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| To: | "Julie Hiatt Steele" | < Julie.H.S@juliehiattsteele.com > |
| From: | "Andrew Goodwin" | <abg@whidbey.com> |
| Date: | Wed, 19 May 1999 | 19:42:36 -0700 |
The following is a rebuttal to Mickey Kaus' "primer" on the Willey/Steele matter that was published in "Slate." I emailed it to them this afternoon and then posted it on Salon magazine's Table Talk/Politics in the Campaign to Rehabilitate Kathleen Willey thread.
"Mr. Kaus has done a disservice to his readers."
"All in all, Kaus' article was not a "primer" but a "pargum," a deliberately inaccurate and biased translation intended for purposes of propoganda. Still, even if he's a bad journalist, he's a good friend."
In his article on Julie Hiatt Steele, Mickey Kaus admits that he is a friend of Michael Isikoff. If his piece is any evidence, Kaus is a good friend, indeed, and Mr. Isikoff should be grateful. But in his effort to uphold the honor of his friend, Mr. Kaus has done a disservice to his readers.He has given only an incomplete account of Mrs. Willey's activities and of the testimony in Mrs. Steele's trial. Let me correct the record.
First: "Version #2." Mr. Kaus contends that Mrs. Steele changed her story not once but twice. According to Kaus, Mrs. Steele first told Isikoff that Willey had told her of the alleged Oval Office encounter with the President on the night it happened; then before "Newsweek" published her story, she told him that Willey had told her about the encounter some time afterward but that the advance was not unwelcome; and finally, in her sworn affidavit in the Jones case, Mrs. Steele stated that Mrs. Willey never told her about any such encounter until she asked Mrs. Steele to falsely corroborate it to Isikoff.
Unfortunately, this is the first time that anyone, including Michael Isikoff, has heard of this "third version." Mr. Kaus states that "Press reports--even Isikoff's account in his book--tend to omit Story No. 2, presumably for simplicity's sake." "Tend" is an inadequate word. "Always" might be more accurate--because up until now, no one has ever heard of this new twist--apparently even Michael Isikoff. As for his "presuming" why Isikoff himself does not refer to it, Mr. Kaus, as a good reporter and friend of Isikoff, could have simply called him up and asked about the alleged omission.
Second, Mr. Kaus asserts that Starr believes that "someone from Clinton's side somehow 'got' to her" [Julie Steele]. Kaus' speculates that Starr's strategy is to "[convict] Steele of lying and then getting her to 'flip' and finger whomever in the Clinton camp got to her to change her story to version No. 3."
So far so good. This is the classic organized crime prosecution strategy. Starr has tried it before without success on Herbie Branscum, Susan McDougal, Webster Hubbell, Sarah Hawkins, et al. David Hale and Jim MacDougal were "flipped" but their evidence could not be corroborated and their own backgrounds as conmen, liars, and swindlers undercut their credibility.
Starr's own inability to successfully "flip" a credible witness in five years of searching is a commentary on the quality of his investigation and on his motives, but we will leave that to another day.
Having laid out a plausible motive for Starr's prosecution of Julie Steele, Mr. Kaus then lets drop a strange sentence:
"Starr's theory may be a bit florid in its paranoia, but it's not crazy, given what we already know about current White House operations." What, the reader wonders, do we "already know about current White House operations?" Mr. Kaus does not bother to tell, preferring to let the sentence hang portentously. However, anyone who has kept up with this "scandal" knows what Mr. Kaus means. He means that this White House is known to suborn perjury and tamper with witnesses. Of course, there is no proven act of subornation of perjury and witness tampering--Mr. Starr's efforts at proving his case in his impeachment referral and in the Senate trial were deftly blown out of the water by Charles Ruff and his colleagues.
But Mr. Kaus' insinuation stands. Its reasoning is elegantly circular: "This is the sort of thing this White House would do, therefore this is something this White House did."
Mr. Kaus asserts that Starr has evidence to back up his theory. "At trial, three friends of Steele's contradicted her account." This is a fair description only if one ignores the cross-examination of those witness, most of which was unreported by major news organizations, with the exception of NPR.
The first witness was William Poveromo, a one-time boyfriend of Steele's, who testified that she told him about Willey's encounter with Clinton. However, the conversation took place after, not before, Steele's first conversation with Isikoff and therefore proves nothing about when Mrs. Willey told Mrs. Steele. Furthermore, on cross-examination, Mr. Poveromo admitted that he simply inferred that Mrs. Steele had known about the Willey-Clinton encounter from the beginning, and that Mrs. Steele had not specifically stated when she learned of it.
The second witness, Mary Highsmith, gave two different, contradictory accounts of when Mrs. Steele had told her of the encounter: First at a 1996 luncheon with Willey and Steele, and second in a spring 1997 conversation.
Unfortunately, on cross, Mrs. Highsmith proved less than reliable. She admitted that in her first six interviews with investigators she had told them that Steele told her nothing of the Willey-Clinton encounter until Spring of 1998.
She, at first, specifically denied that there was any conversation regarding the alleged encounter at the 1996 luncheon. However, on her seventh interview, she changed her story, saying that Steele first told her of the encounter in November 1997--again, long after the Isikoff interview and not in contradiction of Steele.
When she appeared before the Grand Jury, however, Highsmith changed her story a second time, that the alleged encounter had been discussed at the 1996 luncheon.
The third witness was named Amy Horan, and no mention of her testimony was offered by any major news organization that I can discover. Oddly, though, a report on cnbc described her as "believing" Julie Steele's story. Go figure.
None of these witnesses conclusively impeached Mrs. Steele's credibility. One made an inference from hearsay, the second couldn't keep her story(ies) straight, and the testimony of the third wasn't worth reporting.
Third: Mr. Kauss mentions that Mrs. Steele sought to profit from Mrs. Willey's story by selling a picture of Willey and Clinton to the "National Enquirer" for $7,000 and picking up a total of $5,500 for talking to the "National Star" and "Time."
And in a sidebar, Kaus asserts that Steele's defense "focused, oddly, on Willey's testimony during a period when she was trying to avoid giving ammunition to Clinton's attackers."
Mr. Kaus avoids mentioning what was brilliantly documented in Florence Graves' article in "The Nation": that Willey was simultaneously talking secretly to the Jones lawyers, speaking off the record to Isikoff, and peddling differing versions of her story for six figures to publishers, literary agents and tabloids, at the same time that she was telling the court in the Jones case she had "no relevant information" to give it and while she was communicating with the White House and Bob Bennett from allegedly friendly motives.
In other words, the cross examination of Willey in the trial simply laid the basis for a concerted assault had the Steele's attorneys mounted a full defense. That defense would surely have included Linda Tripp, Harolyn Cardozo, and Marlene MacDonald, whose testimony severely undercuts Willey's credibility. Mr. Kaus is surely aware of the content of that testimony.
Kaus also skirts two key facts about the cross examination of Willey reported by Nina Tottenberg on NPR: That Willey admitted that she had lied under oath "two dozen times" in various proceedings including in her direct testimony given the day before, and that she had been given two grants of transactional immunity by Starr because he had discovered she was lying to him.
A final note, while ignoring its richly detailed and documented narrative, Kaus slights Florence Graves' "Nation" article as "endless." This is a cheap shot. "The Man without Qualities" is endless. At twelve pages, the Graves piece is merely long, but well within contemporary attention spans--even, one imagines, Kaus'.
All in all, Kaus' article was not a "primer" but a "pargum," a deliberately inaccurate and biased translation intended for purposes of propoganda. Still, even if he's a bad journalist, he's a good friend.
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