Contempt by Ken Starr

Author:Ken Starr
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2018-09-10T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Disruption

On Monday, January 12, 1998, prosecutor Jackie Bennett was working at the OIC office about 9:00 P.M. when he got a phone call from a woman who declined to give her name.

After trying both the 825 case and the Perry County Bank case, Bennett had taken over as deputy independent counsel in Washington. As Bennett was talking on the phone, a new colleague, Steve Binhak, entered the room. A witty Assistant U.S. Attorney from Miami who had expertise in prosecuting tax fraud, Binhak had been recruited to deal with Hubbell’s continuing legal jeopardy over income tax issues.

FBI agent Steve Irons walked in and Bennett waved him over.

“So, let me get this straight,” Bennett said into the phone. “You’ve tape-recorded calls from a woman who had an affair with the president. She’s lied about it in the Paula Jones case, and is trying to get you to lie about it. People are helping her get a job to buy her silence. And Vernon Jordan is involved in it.”

Washington lawyer and power broker Jordan was known to be the president’s close friend. Bennett later told me Binhak’s eyes were “like saucers.”

Jackie asked her a few questions. Then the woman dropped a bomb: “You know me. I’m Linda Tripp. I was a witness in the Vince Foster case.”

Tripp had been Foster’s executive assistant. Now she truly had Jackie’s attention.

Like first responders, Bennett, Binhak, Irons, and Sol Wisenberg, a brilliant career prosecutor from San Antonio who often worked late, jumped into Sol’s van and headed to Tripp’s home in suburban Maryland, listening to Sol’s Ralph Stanley cassette as they drove.

Upon their arrival at about 11:45 P.M., my four colleagues sat and talked with Linda deep into the night. None of them had been involved in the Foster death investigation; thus, they were assessing her credibility for the first time. They found her believable, though they were unsure about her motives.

A veteran of the Bush administration, when she worked in the White House counsel’s office, Linda had continued in that role for Vince Foster. From the beginning, Tripp had been appalled at the Clintons’ arrogance and treatment of other White House staff. Plus, she was a reminder to everyone around her of Foster’s tragedy. After his death, she had been reassigned to a political-appointee job in the Pentagon.

Tripp explained that Monica Lewinsky, who she described as a Beverly Hills child of privilege in her early twenties, had served as a White House intern, starting in July 1995. She had struck up a relationship with the president. The affair had started during the government shutdown in November 1995, when interns manned the phones and delivered documents. Monica, then twenty-two, and Clinton began having sexual trysts in a hallway off the Oval Office. After her internship was over, Lewinsky got a job in the West Wing and continued to see the president whenever possible.

However, after coming under the watchful eye of Hillary’s hatchet person, Evelyn Lieberman, Monica had been reassigned in April 1996 to a job across the Potomac.

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