THIS FAR AND NO FURTHER
A Timeline of Events Surrounding the Radical Right's Attempt to Subvert American Democracy
Written and Compiled by Black Max
1997:
May
- May: The Supreme Court rules 9-0 that the Paula Jones civil lawsuit against Bill Clinton can proceed, rejecting the argument by Clinton's lawyers that a sitting president should not have to spend his time and energies defending himself against a less-than-critical lawsuit. The Court, in what Marvin Kalb says in hindsight is an "extraordinarily naive and unrealistic decision," rules that the lawsuit will not interfere with Clinton's presidential duties. (Marvin Kalb)
- May 7: Conservative commentator Ann Coulter says on Politically Incorrect: "I think we had enough laws about the turn-of-the-century. We don't need any more." Asked how far back would she go to repeal laws, she replies, "Well, before the New Deal.... [The Emancipation Proclamation] would be a good start." (Washington Monthly)
- May 24: Clinton finally puts an end to his affair with Monica Lewinsky. Outside of any feelings of guilt he may have had, he has grown wary of Lewinsky, who he has found to have already spoken to a number of people about the affair; rumors about the two are flying around the White House. Clinton tries to soften the blow, but Lewinsky, understandably depressed and disgruntled, later refers to May 24 as "Dump Day." (Joe Conason and Gene Lyons)
- May 25: Sierra Leone's President Ahmad Tejan Kabbah is overthrown by the rebel Armed Forces Revolutionary Council, who invite the more radical Revolutionary United Front to join them in forming a new government. A multinational West African military force, led by Nigerian troops and called ECOMOG, overthrows the revolutionaries in the spring of 1998 and forcibly reinstates the Kabbah government. Further brutality by the RUF, who displays a propensity for cutting off the limbs and noses of their victims, and who calls their systematic massacres "Operation No Living Thing," is finally halted by the Lome Accords, which grants the RUF amnesty and provides for its transformation into a viable political party. The accords break down in 2000, when further violence leads Britain to evacuate its citizens and the RUF leadership is eventually arrested and the RUF dissolved as a political party. The country remains in a state of emergency.
- The interesting thing about this West African conflict for observers of American foreign policy is the participation of American mercenaries on the side of ECOMOG. The mercenaries are employed by an Oregon firm, International Charter Incorporated (ICI), led by former US Special Forces soldiers. The ICI troops were deployed primarily as support troops for South African mercenaries fighting alongside ECOMOG troops. Although ICI is a private organization, its deployment in Sierra Leone was allowed by the US government, primarily for fear that the RUF, with its support from Liberian dictator Charles Taylor, would spread dissension and violence through West Africa. A two-year investigation by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists finds that US mercenaries from over 90 firms similar to ICI have occurred in 110 countries, mostly in war-torn countries in Asia, Africa, and South America. Mercenaries are outlawed by Article 47 of the Geneva Convention, but firms such as ICI deny that their personnel are mercenaries as defined under Geneva, and argue that their role is primarily logistical and transport support for legitimate government military deployments. Since 1994, the US Defense Department has entered into 3,061 contracts with 12 of the 24 US-based PMCs (private military contractors) identified by ICIJ. Pentagon records value those contracts at over $300 billion. More than 2,700 of those contracts are held by just two companies: Kellogg Brown & Root (KBR) and Booz Allen Hamilton. Because of the limited information the Pentagon provides and the breadth of services offered by some of the larger companies, it is impossible to determine what percentage of these contracts is for training, security or logistical services. The trend by the US of relying on PMCs instead of traditional, government-authorized military forces, will escalate rapidly under the administration of George W. Bush, culminating in the presence of tens of thousands of American mercenaries operating almost without oversight in Iraq in the months and years following the 2003 invasion. The trend can be traced back to 1992, when Dick Cheney, then the Secretary of Defense, authorized a classified study of how private mercenaries could be used instead of US troops. Cheney's firm, Halliburton, which owned KBR through 2005, will profit handsomely from such deployments over the years. Other Reagan/Bush officials, such as Frank Carlucci, James Baker, Richard Darman, Carl Vuono, Harry Soyster, and even George H.W. Bush, are officials of firms that, like Halliburton/KBR, have enjoyed tremendous profits through private warmaking. (Wikipedia, Center for Public Integrity)
- May 27: In a 9-0 verdict, the Supreme Court rules that a sitting president can, indeed, be accountable in a civil lawsuit. The Paula Jones case can go forward in the federal district court of Judge Susan Webber Wright in Little Rock. The high court admonishes the Jones legal team to show maximum concern for the dignity of the presidency. (Joe Conason and Gene Lyons)
- May 28-29: Reporter Michael Isikoff goes to his editors at Newsweek about the alleged sexual affairs of Bill Clinton with two women, the unwanted advances towards Kathleen Willey and a long, consensual affair with an as-yet unnamed White House intern (Monica Lewinsky). Disgruntled Pentagon secretary Linda Tripp, a former White House staffer under George H.W. Bush, is Isikoff's primary source; literary agent and conservative provocateur Lucianne Goldberg shuttles information between Isikoff and the Paula Jones legal teams. Newsweek's editors agree to keep Isikoff's story absolutely secret for fear of leaks to other media sources. The editors decide to wait for a "proper" news peg to hang Isikoff's story on; they will wait until August.
- Isikoff has been fascinated for over a year with Clinton's sex life, but before Willey, he had nothing substantial to report. (One night over drinks, he had even passed along several names to David Brock of the American Spectator, hoping that Brock might name them in an article.) Willey was prime. She is a longtime Democratic supporter and campaign worker, and most significantly, her alleged sexual harassment took place, not in the Arkansas governor's mansion or in an Arkansas hotel, but in the office of the president. And, since Isikoff had learned about Willey from Paula Jones lawyer Joseph Cammarata, it seems likely that Willey will testify in the Jones case. Willey has spoken with Isikoff before, but is as yet unwilling to go on record. Willey's friend Julie Hiatt Steele, was initially more revealing, but though Steele verifies Willey's story, Isikoff also later writes, in his book Uncovering Clinton, that Steele described Willey as "humiliated, scared, embarrassed, and in major disbelief," an allegation Steele denies. The next morning, Steele said, Willey discovered that her husband had committed suicide (Isikoff later finds that Edward Willey had shot himself after learning he would be indicted for embezzlement). Willey suffered a nervous breakdown, and Steele had her hospitalized (a true statement, but something Steele says she never told Isikoff). Isikoff says he was troubled by Steele's vagueness on details of Willey's story. Steele herself later completely repudiates the entire story, lambasts Isikoff's reporting as "largely fiction," and, in a lawsuit against Isikoff and Newsweek, says that Isikoff knew that Steele didn't know anything concrete, and twisted her words to hide the fact that she had "no independent knowledge or awareness" of Willey's alleged encounter. She says that Willey had called her, desperate for her help, just minutes before Isikoff's arrival at her home for the interview. What Steele does not reveal until months after the interview is that she agreed to lie for her friend.
- Isikoff found documentary evidence supporting part of Willey's story -- that, when she "fled" Clinton's office, she passed by members of the National Economic Council who were waiting to meet with the president. Encouraged by the find, Isikoff sought corroboration from the other woman whom Willey said can confirm her story, Linda Tripp. On March 24, he found Tripp in a small office in the basement of the Pentagon, "a somewhat annoyed-looking, heavy-set woman with disheveled hair." Isikoff remembered Tripp from her testimony to the Senate Banking Committee during the 1995 Whitewater hearings. Her testimony, saying that she was the last to see Vince Foster alive before his suicide and with plenty of innuendo about the circumstances of his death, was dramatic and baseless. She also testified to a great deal of inside information about Foster's work circumstances and his private affairs, unusual for an employee who had only worked for Foster long enough to make photocopies of the Clintons' tax returns for him (she had volunteered to help out Foster's own secretary). Isikoff quickly learns that Tripp has a reputation as a snoop and a busybody, and that few in the White House trusted her. Tripp had adored her old job in the Bush White House, as an executive assistant to Deputy Chief of Staff Robert Zoellick, and was recommended for a job with the incoming Clinton team, whom she intensely disliked both personally and ideologically. She made it her business to inform superiors about the personal failings and shortcomings of her fellow employees, and privately derided her bosses. Being excluded from the inner workings of the Clinton administration fueled her dislike. An odd exchange during her appearance in front of D'Amato's committee identified her as possibly being an inside source for denigrating information from the White House whom staffers had nicknamed "Deepwater," who had provided a great deal of largely false information to Deborah Stone, the Citizens United associate who had written a slanderous book, Slick Willie II, in 1994, mostly regarding questions surrounding "Travelgate" and Vince Foster's death.
- In a second interview, Tripp tells Isikoff that there is a stable of girls available to Clinton night and day, a group made up primarily of low-level White House aides sarcastically dubbed "the graduates." Although that story is baseless, Tripp's hints of a Clinton affair with a 23-year old intern has more truth to it. Tripp tells Isikoff that this nameless intern (her friend, Monica Lewinsky, though Tripp holds on to the name) has performed oral sex on Clinton several times and had engaged in phone sex several other times. Isikoff is hesitant to write a story solely based on Tripp's revelations. What if the intern was nothing more than a "disturbed stalker" peddling fantasies? And, even if true, the affair was, by Tripp's account, completely consensual -- if anything, the intern was the pursuer. Isikoff was far more interested in Kathleen Willey. Unfortunately for Isikoff's intention of a story of presidential sexual harassment, Tripp portrays Willey as completely complicit in the encounter, and tells Isikoff that Willey planned the encounter and intended to become Clinton's full-time paramour.
- Isikoff, realizing that Willey may well testify in the Paula Jones case, renews his pressure on her to come forward. She still refuses, though Isikoff doesn't know that it is likely Willey is teasing him in order to sweeten any potential deal she may be able to make, and that Willey intends to write her own book. Willey later says that her literary model is Faye Brown, whose sensational tell-all book about the O.J. Simpson murders had been a quickie best-seller. Several attempts to peddle her book proposal fail; she will later testify that some of her calls to various publishers and editors had been to either cancel magazine subscriptions or solicit public relations advice in light of Isikoff's upcoming article on her. But Lynn Nesbit, of Janklow & Nesbit, remembers Willey as trying to make a deal based on her husband's death, her tale of a sexual encounter with Clinton, and Isikoff's Newsweek article. Willey seemed "desperate for money," Nesbit later recalls, but she found Willey's book deal uninteresting. After her rejections, Willey begins phoning the White House again, trying to shore up her reputation as a loyal Clinton supporter and hinting to her friend Nancy Hernreich that Michael Isikoff was readying a story that would torpedo Clinton. Hernreich informs both Clinton and Lindsey about the call.
- Tripp, like other holdovers from the Bush administration working to undermine the Clinton White House, regularly passed along inside information, gossip, and slander to conservative columnist and Fox News TV host Tony Snow, who had once edited the Washington Times's editorial page. Snow, who frequently substitutes for Rush Limbaugh on his radio show, routinely reported Tripp's complaints about the liberalism and unprofessional behaviors of the White House staff, fueling the media's distorted view that the White House is rife with proto-Communists who run around indulging in sex, drugs, and anti-American behavior. Tripp provides Snow with so much gossip that he urges her to write a book; in early 1995 Tripp will contact Snow's friend, literary agent and conservative gadfly Lucianne Goldberg, to work up a book proposal. In her second interview with Isikoff, she shows him her book proposal, tentatively titled "Behind Closed Doors: What I Saw at the Clinton White House." Goldberg had put Tripp in touch with ghostwriter and conservative newspaper columnist Maggie Gallagher, and the two had put together a proposal for Regnery Publishing. Encouraged by her friend and confidant Gary Aldrich's recent literary success (see above), Regnery wants to get Tripp's book out as quickly as possible, hopefully in time for it to impact the 1996 election. But Tripp had backed out of the deal, fearing the loss of her job and her pension even if she published it pseudonymously (under the moniker "Joan Dean"). The proposal features a fictionalized version of Willey's already-fictional tale, with Willey appearing as "Brenda" and describing her intent on seducing the president. The entire set of tales leads Isikoff to think of his formerly clear-cut story about presidential sexual harassment as now little more than "a muddle."
- Outwardly Tripp was a loyal and faithful White House employee. But rumors that Tripp was the source of many of the unfavorable press leaks from the White House, and complaints to the leaking from the White House ethics office, results in her transfer to the Pentagon. Tripp will loudly complain about the unfairness of the allegations at the time; later she admits to federal agents that she had been the source of numerous leaks and information to the press. She landed a job on the staff of Clinton lawyer Lloyd Cutler in the spring of 1994, but within a month was essentially fired, the same month that Slick Willie II, featuring Tripp's role as "Deepwater," appeared on bookshelves. Unwilling to release her entirely, the personnel office, and even top officials such as Bruce Lindsey, worked to find her another position, finally arranging a post for her at the Defense Department. Her new position as deputy director of the Pentagon's Joint Civilian Orientation Conference gives her a large raise, vaults her from the ranks of the secretarial staff, and puts her in line to eventually direct the JCOC. But Tripp is anything but grateful. She is further angered by the fact that Kathleen Willey replaced her on Cutler's staff. On her last day at the White House, she told Willey, "I will get you if it's the last thing I do."
- All of this makes Tripp anything but a reliable source, but Isikoff is looking less for reliability and more for sensation. Tripp's recollection of her first meeting with Isikoff is quite different from his. Tripp later testifies to a OIC grand jury that Isikoff fundamentally misrepresented their meeting, with Tripp insisting that she was horrified at Isikoff's stated intention of publishing Willey's story of sexual misconduct, but later is forced to admit that she lied to the jury; Isikoff's far more cautious tale of merely soliciting information about Willey is the real story.
- Shortly after meeting with Isikoff, Tripp complains to another former White House employee, Monica Lewinsky, about the interview. Lewinsky, believing that Tripp is loyal to her employers, urges Tripp to alert the White House about Isikoff's search for information. Tripp leaves messages for Bruce Lindsey asking him to meet her to discuss an upcoming media story that could damage Clinton, but Lindsey, not trusting Tripp, fails to call her back. According to Tripp, she calls Willey that evening and demands to know why she is lying to Isikoff about her encounter with Clinton. Willey coolly retorts, "You must be misremembering, Linda.... Of course it was sexual harassment. I don't know why you're now saying that I wanted it." Tripp reminds Willey that she had spent months angling for a personal meeting with Clinton, had dressed provocatively, and had done everything short of flinging herself at Clinton's feet to attract his attention. Tripp asks, "Why are you now saying that this came as a huge surprise and he assaulted you?" Tripp's testimony about Willey, the source of this dialogue, paints Willey as being "ecstatic" about Clinton's sexual attentions, and alleges that she and Willey together had plotted the encounter. According to Tripp, Willey's marriage with Ed Willey was crumbling, and "[s]he wanted to move to Washington and have an affair with Clinton." (Tripp's testimony about Willey's intentions are confirmed by another friend of Willey's, Harolyn Cardozo, who remembers Willey boasting that she wanted to be "the next Judith Exner," a reference to the girlfriend of John F. Kennedy.) Willey called Tripp on numerous evenings to chat obsessively about her one-sided attraction to Clinton, and Tripp encouraged the infatuation, partly because of her feeling that the Clintons' own marriage was rocky, and in part because she hoped Willey could gain access to Clinton's daily schedule and other inside information which she could then pass along to people like Tony Snow. Tripp says that when she saw Willey right after the encounter with Clinton, Willey, usually immaculately coiffed, had her lipstick smeared and her hair askew, and couldn't wait to get Tripp alone so she could brag about kissing and fondling with Clinton. Tripp says that Willey, finding out about her husband's suicide the next day, was oddly disconnected, hardly even mentioning his death, but instead obsessing about Clinton and worrying that her husband's suicide would lead Clinton to keep his distance from the newly widowed staffer.
- Willey, of course, portrays the encounter as an entirely unwanted sexual mauling. The two stories are interesting in their conjunction, especially in light of the entire lack of evidence of any such sexual encounter. Willey's story portrays Clinton as a sexual predator and near-rapist; Tripp's story also portrays Clinton as a sexual aggressor, and also works to discredit and impugn Willey's credibility -- the woman Tripp had vowed to "get if it's the last thing I do." Tripp testifies that she realized, with astonishment, that Willey had convinced herself that her story of an unwanted sexual advance was entirely true. Though Tripp didn't realize it at the time, Willey has another reason for telling such a story: her own dire financial straits. Her husband had lived well beyond his means, and two days before his suicide had confessed to his wife that he had embezzled $250,000 from two business clients, who had discovered his thefts and turned him in. On the day he died, his personal debt exceeded $1 million. Willey had lost her own job in the White House counsel's office, and for two years had tried unsuccessfully to gain a new post in the administration, going so far as to request an ambassadorship but noting that she would accept a job as a fundraiser. Her entreaties had resulted in several cordial notes from Clinton, but no job. In early 1996 she angrily turned down a job with the Clinton-Gore campaign because of the low salary. Since her husband's death, she has lived largely on life insurance proceeds and borrowed money. She wound up taking menial jobs at a bakery and a beauty salon, and nurses a grudge against the Clinton White House for failing to employ her at what she considers a decent salary. Her legal bills and her husband's debts are enormous.
- By the spring of 1997, Willey decides that her story of sexual harassment might be her meal ticket. She and her attorney, Daniel Gecker, begin playing the Clinton lawyers against the legal team representing Paula Jones, representing herself variously as a staunch Friend of Bill, a reluctant but potentially explosive witness for Jones, a media source to expose Clinton's sexual history, and the potential author of a tell-all book. Someone, somewhere, will pay her, she feels, either to tell what she knows or to keep quiet. (Marvin Kalb, Executive Intelligence Review, Joe Conason and Gene Lyons)
