Witness for The Prosecution By Mary McGrory
Washington Post
January 14, 1999; Page A03
The Senate should do what the House Judiciary Committee did in the way of witnesses -- call one, independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr. Senators should ask him about his prosecution of Julie Hiatt Steele, whom he unaccountably indicted last week. His answers would determine if he is the conscientious, conventional, traditional prosecutor of his own testimony, or the vengeful and petty bully pictured by the White House. Another charge may be added to his sheet, child abuse. Julie Steele, a single mother and a bit player in the impeachment melodrama, has an 8-year-old boy, and Starr has terrified them both by sniffing around about the legality of the adoption, which is official both in Romania and Virginia.
"Adam's having nightmares," says his mother by telephone from Richmond. "He knows what's going on. At school one of the other kids said to him, 'Your mom's in a lot of trouble, that's really cool.' "Julie Steele faces arraignment in an Alexandria court next week. If she is found guilty as charged of obstruction of justice and making false statements, she could face 35 years in jail -- and leave Adam to his own defenses. Impossible? Not when you remember that Starr kept Susan McDougal in chains for l8 months because she didn't see things his way.
How did this state of affairs come about? Through Steele's own foolishness, she is the first to admit. She lied for a friend, Kathleen Willey, she says. Others involved in the scandal have done stupid things, especially the president of the United States, who in the middle of fighting a court case on sexual harassment, embarked on an affair with a 21-year-old intern.
Steele and Willey weren't close friends, but they have known each other since l980, when Julie Steele and her husband moved to Richmond and tried to buy Willey's house. Steele says they're very different. Willey is a Democratic activist and a social striver; Steele, a registered Republican, is resolutely non-political. The relationship was what Southerners call "sometimey." She says she was "always there for Kathy, but she was never there for me and sometimes she didn't speak to me for years."
But they were on speaking terms in March 1997, when, she says, Willey called up to tell her she must speak with Michael Isikoff, the Newsweek reporter who uncovered the Monica saga. She gave the phone to Isikoff so Julie could give directions to her house. Kathleen called her later to explain, Steele said. She was "in a jam," and she absolutely needed someone to corroborate her story about a pass from the president in the Oval Office, which she says, left her outraged and humiliated. She needed help because Starr's star informer, Linda Tripp, was saying Willey was happy about it.
Steele says she was in a hurry to pick up Adam from school, so she agreed. When Isikoff came, she lied for her friend, off the record, she insists. "It was the dumbest thing I ever did in my life," she says now. Why did she do it? "I was afraid of her, I never wanted to cross her."
Some four months later, as Isikoff was writing the Willey story, she told him that she had lied to him and that what she said was also off the record.
When Starr got on her case, almost a year later, none of his agents ever asked her about the adoption. They asked her neighbors, her brother and her grown daughter before the grand jury.
Steele's lawyer, Nancy Luque, is convinced that Willey told CBS producers in the course of interviewing her for "60 Minutes" that Steele, who was insisting that Willey had never told her about the Clinton pass, was vulnerable because there was a cloud over her son's adoption.
Friends are urging Steele, who looks fragile in her pictures, to "tell Starr what he wants to hear." She doesn't intend to lie again.
"What's in it for me?" she asks. "What possible motivation do I have?" It's a question the senators might ponder.
They might also ask themselves about this persecution disguised as prosecution. What's in it for us?
As seen in a Mary McGrory column. Copyright 1999
Universal Press Syndicate. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
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