A Vast Conspiracy by Jeffrey Toobin

Author:Jeffrey Toobin [Toobin, Jeffrey]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 978-0-307-82912-2
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2012-09-25T16:00:00+00:00

As Tripp drew the Starr investigators deeper into the intrigue surrounding her own and Lewinsky’s affidavits and depositions, the question remained: Why was the Whitewater independent counsel investigating the Paula Jones case? What business was this of Ken Starr’s?

Under the law, independent counsels were allowed to investigate matters that had been specifically referred to them by the Special Division and also “related” matters—a usefully vague term. The questions troubled some of Starr’s prosecutors from the moment they heard of Linda Tripp’s first phone call.

The issue didn’t trouble Jackie Bennett. A beefy former offensive tackle in college, Bennett was Hick Ewing’s counterpart in Washington. In practical terms, Bennett served as Starr’s chief deputy in the Washington office in the same way that Ewing was Starr’s deputy in Little Rock; but in a more profound sense, Bennett and Ewing were kindred political spirits as well. Bennett believed that Starr needed no additional authorization from the court to pursue Tripp’s leads, but he was prevailed upon at least to inform the Justice Department of the developments on Wednesday night. At 10:18 P.M., on January 14, Bennett caught Deputy Attorney General Eric Holder by cell phone just as he was leaving a Washington Wizards basketball game.

“We are sort of into a sensitive matter,” Bennett’s notes of the conversation begin. “Breaking. Paying close attention to jurisdictional limits—confident sufficient jurisdictional nexus. Involves people at and associated with White House.” At this stage, there was little Holder could say or do. They agreed to meet the following day, and on Thursday, January 15, Bennett led a delegation to Holder’s office that included Mike Emmick, Bruce Udolf, and a younger lawyer, Stephen Bates, who took detailed notes. Bennett began by reciting Tripp’s allegations. In Bennett’s recitation, he replaced the murky tangle of the facts with perfect clarity. The evidence was “explicit. Lewinsky feared retaliation from the powers that be. She acknowledged she had lied or would continue lying. She told Tripp that she planned to sign a false declaration.” In fact, the sting tape itself contained evidence to contradict all of these assertions, which Holder and his deputy could not have known. “The effort” at providing a false story in the Jones case “seems to go back to the President and a close associate of his, Vernon Jordan.”

“We’ve had no contacts with the plaintiff’s attorneys,” Bennett explained. This was close to an outright lie—and an important one. For one thing, Starr himself had consulted extensively with Gil Davis shortly after the Jones suit was filed and had spoken out publicly in favor of her right to sue the president. That might have been worth mentioning when, in essence, Starr’s office was about to start investigating whether Bill Clinton had committed a crime against Davis and his successors in the Jones lawsuit. But more important, Bennett had been tipped off about Lewinsky’s existence less than a week earlier by his colleague Paul Rosenzweig—who had heard about her from Marcus, Conway, and Porter. Had the deputy attorney general known about

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