s best friend, Debbie Ballentine, was working at an engineering firm in Little Rock. According to Ballentine’s testimony, she received a call from the switchboard operator at approximately 4:00 that afternoon, informing her that Paula Corbin wanted to see her in the lobby. Ballentine recalled: “I could tell something was wrong because she was crying. I also knew something was wrong because she wouldn’t show up at my office unannounced.” The two women ducked outside to a courtyard for privacy. Here, Paula spoke in a rapid voice and poured out her story of the encounter with Governor Clinton. When Paula got to the part about the governor dropping his pants, Ballentine interjected, “He asked you to do what?” Paula replied, “Debbie, he asked me to suck his [expletive deleted].” Ballentine said, “You’ve got to be kidding!”
Ballentine was incredulous. She waved a finger and chastised her friend: “Why did you go up there, Paula? You know how he is. You know he’s got a reputation for being a womanizer.” Paula retorted, becoming emotional, “No, I did not know that.” Ballentine then told Paula that she should notify her boss or go to the police. But Paula became “adamant.” She told Ballentine, “I’m just going to forget about it. Please, don’t ever tell anyone what happened.”
Two days later, Paula recounted a similar story to her sister, Lydia Ruthene Cathey. According to Cathey’s testimony, Paula stopped by her home after work and initiated a sister-to-sister talk in one of the bedrooms. Cathey would later testify: “We sat down [on the bed]. She was bawling, she was squalling and everything. She was upset. I asked her what was wrong. And that’s when she told me that she went up to Bill Clinton’s room. Which Danny Ferguson had took her up there. And she got up there and he [Clinton] was flirty.”
Cathey recalled, “She cried most of the time we was in there. And I just kind of cried with her because I felt sorry