Death of American Virtue - Ken Gormley [82]
Q: Mr. President, did you ever make any sexual advances towards Paula Jones?
A: No, I did not.
Q: Did you ever expose yourself to Paula Jones?
A: No, I did not.…
Q: Now, Mr. President, you’ve stated earlier in your testimony that you do not recall with any specificity the May 8th, 1991, conference at the Excelsior; is that correct?
A: That’s correct.
Q: If that is true, sir, how can you be sure that you did not do these things which are alleged in Ms. Jones’ complaint?
A: Because, Mr. Bennett, in my lifetime I’ve never sexually harassed a woman, and I’ve never done what she accused me of doing. I didn’t do it then, because I never have, and I wouldn’t.
Years later, at home in Chappaqua, chewing on an unlit cigar, the former president would still become angry revisiting this chapter of his life. In dismissing those Sunday morning quarterbacks (including Ken Starr) who would later maintain that he should have ’fessed up, apologized, and taken his lumps rather than letting the Jones allegations balloon into a federal case, Clinton would respond: “I wasn’t going to apologize for something I didn’t do. She said she wanted her name cleared. I did that from the moment the thing surfaced. I said she didn’t do anything wrong, and I didn’t sexually harass her. The whole story’s not true. If she was worried about the lies of the American Spectator, she would have gone after the American Spectator instead of getting in bed with them. So this was never what this was about.”
Whatever the true and complete story of what went on in the Excelsior Hotel suite—known only to Bill Clinton and Paula Corbin Jones—it was clear that Clinton became unusually defensive and incensed whenever he was forced to talk about Jones and her lawsuit. “From the beginning,” he said, setting his cigar down so that he did not chew it to pieces, “I’m not sure this thing was really level. Although I have no idea what was going through her mind.”
Paula Jones’s account of her encounter with then-Governor Bill Clinton, from the moment she went public with it, created a messy he-said/she-said battle. It provided perfect grist for a rumor mill that was already churning forward with stories about the offbeat McDougals and Vince Foster’s mysterious death.
In this case, there was plenty more to come.
CHAPTER
11
DANNY TRAYLOR: “CAN WE SETTLE FOR FIVE THOUSAND DOLLARS?”
Danny Traylor’s office files indicate that shortly after he met with Paula Jones and agreed to take her case, he visited the Little Rock Public Library and photocopied David Brock’s American Spectator article. Rather than purchase the actual magazine from the newsstand, he wanted to keep out-of-pocket costs to a minimum.
Traylor also began assembling legal research on possible claims Jones might file. His research papers reveal that he copied pages from legal form books to help draft a simple complaint, as if handling a slip-and-fall case. He highlighted Arkansas cases allowing recovery for “emotional distress,” for “outrage” (an obscure legal claim involving “injury to plaintiff’s emotional well-being”), plus a chunk of the Arkansas Civil Rights Act of 1993, which included remedies for sex discrimination.
Traylor also invested in sufficient postage stamps to write to the National Organization of Women, from which he received a “Legal Resource Kit” with the label “Sex Discrimination and Sexual Harassment.” The kit summarized the federal law regarding gender discrimination in the employment