A Vast Conspiracy Read online

  Strangely enough, 1995 proved to be a year of renewal for the Clinton presidency. The previous year had been consumed by disasters—the appointments of Fiske and then Starr, the failure of the Clinton health-care plan, and, worst of all, the midterm congressional elections. In November 1994, Republicans regained their majority in the Senate and, astonishingly, won a majority in the House of Representatives for the first time in almost four decades. In the days after the rout, the president was reduced to protesting wanly that he was still “relevant” in a city that seemed to belong to the new speaker of the House, Newt Gingrich. But guided by his resurrected Svengali, Dick Morris, Clinton co-opted some elements of Gingrich’s “Contract with America,” rejected the more extreme parts of the program, and positioned himself at the moderate center of American politics.

  The defining moment of Clinton’s comeback came in the fight over the federal budget in November 1995. At the time, Clinton chose to pick a fight with Gingrich and company over Medicare rather than “triangulate” between the congressional Republicans and Democrats. The more the president vowed to protect that prized entitlement, the higher he went in the polls. As the showdown loomed, more good news came Clinton’s way. On November 8, Colin Powell announced that he would not run for president in 1996, leaving only the elderly and uncharismatic Bob Dole as Clinton’s likely opponent. On November 14, Clinton denounced Gingrich and Dole for their “deeply irresponsible” insistence on cutting Medicare “as a condition of keeping the government open.” Clinton refused to sign their budget, and nonessential federal workers were sent home that day.

  The following morning, the second day of the shutdown, the White House had a giddy, almost euphoric feel to it. The few staffers who were allowed to come to work scrambled to complete the marathon budget negotiations in what felt like, for some, a no–grown-ups slumber party. The morning of November 15 brought the president even better news. At a breakfast with reporters, Gingrich said that he had sent a tougher budget bill to the president because of the way he had been treated on Air Force One during the trip to Israel for the funeral of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. “You land at Andrews Air Force Base and you’ve been on the plane for twenty-five hours and nobody has talked to you and they ask you to get off the plane by the back ramp.… It’s petty,” Gingrich said, “but I think it’s human.” Gingrich’s remarks caused an immediate sensation, and by noon George Stephanopoulos arranged for an official White House photograph of Gingrich and Clinton on the flight to be released to the news media. Suddenly, the president—and everyone else—could see a clear path to one of the most extraordinary political rebirths in American history.

  At exactly 1:30 P.M. on November 15, according to the computerized Workers and Visitors Entrance System (WAVES), an intern named Monica Lewinsky entered the White House. She didn’t leave until eighteen minutes after midnight the following morning.

  For Bill Clinton, the political showdown with the Republicans in 1995 paralleled another moment four years earlier. Clinton had endured several rocky months in 1991 when he was trying to make up his mind about whether to run for president. In his last reelection campaign for governor of Arkansas, he had pledged not to seek higher office, and he was struggling to climb away from that promise. President Bush was still basking in the success of the Persian Gulf War. In the midst of these troubles, Clinton traveled to Cleveland to give the keynote address at the national meeting of the Democratic Leadership Council, the collection of moderate Democrats he then chaired. Speaking from only a handful of notes, Clinton gave what was widely regarded as the best political speech of the year. “We’re here to save the United States of America,” he said. “Our burden is to give the people a new choice rooted in old values. A new choice that is simple, that offers opportunity, demands responsibility, gives citizens more say, provides them with responsive government, all because we recognize that we are community.” The national press corps gave the speech rapturous reviews. On this day, more than any other, Bill Clinton became a realistic possibility as a presidential candidate. It was a day, like the one in November 1995, of the most powerful kind of adrenaline rush an American politician can enjoy. It was May 6, 1991, two days before Bill Clinton appeared at the Governor’s Quality Management Conference at the Excelsior Hotel.

  Henry Kissinger’s observation that power is the ultimate aphrodisiac has become a cliché because it made the obvious sound original. Politicians have led charged sexual lives through all of history. In some cases, no doubt, they have used their power to coerce unwilling partners, but just as surely many women have sought them out. In the twentieth century alone, the ranks of presidential adulterers include, among others, Warren Harding, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and John F. Kennedy—a terrible president, a great president, and one viewed ambivalently by history. In other words, their sex lives revealed little about their presidencies—or their “character.” Clinton, too, strayed during his long marriage—a damning fact about him as a husband but one with no bearing on his record as a public man.

  In part because of his status as a symbol of sybaritic baby boomers, Clinton developed the reputation of a kind of Lothario, somewhere between a suave seducer and a relentless conqueror. If his dealings with Monica Lewinsky were any indication, however, both descriptions seem wrong. To be sure, few relationships would shine under the kind of microscopic attention that was focused on the president and the intern, but Clinton appeared more miserable than joyous in his sexuality—guilt-ridden, selfish, compulsive. Bob Bennett once told Clinton as much. Having surveyed private investigators’ reports and interviews with dozens of purported lovers, the lawyer told the president, “This stuff would kill your reputation.” Clinton never hid his interest in sex. His handshakes with pretty women lingered, and he leered without apology. But there was a lot more talk than action.

  Once the squalid details of the Lewinsky story broke, some of his old friends shared a rueful memory. During the early days of the 1992 presidential campaign, when Clinton’s staff was small and the circumstances intimate, one young woman confided to another that she had had an erotic dream about one of their colleagues—George Stephanopoulos, whom she barely knew. Somehow this story reached the candidate, and it prompted him to initiate a series of late-night conversations with staffers about sexual fantasies. Clinton never laid a hand on anyone during these talks in airplanes and hotel rooms, but they occurred in an atmosphere thick with sexual tension. When it was Clinton’s turn to talk, he often returned to the same scenario: that he was standing in a doorway as a woman kneeled before him and performed oral sex.

  When Monica Lewinsky gave a deposition during Clinton’s impeachment trial in 1999, she was examined by Tennessee congressman Ed Bryant, one of the House impeachment managers. Bryant decided to break the ice with a few questions about Lewinsky’s background. “Tell me about your work history, briefly,” he said, “from the time you left college until, let’s say, you started as an intern in the White House.” Lewinsky looked at the congressman as if he were crazy (not for the last time in their interview, either).

  “Uh, I wasn’t working from the time …” she said.

  “Okay,” her nervous inquisitor replied and turned to another subject. Bryant had forgotten that Lewinsky had no real “work history” before she came to the White House. Lewinsky graduated from Lewis and Clark College in May 1995 and began her internship two months later, shortly before her twenty-second birthday. (Lewinsky was six and a half years older than Clinton’s daughter, Chelsea.)

  Lewinsky had been raised in Beverly Hills, the daughter of a moderately prosperous oncologist and a socially ambitious housewife. In a home, and a town, where learning mattered less than looks, Lewinsky had spent most of her brief life obsessed with her weight. She drifted from one high school to another, from a mediocre junior college to a modestly regarded university, and made little impact anywhere she went. By the standards of most Americans, her life was privileged—expensive schools, private lessons, powerful friends, and ple
nty of money for clothes and vacations. Yet once she became famous, Lewinsky did little but dwell on her supposed privations—that her parents divorced, that a mean boy had called her “Big Mac,” that she lacked “self-esteem.” Before she became obsessed with the president of the United States, her only other serious interest in life was dieting.

  Indeed, even beyond the fact that Lewinsky and Paula Jones both entered Bill Clinton’s life at politically exhilarating moments for him, the two women had a great deal in common. Owing to differences in social class, Lewinsky appeared more sophisticated and worldly than Jones. Still, their similarities were considerable, starting with their ages (Monica was twenty-two, Paula twenty-four) and their personalities—both bubbly, outgoing, and friendly. They also lacked talent, learning, wit, great beauty, interest in the outside world, or knowledge of politics. The most important thing they shared was an apparent sexual availability. Clinton told his trooper Danny Ferguson that Paula had “that come-hither look.” Lewinsky just said to Clinton, Come hither.

  Before November 15, 1995, Clinton and Lewinsky had never had an actual conversation, though she later asserted they had engaged in “intense flirting” through eye contact. During the shutdown, all but ninety of the 430 employees of the White House were furloughed, so unpaid interns took up the slack. Lewinsky was assigned to the office of Leon Panetta, the chief of staff, just down a corridor from the Oval Office. Clinton spent most of the day negotiating with congressional leaders, and he popped in and out of Panetta’s office several times. To Lewinsky’s credit, she never portrayed herself as any kind of victim of Clinton’s advances. Indeed, her own account of that day demonstrated how hard she tried to seduce the president. Her efforts began with a now-famous gesture. Noting that Clinton was alone for a moment in Panetta’s office, she lifted her jacket and gave the president a quick glance at the top of her thong underwear, which showed above the waist of her pants. Clinton, Lewinsky recalled, smiled enigmatically.

  A little later, according to the methodical accounting of the Starr report, “En route to the rest room at about 8 P.M., she passed George Stephanopoulos’ office.” In fact, Starr’s sleuths failed to note that this venture alone was a pretty bold gesture. To cross Clinton’s path, Lewinsky had chosen the bathroom that was closest to the president’s domain in the West Wing. As she had hoped, Lewinsky found the president alone in Stephanopoulos’s office. (Stephanopoulos himself was lobbying on Capitol Hill.) Clinton noticed Lewinsky, beckoned her in, and made small talk, asking her where she had gone to school. Instead of answering, Lewinsky blurted out, “You know, I have a really big crush on you.” Clinton invited her to his private study, a few steps away. There they kissed for the first time. Lewinsky recalled breathlessly that “his eyes were very soul-searching, very wanting, very needing and very loving.” They soon parted, but before the end of the evening, Clinton found Lewinsky alone in Panetta’s office and invited her to meet him in Stephanopoulos’s office again. To prepare for this second meeting of the night, Lewinsky removed her underwear.

  There was a kind of poignancy in where Clinton chose to take Lewinsky at that point. The couple went to the tiny hallway that ran from the closed door to Stephanopoulos’s office to the closed door to the Oval Office. On one side of this hallway was a tiny bathroom, on the other a door to Clinton’s private study. It was the only place in the White House where the president could pretty much guarantee that he would not be seen by anyone. For all that Clinton may have wanted to pursue women during his presidency, his encounters with Lewinsky illustrated the logistical challenges. It took not only a determined partner, but one who didn’t mind awkward and degrading circumstances. Monica Lewinsky fit the bill.

  In the protected hallway, Clinton and Lewinsky began to kiss again, but they were interrupted by the telephone ringing in his study. In the surreal deadpan of the FBI summary of Lewinsky’s interview on the subject, the agent recounted: “The President began kissing her and she unbuttoned her jacket. The President pulled her bra up (he only unhooked her bra once in subsequent sexual contacts) and put his hand down into her pants. The President received a phone call from a Congressman or Senator. While talking on the telephone, the President kept his hand in LEWINSKY’S pants to stimulate her, thereby causing her to have an orgasm or two.”

  As the Starr report described what followed, “While the President continued talking on the phone, she performed oral sex on him. He finished the call, and, a moment later, told Ms. Lewinsky to stop. In her recollection: ‘I told him I wanted … to complete that. And he said … that he needed to wait until he trusted me more.’ ” (At that moment Clinton could not have known how right he was to worry about the consequences of what became known, delicately, as “completion.”) The Starr authors concluded their description with one of the report’s several gratuitous and cruel observations about the Clintons’ marriage. “And then I think he made a joke,” the report quoted Lewinsky as saying, “that he hadn’t had that in a long time.”

  Sixteen months later, on March 29, 1997, Clinton and Lewinsky had their final sexual encounter. But it would be a mistake to think of their affair as lasting nearly a year and a half. They never had more than sporadic contact, and they had “sex” with each other—using the term in a loose, colloquial sense—only about a dozen times. Moreover, nearly all of the physical intimacy between them took place within a few months of the government shutdown. Indeed, there was only one month when they had sustained contact. (Their relationship can be reconstructed with this kind of precision because Lewinsky possessed an extraordinary memory, and her friend Linda Tripp persuaded her to make a computerized matrix of all of her contacts with the president. In addition, the Starr prosecutors forced Lewinsky to supply minute-by-minute accounts of all of her dealings with Clinton.)

  The month of glory for the Clinton-Lewinsky relationship was January 1996. After their first encounter on November 15, they had another two days later, while the government shutdown was still in effect. Clinton orchestrated this second rendezvous by asking Lewinsky to bring him a slice of pizza. As on the first occasion, Clinton was lobbying congressmen on the telephone while Lewinsky performed her ministrations. Lewinsky, who moved to a junior position on the president’s legislative staff after the shutdown, worried that with the return of the normal White House operations, the president would forget about her. Lewinsky recalled for her friend Linda Tripp, in one of their taped telephone conversations, “You know, I mean, when this first happened, I mean, I said to my mom, I said, ‘Well, I think he just fooled around with me because his girlfriend was probably furloughed.’ ” But around lunchtime on New Year’s Eve, Lewinsky engineered a visit to Bayani Nelvis, one of the president’s Navy stewards, and she succeeded in running into Clinton. At that meeting, Lewinsky quizzed the president about her actual name—he had been calling her “kiddo”—and when he passed the tests, she performed oral sex on him. For the first time, he was not on the telephone.

  The New Year’s Eve encounter set off a month of regular contact between them—which is of interest chiefly because of what else was occurring in Clinton’s family life. The most intense month of his relationship with Lewinsky was the worst month of Hillary Clinton’s tenure as first lady. On January 4, 1996, Carolyn Huber, a White House aide and former office manager at the Rose Law Firm, discovered 115 pages of Hillary Clinton’s billing records from her time at the firm. Huber reported that she had found the records the previous August in the Clintons’ residence area at the White House, and had then taken them to her own office and forgotten about them. Starr’s prosecutors had subpoenaed the documents more than a year earlier, and the Clintons’ lawyers had been unable to produce them. As White House officials never tired of pointing out, the substance of the records generally backed what Hillary had said all along—that she had done “minimal” work at the Rose firm for Madison Guaranty. Still, no one could erase the suspicion that surrounded the documents’ mysterious vanishing and reappearance.

  The story of
the billing records hit the newspapers on Saturday, January 6. The following day, Clinton telephoned Lewinsky for the first time. She later testified, “I asked him what he was doing and he said he was going to be going into the office soon. I said, oh, do you want some company? And he said, oh, that would be great.” Later that afternoon, Clinton called Lewinsky at her desk to arrange their meeting. He said she should bring some papers by the Oval Office. He would leave his door open, catch a glimpse of her “accidentally,” and then invite her in. The operation went perfectly, and they spoke for about ten minutes in the Oval Office and then went to his private bathroom. The Starr report recounted, “The President ‘was talking about performing oral sex on me,’ according to Ms. Lewinsky. But she stopped him because she was menstruating and he did not. Ms. Lewinsky did perform oral sex on him.” In the course of this encounter, Lewinsky noticed that the president was looking at a cigar in “sort of a naughty way.” She told him, “We can do that too, sometime.”

  The next day’s newspaper brought a thunderous attack against Hillary Clinton. In a column headed “Blizzard of Lies,” in the New York Times of January 8, William Safire began, “Americans of all political persuasions are coming to the sad realization that our First Lady—a woman of undoubted talents who was a role model for many in her generation—is a congenital liar.” In his daily briefing on the day after the article was published, press secretary Michael McCurry said that Clinton had told him that if he were not president, he “would have delivered a more forceful response to that [column] on the bridge of Mr. Safire’s nose.” (The same day, a three-judge panel of the federal appeals court in St. Louis ruled that Paula Jones could proceed with her lawsuit against the president. This was only a temporary setback for Bob Bennett’s strategy of delay, because he still could appeal the issue to the full appeals court and then on to the Supreme Court—all of which would likely take enough time to push the issue past the election in November. Still, the appeals court decision served as a reminder of the potential costs of Clinton’s personal behavior—a warning, of course, he chose not to heed.)