Death of American Virtue - Ken Gormley [81]
Several significant discrepancies soon became apparent, however, between Jones’s version of events and that of Trooper Danny Ferguson, who would eventually be named as a codefendant in the lawsuit. Ferguson’s rendition cast Jones in a less-than-blameless light.
According to Ferguson’s sworn testimony, he was the only trooper assigned to the governor’s security detail that day. As Clinton munched on a doughnut, Ferguson spotted Paula Corbin working at a registration desk, recognizing her as a person who occasionally dropped off packages at the governor’s office. The trooper sauntered over as the two young ladies “were kind of giggling about the governor’s pants being too short. She [Paula] said that she thought he [Clinton] was good-looking, had sexy hair, wanted me to tell him that.” According to Trooper Ferguson, Paula giggled that “she’d like to meet [the Governor].” Ferguson meandered his way back to his boss and mentioned this overture. Clinton glanced over at Paula Corbin and invoked one of his favorite lines, telling Ferguson: “She’s got that ‘come-hither’ look.” After chatting with reporters for a while, Governor Clinton excused himself by saying that he was “expecting a call from the White House,” and told the bodyguard “to go to the car, get his briefcase because his phone messages were in there, and to get a room.”
Trooper Ferguson procured a room key from the manager, who provided a suite gratis for the governor’s use. After Clinton settled in, the governor told the trooper that if Paula Corbin “wanted to meet him” then “she can come up.” So Ferguson rode the elevator back downstairs and handed Paula the room number to Clinton’s suite.
According to Ferguson’s sworn testimony, Paula initially said she “wasn’t sure she could break away from the desk.” Ferguson replied in good humor, “It’s no big deal. I’ll just tell the governor.” But several minutes later, Paula Corbin appeared around the corner at the bank of elevators where Ferguson was stationed. He asked, “How did you get away?” Paula answered with a grin that she had told her supervisor “that she wasn’t feeling well, that she needed to go to the bathroom.” Ferguson asked, “Do you want me to walk up with you?”
Paula answered, “Yeah.”
Together, they rode the elevator to the eighth floor. When they exited, Ferguson pointed toward the room, leaving Paula to introduce herself to the governor. According to the trooper’s version of events, “I immediately turned and went back downstairs to the second floor where the governor told me to wait.”
In a key departure from Paula’s account, Trooper Ferguson would testify that he was not guarding the door of Clinton’s hotel room, nor was he present when she exited. Rather, he stated emphatically, fifteen or twenty minutes later, Corbin returned to the second floor, where he had maintained his post close to the elevators. “She was smiling,” the bodyguard testified. She also “asked me if the governor had any girlfriends.” Paula then stated “that she would be his girlfriend.”
Ferguson went on to testify that Paula had “asked for a piece of paper and a pen and wrote down her home number and told [him] to give it to Governor Clinton.” The young woman told the trooper that she was “living with her boyfriend and that if the boyfriend answered, Governor Clinton should either hang up or say that he had a wrong number.”
Ferguson stated that a few minutes later, he rode the elevator upstairs to notify the governor that it was time to leave for a photo op at the mansion. On the subject of Paula Corbin, Governor Clinton told the bodyguard, “She came up here, and nothing happened.” At that point, the trooper testified, the two men departed for the governor’s mansion.
President Clinton’s own account of the alleged encounter sheds little light on the truth