Death of American Virtue - Ken Gormley [85]
It was this same Cliff Jackson whom Danny Traylor decided to call, in search of legal guidance with respect to Paula Jones’s new case.
Jackson offered to do even better—he would provide a “national audience for the airing of Miss Jones’ complaints.” Luckily, he told Traylor, the troopers were scheduled to hold a big press conference in Washington in a couple of weeks. This was a perfect “forum” for Jones to unmask Clinton in public.
Jackson helped Traylor put together a press packet. He also assisted Traylor in drawing up a fee agreement, covering book deals, movie rights, and a host of sundries that went far beyond an ordinary lawyer-client arrangement. It also contained an odd clause, drafted by Jackson himself, by which Jones promised not to accept any “hush money, jobs or other inducements from Bill Clinton, his supporters or anyone else to cease and desist in her present effort to bring her unique information and perspective to the attention of the American people.”
Hoping to head off the matter before it got any stranger, on February 11, 1994, Traylor composed a letter on his one-man law office stationery. Addressed simply to “The President,” the letter was faxed to the White House before the scheduled conference:
Dear Sir:
I represent Ms. Paula Jones. Ms. Jones complains of your conduct at a meeting with her in a private room at the Excelsior Hotel, Little Rock.… Today Ms. Jones will characterize your conduct as the equivalent of on-the-job sexual harassment but will refrain from an explicit description as to afford you an opportunity to publicly apologize and take responsibility for your actions.
Traylor told the president that his client had been “defamed” and that “you have personal knowledge that would discredit Trooper Ferguson’s account and restore Ms. Jones to her good reputation.” He concluded as if in forewarning: “She is requesting that you publicly do so.”
Later that same day, Jones and her tiny entourage assembled in Washington at the annual convention of the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC). The weather was a nasty mixture of snow and sleet. The audience was decidedly anti-Clinton and rambunctious. Recalled Traylor of the surreal CPAC experience: “I started feeling kind of uneasy about this whole thing, I was wondering what the f——am I doing? But I had made this commitment, and we’re here, and we’ll go ahead and give it our best shot.”
The transcript of the Jones press conference reveals a freewheeling assemblage that was nearly comical at times. Even Traylor would later admit: “You know, the subject matter lends itself to levity. So there was some of that.”
Cliff Jackson, serving as emcee, first announced the launching of the Troopergate Whistle-Blowers Fund to help pay for the legal defense of the Arkansas troopers. Next, he turned the microphone over to Traylor. The Little Rock lawyer issued a disclaimer, “I’m not a political animal as such,” but quickly warmed to the CPAC crowd. Traylor told the noisy audience that at the airport, he had picked up a magazine that contained a question on the cover: “Are All Men Pigs?” When he had posed that question to Paula Jones, his client had replied, “Most men aren’t really that bad, but there is a good dose of ‘oink’ in a whole lot of them.”
After that brief effort at stand-up comedy, Traylor shifted to a stream-of-consciousness soliloquy about children in third-world countries “fighting over neck bones with dogs.” He then declared in a burst of political oratory, “We’ve got Bosnia. We’ve got a health care crisis! Mr. President, this is something that shouldn’t occupy your energy and your attention. I would encourage you to come forth. Tell the American people