A Vast Conspiracy (7 page)

From there, it was on to the allegations—the “new details about extramarital affairs.” The troopers said they “were often called upon to act as intermediaries to arrange and conceal his extramarital encounters” and they “shielded his infidelities” from Hillary Rodham Clinton. As for Gennifer Flowers, the
Times
report suggested that by denying Flowers’s accusations about their relationship in an interview on
60 Minutes
, Clinton had made the Flowers affair a legitimate story to pursue. This was, of course, the classic bootstrapping formulation that reporters often used. It may not be a legitimate subject to ask about, but once Clinton answered, the issue became his lying rather than the underlying conduct. Trooper Larry Patterson said he had never seen Clinton engaged in sexual activity with Flowers, but he had heard phone calls between them. In addition, Patterson said, following
the governor’s visits to her apartment building, “Bill would come back in a half-hour or so smelling like perfume.”

In
The American Spectator
, Brock employed a different tone from that of the
Times
’s reporters, but his conclusion on the legitimacy of the subject was the same. Press coverage of the Flowers case, Brock wrote, “quickly devolved into a tortured colloquium on whether or not infidelity was a Legitimate Issue.… Though opinion polls showed that 14 percent of the electorate would not vote for an adulterer, the indifferent public response to the Flowers story may have convinced many in the media that the public desire for ‘change’ outweighed any concerns about Clinton’s character.” There was nothing “tortured” about Brock’s interest in adultery and infidelity. In one passage that later drew a great deal of notice, Brock quoted Patterson as saying Clinton had said “he had researched the subject in the Bible and oral sex isn’t considered adultery.” (Perry actually mentioned this point in the original taped interview.)

In fact, Brock wasted little time on his rationale and devoted most of his energy simply to trying to humiliate the president and first lady, who, the author asserted, had “an inadequate sex life” with each other. “Listening to the audio monitor at the rear porch of the main house,” Brock wrote, in a passage also drawn from the first interview, “Patterson said he sat in the guard house and heard Hillary tell Bill, ‘I need to be f—ed more than twice a year.’ ” In another passage, “Clinton evidently couldn’t resist bragging about his sexual exploits. On one occasion, Perry recalled, Clinton said that Gennifer Flowers ‘could suck a tennis ball through a garden hose.’ ”

It was, of course, the obscure section of the
Spectator
story about “Paula” that prompted Danny Traylor to call Cliff Jackson. But when Traylor called him, Jackson at first brushed him off. For one thing, Jackson didn’t even represent Trooper Ferguson. For another, he had heard Ferguson tell the story to Brock, and he knew that the reporter had given an accurate account in the
Spectator
article. Traylor then recounted his client’s version of the incident at the Excelsior Hotel. This interested Jackson a great deal. In a flash, Jackson could see that Paula Jones was not a putative adversary but rather a potential friend.

The appeal for Jackson was obvious. Instead of troopers passing along rumors and circumstantial evidence of sexual misconduct by Clinton, Paula Jones could provide firsthand testimony. Jackson asked to meet
Jones, and Traylor—desperate for allies anywhere he could find them—agreed. Traylor had access to a shared suite of lawyers’ offices in the First Commercial Building, one of the handful of office towers that dot the skyline of Little Rock. Lynn Davis, Debbie Ballentine, and Jackson joined Traylor and Jones around a desk and heard her repeat her story. As Jackson remembered it, there were tears in the young woman’s eyes as she reached the end of her story. “I will never forget it as long as I live,” she said. “His face was blood red, and his penis was bright red and curved.”

At this point, though Traylor remained Jones’s attorney in name, Jackson basically took over the representation. Jackson showed Traylor a copy of the original agreement he had signed with the troopers, and together they modified it into a six-page “Agreement for Legal Services” to cover Traylor’s representation of Jones. It began with sixteen paragraphs summarizing the facts of the case to this point, each beginning with “WHEREAS.” The provisions included:

WHEREAS, the inaccurate published report [in
The American Spectator
] has caused Client great mental anguish, embarrassment, and distress in that it erroneously implies a consummated and satisfying sexual encounter with Bill Clinton, as well as Client’s willingness to continue a sexual relationship with him; and,

WHEREAS, Client, in order to clear her good name and to set the record straight, has decided to go public with the details of this encounter with Bill Clinton; and,

WHEREAS, Client, as a proponent of women’s rights and workplace security believes that all persons, have a right to security in the workplace from unwelcome sexual harassment and intimidation, especially from employers …

The contract then went on to describe the obligations of Traylor and Jones. Jones “will not accept any ‘hush money,’ jobs or other inducement from Bill Clinton, his supporters or anyone else to cease and desist in their present effort to bring her unique information and perspective to the American people.… [Jones] will not be intimidated from the present course of action by threat or coercion of any kind.” The agreement went on to empower Traylor to “negotiate and arrange … the timing, manner and terms in which her story is brought to the attention of the American people.” It also allowed Traylor to arrange “any and all television, radio or movie contracts”
and entitled the lawyer to one-third of all of Jones’s earnings from such ventures. The contract was signed and dated on February 7, 1994. (Traylor left a copy of the agreement lying around the lawyers’ suite he sometimes used, and the occupants of the suite passed it around, to much hilarity.)

The agreement left open precisely how Paula Jones was to bring her story to the attention of “the American people.” Traylor and Steve Jones wanted to make a public demand for Clinton to apologize to Paula. “If you are hell bent on having a press conference,” Jackson told them, “you have three choices. You can do it in Little Rock on your own and try to get the press to cover it. You can do it in Washington and try to get people to come. Or you can tag along with my troopers.” Jackson and the troopers were planning a press conference the following week at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Washington. “There’ll be a lot of press there,” Jackson explained, “but you have to be aware that it’s a conservative organization, and the White House will try to spin that.” Frustrated by George Cook’s brush-off and lacking any better ideas, Paula, Steve, and Danny agreed to go to Washington.

“Has everybody had an opportunity to get a press packet? Raise your hand if you did not get a press packet.”

Cliff Jackson stood at the podium on February 11, 1994, and surveyed the rows of seated journalists who were waiting, pens poised, before him. The hotel ballroom was nearly full. In addition to about fifty reporters and a half-dozen television crews, more than a hundred participants in the CPAC conference stood behind a velvet rope awaiting the beginning of his presentation. Jackson’s press conference wasn’t on the official calendar of events for the annual convention, but it was the most anticipated event of the year’s festivities.

This was the fourteenth annual meeting of CPAC, and the event had grown each year—more people, more speakers, more passion. The event gathered the hard core of the right wing of the Republican Party, and they were, at this moment, united in passionate loathing of the new president. There were bumper stickers—
WHO KILLED VINCE FOSTER?
—and doctored photographs of a naked Hillary Clinton. Jackson and his troopers were greeted like heroes.

When the time came for the press conference, Jackson had arranged for
a large sign to be placed just in front of him.
TROOPERGATE WHISTLE-BLOWER FUND
, it said, with a post office box in Little Rock and an 800 number. Seated behind Jackson to his right were Patterson, Roger Perry, and Lynn Davis. To his left were the real stars of the day: Danny Traylor and Paula and Stephen Jones.

After making a pitch for funds for the troopers—who, as it turned out, were never fired from their jobs—Jackson turned to the next part of the program. “You’ll hear the details,” Jackson said. “I’m not going to steal her thunder.” Then, instructing the reporters who were going to ask Paula questions, Jackson said, “Make it simple. And no follow-up questions.”

“Ms. Jones,” the first reporter began, “a lot of people want to hear this in your words. What was wrong in your view with what happened?”

The answer was the first time Paula Jones ever spoke in public. As her case stretched out over five years, Jones became a fairly accomplished public performer, but at this moment she was painfully awkward to behold. With her untamed Arkansas twang and her curls stacked so high that her hair bow was barely visible in the tangles, she projected a wounded innocence but painfully little sophistication. “What was wrong,” Jones said, “is that a woman can’t work in the workplace and be harassed by someone that high, and it’s just humiliating what he did to me.”

“Will you tell us in your own words something about what really happened in that room? Everybody has been vague,” another reporter said.

“I will not speak on that,” Jones replied.

The reporters, clearly perplexed, followed up. Jackson had read the relevant portion of the
American Spectator
article and denounced it as untrue, and Traylor had said vaguely that they were seeking an apology from the president. So, the journalists wondered, why weren’t they suing the
Spectator
? Why wouldn’t they say what Clinton had done? Why were they here?

“Understanding that you don’t want to go into any great detailed description of what happened,” one reporter ventured, “can you tell us just what happened in the room?”

“I’ll just put it this way,” Jones replied. “He presented hisself to me in a very unprofessional manner. I would call it sexual harassment, and that’s all.”

“Did he ask you to have sex with him?”

“A type of sex, yes.”

After another reporter harangued Jones about the details of the encounter,
Traylor jumped in. “I appreciate that concern, but you also have to appreciate our deference to the first family and you have to appreciate the sensitive nature of what we’re discussing, but I am going to talk to Paula right now and ask her to give you kind of a blow-by-blow account …”

Snickers filled the room at Traylor’s choice of words.

“…  of what transpired in the room.”

Then, as the bewildered reporters waited, Traylor and Paula and Steve Jones conferred behind the podium.

When they finished, Paula expanded her story a bit. “When I went into the hotel room, then he proceeded to take my hand and pull me over, and then slide up my legs. I pushed him back. It was just humiliating for someone of that nature, you’re supposed to trust somebody like that or I would never have went to that room.… Somehow it worked its way into, ‘You have nice curves.’ ‘I love the way your hair goes down your body.’ Garbage like that.”

Finally, the reporters grew a little giddy with the sparring. “You have mentioned that he asked you to perform a sexual act,” one person ventured. “Was this something that could have been performed without you taking your clothes off?”

The reporters groaned, and Traylor allowed, “The answer is yes.”

Finally, as Jackson said they would take only one more question, one reporter asked, “Did the governor ask you to perform fellatio?”

“Excuse me?” said Paula.

“Fellatio?” he shouted back.

With that, Jackson closed the proceedings. Back in their room, Paula and Steve were distraught. So was Traylor. They knew the event had gone badly. (The press conference received little coverage, and the White House dismissed it. “It’s just not true,” said press secretary Dee Dee Myers.)