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Dispatch From the Flytrap Endgame

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By Jodie T. AllenPosted Friday, July 31, 1998, at 3:30 AM ET

Here in Washington the air is still but thick with portent. We are in the eye of the storm (or let us imagine so for drama's sake).
I write this in my capacity as Slate's last-ditch political correspondent. Our regular political correspondent, David Plotz, is vacationing in Vermont; our erstwhile political correspondent, Jacob Weisberg, has gone mushy over cultural stuff; and our Chatterbox correspondent, Walter Shapiro, is attending a conference in Boston on Calvin Coolidge's legacy (true fact). And while Slate is taking a semi-vacation, events--not for the first time--have refused to cooperate. Indeed, the nation's capital is engulfed in the most portentous political happening since Monica Lewinsky fluttered onto the stage last January.
Pressed into service, I set out looking for bang-bang (as the war correspondents say). I head for ground zero: the White House, where I am not surprised to find that the northwest gate, where reporters and people attending meetings normally enter, has been blocked off by a 25 foot high barricade. It seems appropriate. I find the alternative entrance and am somewhat surprised that the guard actually issues me the promised temporary press pass. (The last time I was here it was for an invitation-only meeting. We editors do not often mingle with the working press.)
The White House lawn is sweltering. Sparse camera crews are loitering along the western perimeter, and CNN's Wolf Blitzer is getting ready to tape a spot. He waves at me and asks what I'm up to. I tell him I'm not sure but would greatly appreciate any advice he could give me. He says we'll talk when he has a break.
I'm loaded with questions. This is an important moment. It's not just that Monica has cut a deal with Ken Starr. Or that (reportedly) the deal includes testifying that, while the president did not tell her directly to lie ("as your commander in chief, Monica, I want you to go out there and lie"), she and Clinton did chat at some length about how she could avoid telling the truth. After all, that's just her word against his and, as history has shown us (recall William Kennedy Smith, Clarence Thomas, et al.), both the public and the legal system tend to give the accused the benefit of the doubt.
Nor is it even that the president has agreed (against my counsel, if he had asked, and reportedly against the counsel of his lawyers) to give videotaped testimony to Starr. Or that in that testimony--at least according to the White House's willfully ignorant press secretary, Mike McCurry--the president will stick by his story of wounded innocence. This is dangerous, to be sure, but Clinton has talked his way out of many a tight spot before.
No, the galvanizing event is the surfacing of apparently credible reports that Monica has turned over to Starr a bunch of physical evidence. This is said to include not only voice mail recordings in which Clinton counsels Lewinsky to "stay on message" but also a dress that she had entrusted to her mother's care. Moreover (this is a Slate exclusive!), according to an informed intermediary with sources close to Linda Tripp, a very well-informed magazine writer reports that the dress does indeed carry a stain that is alleged to be traceable to, er, bodily secretions of the president. Which means that Clinton--urged on by political advisers and Hill Democrats--may well have walked into a perjury trap.
Of course, faced by incontrovertible evidence, if such truly exists, he could switch his story, as some commentators have counseled. But that's easy to say and hard to do. Think about what it would mean for a president to admit that he had lied not only under oath to Paula Jones' lawyers (no object of sympathy), but stern-jawedly and unequivocally to the American people (and, presumably, to his wife and daughter). How serious is the president's predicament?
I wander down to the White House press briefing room. It is almost empty. A handful of reporters are scattered among the rows of empty chairs, reading papers or dozing. I don't see anyone I know. After a while Wolf comes in. I ask him if a briefing or anything is going to happen. He says he doubts it, because the president is in North Carolina doing the nation's business. Yesterday Clinton called for a guarantee of "universal, excellent education for every child on the planet." (How about starting here in D.C.?) Today he will be talking about the environment. (Presumably he will not be projecting any of his plans more than a year into the future, given the White House Communications Office memorandum widely circulated yesterday declaring that any mentions of the coming millennium were verboten, having been reserved for the first lady's Millennium Initiative.) Is he trapped? I ask. "Who knows," says Wolf, heading back to his camera. "If there's the semen-stained dress ..."
I wait around a little. Nothing more happens. I ask the guard at the gate whether, if I give my badge back now, I will be able to reclaim it later. He gives me a smile that I find a wee bit patronizing and says yes. I go by Plato Cacheris' office building on the way back to the office. No one is staked out there today. When I get back, I hear the latest (totally unconfirmed as far as I can tell) rumor that Bruce Lindsey is entering the hospital for emergency back surgery, so he won't be able to answer Starr's questions for a while. Comparisons are being drawn to the advice that Monica and her mother gave to Linda Tripp about staging a foot injury to avoid Paula Jones' lawyers. Bets are placed on the chances of his surviving anesthesia. Why are people so conspiracy-minded? Let us all wish Lindsey a safe and speedy recovery.

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By Jodie T. AllenPosted Friday, July 31, 1998, at 3:30 AM ET
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Jodie T. Allen is Slate's Washington editor.
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