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:
November
November 1997
"The Jews' motto is 'never forget, and never forgive.' One can't agree with the way they've turned spite into welfare billions for themselves, but the 'never forget' part is very sound." -- Council of Conservative Citizens, Winter
- November 4: AP reporter Peter Yost releases a story detailing the discovery of a certified check made out to Bill Clinton and found in the trunk of an abandoned Mercury outside a Little Rock transmission shop. The check, for $27,600, had been written by Madison Guaranty and made out to Clinton, but never been endorsed, though it was twice stamped for deposit, once by Madison Guaranty and again by Union National Bank. It was lost by Henry Floyd, the vehicle's owner, a former Madison employee who had put a number of documents in his trunk to take to storage, but forgotten and left in the car. The imprisoned Jim McDougal exults that prosecutors will use the check to "hang" the Clintons; the press touts the check as certain proof that Clinton perjured himself under oath. The questions no one ask, at first, is why Clinton would have lied about borrowing money from Madison, certainly a legal transaction, and why, if Clinton made such a loan, had he never signed the check? Under normal circumstances, as an Arkansas Democrat-Gazette reporter confirms, a check for such a large amount would not be honored unless signed by the payee in the presence of a bank official. The 1995 Pillsbury Report documented that Jim McDougal himself, and not the Clintons, owed McDougal's bank $27,600 in November 1982, when the check had been written. The report shows that McDougal had paid the debt on November 18, 1982, with $27,600 from "an unstated source." It appears almost certain that McDougal had drawn a $27,600 check on his new Madison Guaranty savings and loan to repay a loan he had made through himself through his bank in Kingston, Arkansas a year before. Then why would McDougal have written Bill Clinton's name on the check? Possibly because Union National loan officers wouldn't have been happy to see McDougal, who owed that bank over a half-million dollars over the purchase of Madison Guaranty, writing checks to himself from the S&L they had just loaned him money to buy. Far better to have a check from the newly elected governor to repay the loan.
- Worse, FBI agent Michael Patkus, investigating the check and its circumstances, realizes something else. One of McDougal's first accusations against Clinton in August 1996 had been over a $25,000 loan he says Clinton took from Madison, a loan Clinton denied under oath ever making. Patkus had spent months trying to prove the loan's existence. McDougal's story is that he hand-carried the loan application to Clinton, who had casually signed the document while leaning against a doorframe in the governor's office. Unfortunately for McDougal's story, Clinton was not governor in November 1982 -- his predecessor, Frank White, had not yet left office. Therefore McDougal's story could not be true. Confronted by the discrepancy, McDougal tells Patkus and OIC prosecutor Hickman Ewing that he now remembers Clinton signing a "backdated" loan application several months later. McDougal says that he later destroyed all of the loan documentation. Patkus refuses to believe McDougal's story. At Susan McDougal's 1999 trial for contempt of court, Patkus testifies that in the matter of the loan and in other matters, he finds McDougal dishonest. Patkus also testifies that McDougal was at the time under pressure from state and federal bank regulators to "clean up" Madison's chaotic loan portfolio by removing insider deals like the loan to himself; Patkus believes that McDougal created a "phantom loan" to Clinton for just that purpose. He says there's no evidence that Clinton ever took a loan from Madison, and that, without further confirmation of the stories from McDougal and fellow Clinton accuser David Hale, he wouldn't feel comfortable indicting anyone.
- Though the check's discovery was touted in the media as "proof" of Clinton's perjury, not a single media outlet reports the outcome of the check investigation. However, the story is well known in the OIC, forcing Starr to conclude that any hopes he may have still had of indicting Clinton for perjury have vaporized. In 1999, Starr tells CNN's Larry King that in December 1997, his office realized that it had no basis for any indictments of either of the Clintons over any financial misdoings, or perjury pertaining to their testimony about their finances. As a result, he tells King, the OIC determined to go after Clinton's sex life instead. (Joe Conason and Gene Lyons)
Miami election fraud presages 2000 election fraud
- November 6 - on: A hotly disputed mayoral election in Miami results in the narrow victory of Republican Xavier Suarez over Democrat Joe Carollo. Suarez apparently wins due to absentee ballot fraud. Because of the charges, and the additional findings that dead people and convicted felons cast ballots, the Republican administration demands changes. Nothing is done to correct the absentee ballot fraud that placed a Republican in office, but the findings that the majority of felons who illicitly voted were Democrats lights a fire under the state Republicans. Weeks later, the state legislature will enact a sweeping antifraud bill that calls for stricter enforcement of Florida's Jim Crow-era prohibition of convicted felons being allowed to vote, and states that "the division shall annually contract with a private entity" to maintain a list of deceased individuals still on the rolls, those adjudicated "mentally incompetent" to vote, and, of course, felons. The appropriations committee will allocate $4 million to the project; no money will be appropriated from the state for voter education in 1998, 1999, or 2000.
- After bids are taken, a Boca Raton company, Database Technologies (since merged with ChoicePoint as of the spring of 2000) is selected to handle the chore. DBT estimates the cost at $4 million, knowing somehow that this was the exact amount the state had provided for the job (the job had previously cost around $5700). "There has been four million dollars allocated by the state for this project," DBT senior vice president of operations George Bruder wrote to his boss, CEO Chuck Lieppe, in an e-mail. "The bid we are constructing will have three different levels for price (a little bird told me this will help)." The little bird is correct. DBT comes highly recommended for the job by a now-defunct conservative advocacy group called the Voting Integrity Project, which supports "voting rights" by fighting "motor voter" registration and other programs to encourage minority voter participation. Leon County Ion Sancho is one of many state and county officials who are queasy about the felon lists DBT will provide. "We were sent this purge list in August of 1998," Sancho recalls. "We started sending letters and contacting voters, [saying] that we had evidence that they were potential felons and that they contact us or they were going to be removed from the rolls. Boy, did that cause a firestorm." One of those letters will be sent to Sancho's friend Rick Johnson, a civil-rights attorney, who is no felon. "Very few felons," Sancho points out, "are members of the Florida bar." In 2000 Sancho grills the Division of Elections' assistant counsel Emmett "Bucky" Mitchell and demands to know why the list contains so many names of innocent people. "Bucky told me face-to-face that the Division of Elections was working on the problem," recalls Sancho, "that it was the vendor's [DBT's] problem, and that they were telling the vendor to correct it." But ChoicePoint's chief marketing officer James Lee says the state did just the opposite. "Between the 1998 run and the 1999 run, the office of elections relaxed the criteria from 80 percent to 70 percent name match," says Lee. "Because after the first year they weren't getting enough names." So, armed with a database of felons supplied by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE), DBT programmers compile a list of people ineligible to vote. Many of the names on the list are only partial matches, and are scrounged from Florida voting rolls and a variety of other reliable and not-so-reliable sources. Middle initials are ignored, as are suffixes such as Jr. and Sr. In 2000, Willie D. Whiting Jr., pastor, will not be allowed to vote because Willie J. Whiting was a felon. First and middle names could be switched around; nicknames are perfectly acceptable. Variants of last names are thrown into the mix. Decorated Gulf War veteran Willie Steen will be denied his right to vote in 2000 because his name is similar to felon Willie O'Steen. In March 1999, DBT project manager Marlene Thorogood expresses concern that the new parameters might result in "false positives" (i.e., wrongly included people). Bucky Mitchell will respond, "Obviously, we want to capture more names that possibly aren't matches and let the [elections] supervisors make a final determination rather than exclude certain matches altogether." In the judgement of the Florida department of elections, everyone on the list is guilty until proven innocent.
- In May 2000, a new list is given to election supervisors, including the names of 8,000 former Texas residents. Unfortunately, none of the former Texans are felons. DBT accepts the blame and corrects the problem, but that leaves the question of why the names are on the list in the first place, especially since Texas is one of the 43 states that automatically restores the rights of felons to vote once they have served their time. According to two separate Florida court rulings rendered before the 2000 election, prisoners who'd had their rights restored in other states retained them when they moved across state lines to Florida. Instead, the Division of Elections was advised by the Office of Executive Clemency to have DBT include out-of-state ex-felons residing in Florida, even those from so-called automatic-restoration states. In order to vote, these ex-felons would have to show written proof of clemency from their former state, or re-apply for it in Florida. Janet Modrow, the state's liaison with DBT, writes to Mitchell, "On the good side, we can add all the [states] that do have automatic restoration because they will have to get Florida clemency. On the bad side, you will still have to check with those [states] that formally give clemency for each hit as before." Worse, the clemency data itself is sloppy. Much of the information exists on wads of 3-by-5 index cards kept in shoeboxes, and thousands of names of felons who have had their rights restored under Governor Askew between 1975 and 1978 are still listed. And the information provided by the FDLE? It's a list of people arrested, not convicted. As a result, says Sancho, "they pulled up the entire universe of all potential felons that they found in everybody's database."
- In late May 2000, a "corrected" list goes out. Linda Howell, elections supervisor of Madison County, finds her own name on it. In Monroe County, the supervisor, Harry Sawyer, finds his father on the list, as well as one of his seven employees and the husband of another; none of them were felons. As a result of the mistakes, a few counties, including Broward and Palm Beach, decide not to use the list. Sancho, whose list had 697 names on it, went through them one by one, scrupulously checking. "We went for a five-for-five match," says Sancho. "Those were criteria such as name, birth date, race, sex, Social Security number. When we applied that to this list of 697 that we got in 2000, I could verify only 33." Most county supervisors take the list at face falue. In Bay County, where the list contains approximately 1,000 names, elections officials run with it. Once he gets the list, Larry Roxby, deputy elections supervisor, will recall, "it was pretty much a done deal." In Miami-Dade, whose lists contained about 7,000 people, supervisor David Leahy sends out letters, informing people of their felony status and advising that they could come in for a hearing if they wanted to appeal. If he doesn't hear back from them, these names are simply struck. Throughout the state, many of these letters came back "undeliverable." Small wonder: the addresses provided by DBT were often out-of-date.
- Why is Florida so eager to pay $4 million for such shoddy work? According to a 2001 class-action lawsuit brought by the NAACP and many African-American voters, it is because DBT, GOP Secretary of State Katherine Harris, and a number of individual supervisors are working to systematically disenfranchise black voters. Beyond the unreliable matching criteria the state had demanded, beyond the flawed data it had provided from the Office of Executive Clemency and the FDLE, evidence and testimony from the suit suggests that the state had failed to properly monitor whether DBT was fulfilling its contract. For example, the 1998 contract stipulates "manual verification using telephone calls and statistical sampling." But DBT vice president George Bruder will testify, "I am not aware of any telephone calls that were made." The suit is settled out of court, in an agreement that purports to rectify the problem; the state agrees to restore the names of out-of-state felons from "automatic restoration" states, and DBT/ChoicePoint agrees to run the names from the 1999 and 2000 purges again using stricter criteria, and to provide to Florida's elections supervisors the names of people who most likely shouldn't have been on the list. The list of potentially wrongly targeted voters came to 20,000 -- more than a third of DBT's May 2000 list. The supervisors, in turn, were supposed to restore these names to their voting rolls, had they been wrongly purged. As of November 2004, Jeb Bush's government has, in the words of Vanity Fair, "utterly failed to uphold its end of the bargain. Virtually none of the 20,000 people erroneously purged from Florida's rolls have been reinstated in any formalized way. In September 2003, DBT and the state did manage to finish vetting the list and to send out a so-called filtered list to the elections supervisors to 're-evaluate.' No deadline was imposed for restoring the innocents, and little direction on the subject came from the state. If supervisors wanted to restore the names, they could; if they wanted to ignore the task, they could do that too. Some supervisors have worked with the filtered list to restore names. But others have put it aside; as of June, more than a few had no recollection of ever receiving it. (After prodding from advocacy groups, the state re-sent the list.) In Miami-Dade, the filtered list had more than 17,000 names. Of those, to date, only 14 voters wrongly identified as felons have been restored to the voting rolls."
- And the lists aren't done: in May 2004, the Division of Elections attempts a new purge, with a list of 48,000 names. Sancho asks his staff to do a preliminary examination of the names and find dozens of names right off who are not felons. Flying in the face of new legislation from an embarrassed Florida Congress mandating that private companies have no input in any such new listings, the list is compiled with the help of a company called Accenture, a part of accounting firm Arthur Andersen, currently under investigation for its part in the Enron bankruptcy scandal. Accenture itself is a heavy contributor to Republican politics in Florida, and is under investigation for bribing foreign officials. Although Republican officials try manfully to keep the list away from the public, pressure from such groups as the ACLU and People for the American Way finally get the list into the hands of, among others, the Miami Herald, who promptly finds that thousands of the people named on the list have already been granted clemency, and that the list is skewed wildly towards Democrat registrants. Only 61 of the names -- .1% -- are Hispanic, and investigation shows that Hispanic names were deliberately left off the list (the Florida GOP is pushing hard to make inroads in the local Hispanic communities). On July 10, just days after the Herald begins publishing its findings, the list is scrapped. However, the state has informed election supervisors that it is their responsibility to bar ex-felons from voting in November 2004. (Vanity Fair/Make Them Accountable, Miami Herald/Joshua Leinsdorf)
- November 12: Paula Jones gives her testimony in her lawsuit against Bill Clinton; her testimony is incoherent and contradictory, and is widely considered disastrous by lawyers on both sides of the case. Her timeline of events is contradicted by the facts, and she has no witnesses to bolster her story of Clinton's unwanted sexual advances. (Her "best" supporting witness, coworker Pamela Blanchard, is unable to provide much in the way of substantiation.) Jones's contention that, because of her complaint of Clinton's misconduct, her career has suffered, comes to pieces under examination: she is forced to admit that she received the same cost-of-living raises as everyone else, and her personnel records confirm that she is a lousy employee, scoring a mere 45% on a grammar test, missing a third of the questions in a simple alphabetizing test, and is a poor typist. Even so, her evaluations have been uniformly satisfactory, and received pay raises commensurate with her position as a secretary. She denies even being aware of two merit pay raises she received, and says she didn't know she had been promoted two pay grades within months of the alleged encounter. In her legal pleadings, she claimed to have been shunted to a "dead end" position, forcing her to move to California; under oath and confronted with the evidence, she admits that she was never given a downgraded position, and that she moved to California as part of her husband's attempt to secure an acting career. She had made no transfer requests and filed no grievances. Her biggest complaint seems to be that no one gave her flowers on Secretary's Day. "I'm the only one out there that did not get any flowers," she complains, "and everybody noticed it and was coming around saying, 'That is so cruel of them. I cannot believe they did that to you.' Now what other reason would they do that? Just to leave me out intentionally knowing that I'm a secretary? ...There had to be a reason for it. I know I wasn't doing anything wrong. So that's why I feel that there were things -- somebody knew something."
- Coworkers and supervisors testify that Jones had nothing but good things to say about Clinton, and never mentioned anything about an unwanted sexual advance. They testify about her excitement over meeting the then-governor and shaking his hand. "she was very excited about it," her supervisor recalls. "It was a big day in her life." Another coworker remembers Jones calling Clinton "gentle and sweet" and being excited about meeting Clinton at the Excelsior Hotel during the AIDC conference. The coworker, receptionist Carol Phillips, recalls Jones often asking for Clinton's schedule so she could see him, and remembers her being excited about being mailed an autographed picture of Clinton. She had even been reprimanded by her superiors for handing around the vestibule outside his office.
- The testimony from other supposed victims is also less than helpful. Juanita Broaddrick, who once claimed to have been raped by Clinton, submits a deposition saying that the entire incident never happened. Kathleen Willey continues to insist that Clinton sexually assaulted her in his White House office, is vague and contradictory, shuffling details and lying about the fact that after the so-called assault, she had attempted to get a job with the White House (which later issues evidence of nine letters and twelve phone calls from Willey soliciting employment). Clinton's lawyers tear Gennifer Flowers's story to shreds. Flowers is forced to admit to making over $500,000 selling various versions of her story of a 12-year affair with Clinton, but cannot name a single time and place where she and Clinton had any encounters. Another woman accused by right-wing sources of being a Clinton victim, Dolly Kyle Browning, testifies that Clinton, her childhood neighbor, had been nothing but kind and warm to her and her family. When asked if he ever made sexual advances towards her, she replies, "Absolutely not."
- Several state troopers testify about their "knowledge" of Clinton's sexual rampages, but under cross-examination their stories contradict one another. Evidence that they had secretly made profitable deals for their stories further shatters their credibility. One trooper, Danny Ferguson, says that he never knew anything about Clinton's so-called affairs, and says that Los Angeles Times reporter William Rempel had browbeaten him to make allegations against Clinton, and when he refused, put words in his mouth when reporting about the troopers' allegations. L.D. Brown bragged that he had ferried Clinton all over the country for assignations, and had himself enjoyed the favors of some of Clinton's women, but under cross-examination, cannot recall a single name, place, or date of any of these encounters. Another federal employee, Buddy Young, testifies that Brown has nursed a bitter grudge against Clinton ever since Clinton refused to put him in charge of the Arkansas crime lab, and that Brown had been fired from his post as president of the state troopers' association for spending the summer partying with lobbyists and state legislators. Young tells the court about Larry Patterson's obsession with "getting in women's britches," and says that Patterson's lurid tales of Clinton's sexual encounters were merely figments of Patterson's dirty mind. Patterson's own story of watching Clinton receive oral sex in parked cars is proven impossible by evidence from Patterson's own guard shack. Patterson is forced to admit that he has received large financial payments from Arkansas lawyer Cliff Jackson, as well as profiting handsomely from his appearance and tours connected to the Clinton Chronicles videotape. Patterson's testimony that he has never said a word about Clinton's involvement with drugs and murder is directly contradicted by numerous videotapes and speeches Patterson made; Patterson blames all of those stories on his friend Larry Nichols.
- All in all, the testimony appears to have destroyed the Jones case; Clinton's lawyers believe that the case will implode so thoroughly that Monica Lewinsky will never be called to testify. (Joe Conason and Gene Lyons)
- November 13: In retaliation for UNSC Resolution 1137, which continued violation of its obligations and imposes a travel ban to penalize Iraqi officials involved with non-compliance, Iraq orders all US nationals working for UNSCOM to leave immediately. The Chairman decides all UNSCOM personnel should leave and the President of the Security Council issues a statement condemning the action. Negotiations between the UN, Iraq, and the Russian Federation result in an agreement allowing the inspectors to return. (UN/Electric Venom)
Accusations that Clinton gave waivers for burial at Arlington National Cemetery proven false
- November 18: Insight magazine, a far-right publication owned by the Moonie-owned and operated Washington Times, smears Bill Clinton by falsely accusing him of allowing friends and campaign donors to be buried at Arlington National Cemetery. (The requirements for being buried in Arlington, the most prestigious military cemetery in America, are stringent.) The article, by managing editor Paul Rodriguez, alleges that "dozens of big-time political donors or friends of the Clintons" received waivers to have themselves or family members buried at Arlington. The article fails to mention a single name. Insight forwards advance copies of the article to right-wing talk-radio hosts across America, giving them a chance to mount accusations against Clinton without warning. And the accusations do fly. On the same day, Republican House member Terry Everett, chairman of the House Veterans Affairs Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, issues a press release "reaffirming the interest of his subcommittee" in the Arlington National Cemetery allegations. Everett says that his subcommittee had "found some questionable waivers made in recent years." With the imprimatur of Congressional interest, not only do right-wing media mavens repeat and embellish the Insight charges, but the charges become front-page news in the mainstream media and on cable news broadcasts. A November 20 denial by the White House gets little play.
- It doesn't take long for the accusations to become a full-blown scandal. Republican National Committee chairman Jim Nicholson says on November 20, "This has to represent one of the most despicable political schemes in recent history. The ground at Arlington has been sanctified by the blood of those who served with pride, fought and died, and gave themselves to preserve the American ideal of liberty. For this hallowed ground to be so debased in the pursuit of campaign cash is a perversion of common decency." House Speaker Newt Gingrich adds his voice to the chorus and threatens to subpoena people. Republican senator Arlen Specter releases a letter he has written to Clinton that asks him to "respond personally to the public" regarding the allegations, and adds, "it appears that this is a matter which will warrant a Committee hearing."
- The facts, as they so often do in matters of Clinton scandals, tend to get lost in the screaming and manufactured outrage. On November 21, Secretary of the Army Togo releases a statement that is all but ignored by the mainstream press. West lists the 69 individuals who have received waivers to be buried in Arlington since 1993, when Clinton became president. Clinton personally issued four waivers, for the following people: former Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall; Elvera Burger, the widow of Supreme Court Justice Warren Burger; J.W. Seale, a US Army veteran killed while on an undercover mission in Peru as a Drug Enforcement Agent; and Henry Daly, a Marine Corps veteran killed in the line of duty while serving as a Washington, DC, policeman. The other 65 waivers were granted by West, the vast majority of those being spouses who wished to be buried with their husbands, or to individuals like Marshall, whose distinguished military or other government service warranted exceptions. Only one of the 69 was a donor to the Democratic National Committee: former ambassador Larry Lawrence, whose family received permission for Lawrence to be buried in Arlington because of Lawrence's distinguished record as a Merchant Marine sailor during World War II and his long career in the Foreign Service. Not one single waiver was issued to a Clinton family member or friend, and except for Lawrence, not one waiver was issued to anyone who had donated a dime to the Democratic Party. (Nicholson attempts to extend the smear to Lawrence, calling him "a major Democratic donor who never served in the Armed Forces.")
- On November 25, the Washington Post's Howard Kurtz writes, "Within 48 hours, a story that did not include a single named source ricocheted from a conservative magazine to the talk radio circuit to Capitol Hill, and from there to such mainstream news outlets as the Washington Post, New York Times, Los Angeles Times, USA Today, and CNN. The administration convincingly knocked down the charges Friday but failed to bury the controversy."
- Everett later admits, indirectly, that he leveled false accusations against Clinton when he admitted knowing about the 69 waivers since June 1997. Everett also admits to having never checked the names against Federal Election Committee records to corroborate whether any had actually been political donors. Nicholson never retracts, or explains, his accusations. No one ever holds Insight accountable for its bald-faced lies, or even asks Rodriguez or the other Insight editors where they got the idea about the "dozens of big-time political donors or friends of the Clintons" who supposedly received waivers to be buried at Arlington. Jonathan Broder, a reporter for Salon, writes that he has tried repeatedly to contact Everett, Nicholson, and Rodriguez, who have uniformly refused to return his calls. "And why should they?" Broder asks. "They've already accomplished what they intended -- to sow another seed of Clinton scandal in the American public's mind. Who cares if it's true? The real point is, will it stick?" (Salon, Washington Post/MediaMatters)
- November 20: Linda Tripp calls reporter Michael Isikoff with remarkable news. She has a taped phone conversation with Monica Lewinsky that features Lewinsky discussing a blue dress of hers with Clinton's semen stains upon it. Tripp suggests that she and her cohort, literary agent Lucianne Goldberg, can steal the dress and deliver it to Isikoff for DNA testing. "What in God's name are you talking about?" Isikoff retorts. Tripp knows about semen and DNA from Goldberg, who represents former Los Angeles detective Mark Fuhrman, notorious for his involvement in the O.J. Simpson case. Intrigued in spite of himself, Isikoff says that the biggest stumbling block would be to obtain a sample of Clinton's DNA for comparison. Tripp remains fascinated by the possibilities engendered by the blue dress. She even makes plans to steal it herself from Lewinsky's apartment, though her plan never bears fruit. When Lewinsky tells Tripp that she plans on having the dress dry-cleaned, Tripp nearly panics. After telling Lewinsky that she should preserve the dress in case she ever needs evidence, an argument Lewinsky rejects, Tripp plays on Lewinsky's self-image by telling her the dress makes her look "really fat." Lewinsky decides to keep the dress in her closet. (Joe Conason and Gene Lyons)
- November 21: A UN Emergency Session discusses ways to make the Iraqi weapons inspections more efficient. The session concludes that there is no evidence of nuclear activity, but notes a systematic effort to conceal, obstruct and restrict information to interfere with UNSCOM's investigation. Two missiles, numerous chemical and biological delivery warheads, and chemical munitions are unaccounted for. UNSCOM is also awaiting updated information on the newly-disclosed biowarfare program. Later in the year, Iraq blocks access to more sites, claiming they relate to national security or are Presidential Palaces or foreign ministries. (UN/Electric Venom)
- November 21: Paula Jones's attorney David Pike calls Linda Tripp to inform her that the Jones legal team intends to subpoena her to testify. Tripp has been agitating for weeks to get subpoenaed, with help from Tripp's confidante and cohort Lucianne Goldberg. Goldberg uses her connections with the Jones "elves," particularly Richard Porter, and conservative Chicago financier Peter Smith, to arrange the subpoena. Porter, after informing his colleague George Conway of the yet-unrevealed affair between Clinton and Monica Lewinsky, makes the preparations. The Jones lawyers have not been interested in Tripp's testimony, fearing that she will damage the credibility of their star witness, Kathleen Willey, but the revelation about Monica Lewinsky changes their thinking. Pike, already briefed by Goldberg, elicits more information from Tripp about the Clinton-Lewinsky affair, and Tripp tells Pike about her tape-recordings of her conversations with Lewinsky. The plan is for Pike to write such a vague subpoena that Tripp, though "compelled" to testify, will not have to surrender the tapes. They agree on a December deposition date, and as his final word of advice, Pike tells Tripp not to tell her own lawyer, Kirby Behre, of the deal. (Behre is a Democrat whom Tripp had retained years before on the advice of White House staffers; she does not trust him any longer, but won't fire him for fear of alerting the White House that she is up to something.)
- After receiving the subpoena in the mail, Tripp takes both the subpoena and the audio tapes to Behre, without informing him of her deal with the Jones lawyers. Behre is aghast at the existence of the tapes, knowing that Tripp has committed multiple felonies in making them. He takes the tapes from Tripp and tells her to stop taping if she wanted to stay out of jail. Behre reads the subpoena and laughs at how badly it is written: he tells Tripp that it has been so "poorly" drafted that he can legally withhold the tapes. Tripp replies, "Oh. Isn't that great?" (Joe Conason and Gene Lyons)
