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Date: 6 Feb 1998 06:03:58 -0500
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From: "Steve Gilbert" 
Newsgroups: alt.current-events.clinton.whitewater
Subject: NYT: Betty Currie Rats
Date: Thu, 5 Feb 1998 23:54:36 -0500
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New York Times
Friday, February 6, 1998 Jeff Gerth, Stephen Labaton and Don Van Natta, Jr.


February 6, 1998

Aide Said to Give Evidence to Starr in Clinton Inquiry


Related Articles
The New York Times: The President Under Fire

[For educational purposes; not for commercial use]

This article was reported and written by Jeff Gerth, Stephen Labaton and Don
Van Natta Jr.

WASHINGTON -- President Clinton's personal secretary has told investigators
that Clinton summoned her to the White House hours after he testified in the
Paula Corbin Jones lawsuit and led her through an account of his
relationship with Monica S. Lewinsky that mirrored that testimony, according
to lawyers familiar with her account and his testimony.

The secretary, Betty Currie, has told investigators the President asserted
that he had never been alone with Lewinsky and that he had resisted her
sexual advances, the lawyers said.

They paraphrased Currie as saying that the President had portrayed his
relationship with Lewinsky through such questions as We were never alone,
right?

Currie, however, has told investigators that the President and Lewinsky
sometimes were alone, the lawyers said.

She has also turned over gifts to investigators that she retrieved from
Lewinsky, including a hat pin, a brooch, and a dress, the lawyers familiar
with her account said.

These gifts are among several pieces of new evidence that Currie has
provided to investigators, who are trying to determine whether the President
tried to hide aspects of his relationship with Lewinsky.

Last December, Jones's legal team served Lewinsky with a subpoena that
demanded she surrender any gifts she had received from the President.
According to Lewinsky's account, she discussed the demand for the gifts with
Clinton in late December, and he told her if she did not have the gifts, she
would not have to turn them over, according to lawyers familiar with the
account provided by Lewinsky to the Whitewater independent counsel.

Soon after, Currie collected the items from Lewinsky. Two weeks ago, Currie
turned over a box of gifts to investigators working for the independent
counsel, Kenneth W. Starr.

Currie has been extensively interviewed by agents and prosecutors from the
office of independent counsel. The gifts and her conversation with the
President are among several pieces of new information she has provided to
investigators about possible efforts to hide evidence of Clinton's
relationship with Lewinsky from lawyers for Paula Corbin Jones, the lawyers
said.

Starr has been investigating whether Clinton lied about his relationship
with Lewinsky, a 24-year-old former White House intern, or encouraged her or
others to lie, too.

Currie, who authorized many of the 37 visits Lewinsky made to the White
House after she stopped working there, has told investigators that she does
not know if Lewinsky and President Clinton had a sexual relationship, the
lawyers said.

Clinton has repeatedly denied, and did so again today, that he had "sexual
relations" with Lewinsky and has said he never encouraged anyone to lie.

A White house spokesman said tonight: "For the past few weeks we've been
subjected to false leaks designed to mislead both reporters and the American
public. We're not going to dignify the latest false leak with a response."

On Jan. 17, a Saturday, Clinton testified under oath in the Jones law suit
for six hours. According to a lawyer who has reviewed the President's
testimony, Clinton said that he could not specifically recall being alone
with Lewinsky but that if they had been alone, the encounters involved only
brief official contact.

Clinton testified at his lawyer's office, a site chosen to keep Jones, who
was also present, from entering the White House. After the testimony,
Clinton returned to The White House. He canceled plans to go out to dinner
with his wife, Hillary Rodham Clinton.

According to Currie's account, the lawyers said, the President called her
Saturday night and summoned her to work at the White House the next day. It
was there, Currie told the investigators, that she had a private meeting
with Clinton in which she listened as the President posed and then answered
a series of questions about his relationship with Lewinsky.

It is not clear who, if anyone, instructed Currie to retrieve the gifts from
Lewinsky or whether Currie knew they had been subpoenaed by Jones's lawyers.

Currie's lawyer, Lawrence Wechsler, released a one sentence statement
tonight: "Without commenting on the allegations raised in this article, to
the extent that there is any implication or suggestion that Currie was aware
of any legal or ethical impropriety by anyone, that implication or
suggestion is entirely inaccurate."

Reached by telephone at her home in Arlington, Va., Currie declined to
comment tonight, saying, "You've already talked to my lawyer."

Lawyers for Lewinsky, in their latest proposed testimony to Starr, have
provided her account of how the gifts wound up in the possession of
Clinton's secretary. This proposed testimony is consistent with Currie's
version on several points, according to lawyers familiar with the inquiry.

Currie has already emerged as a central figure in the inquiry. Vernon E.
Jordan Jr., the Presidential confidant who helped Lewinsky get a lawyer and
find a job, has said that Lewinsky was "referred" to him by Currie.

The possibility that Currie, 58, might be helping investigators has been a
subject of anxiety for the White House for weeks, according to
Administration officials.

Currie was absent from work in the days after the story erupted last month,
and in that time she was secretly meeting with Starr's investigators,
lawyers familiar with the inquiry said. She has since returned to work and
was at her desk outside Clinton's office today, a White House spokesman
said.

Lawyers say Currie's meetings two weeks ago with investigators were a moment
of deep anguish for the longtime Democratic loyalist, who worked in the 1992
Clinton Presidential campaign. Colleagues describe her as deeply religious
woman. Lawyers familiar with the inquiry say that Currie appeared to be a
reluctant but truthful witness who felt torn between her devotion to her
boss and an obligation to tell what she knew to Starr, whom the White House
has characterized as a right-wing zealot intent on destroying the Clintons.

Last month, Currie appeared before the Washington grand jury investigating
the case. What she said remains a secret. Federal rules generally bar anyone
except the witness from disclosing grand jury testimony until it is released
in court.

Lewinsky became a White House intern in the summer of 1995. An associate of
Lewinsky and others familiar with her account say she has acknowledged in
her proffers that she had a sexual relationship with the President from 1995
to 1997.

At the end of 1995, she took a job in the White House legislative affairs
office. In April of 1996, Lewinsky was transferred to the Pentagon after
White House aides became concerned about her habit of turning up at
Presidential events and ceremonies to which she was not invited.

In the summer of 1997, Lewinsky began confiding to a friend, Linda R. Tripp,
about what she described as an affair with the President. Tripp taped some
of these conversations without Lewinsky's knowledge.

By the fall, Lewinsky had begun looking for a job in New York with the
assistance of Currie. In October, Currie asked a deputy White House chief of
staff, John D. Podesta, to help Lewinsky find a job in New York, where
Lewinsky's mother lives, said an associate of Currie's.

On an official trip to South America, Podesta asked the chief United States
delegate to the United Nations, Bill Richardson, whether he could find work
for "a friend" of Currie. By the end of October, Richardson and two aides
met with Lewinsky at the Watergate apartment complex, where they offered her
a job. She turned it down.

DEC. 5. Lawyers for Jones notified Clinton's lawyer that Lewinsky was a
possible witness in the case. A few days later, Jordan, a Washington insider
who serves on the corporate boards of Revlon and American Express, began
looking for a job for Lewinsky. In his only statement on the matter, Jordan
has said the former intern was "referred" to him by Currie. He did not
elaborate and declined to answer any questions.

DEC 17. Lawyers for Jones issued a subpoena to Lewinsky that demanded her
testimony and any gifts she might have received from Clinton. It is not
clear what the Jones lawyers knew about the relationship.

After the subpoena was issued, Lewinsky and Clinton had several
conversations and at least one private meeting in the White House, said an
associate of Lewinsky.

At that session, according to Lewinsky's version of events, CLinton told her
that if she were in New York, she might be able to avoid testifying in the
Jones lawsuit. Clinton also reportedly told her she could explain her visits
to the White House as trips to see Currie.

In a conversation with Clinton in December, Lewinsky warned the President
that the lawyers for Jones were aggressively pursuing details of their
relationship, including any gifts. It was at this time, according to
Lewinsky's account, that Clinton noted that she could avoid turning over the
gifts if she no longer had them.

There have been numerous reports about Clinton's gifts to Lewinsky.

After the story erupted three weeks ago, Lewinsky was quoted as having told
Tripp on tape that Clinton gave her a dress.

When Federal agents searched Lewinsky's apartment for any gifts or other
evidence, her lawyer, William H. Ginsburg, said that no such dress had been
found. Ginsburg said other inconsequential items, like a book of poetry, had
been seized by the agents.

JAN. 7. Lewinsky signs an affidavit denying that she had a sexual
relationship with Clinton. Efforts to land her a job by Jordan reach
fruition over the next several days with a post offered to her by Revlon in
New York.

JAN. 17. After years of legal skirmishing, the lawyers for Jones finally had
their chance to question Clinton. In a six-hour, secret session, Clinton's
lawyers attempted to block questioning about Lewinsky, citing her affidavit,
according to people involved in the deposition.

The effort failed. A Federal judge allowed some questions to be asked about
Lewinsky. He denied that he had sex with her. Asked if he had given her
gifts, he replied that perhaps he had done so, but only ordinary White House
souvenirs, according to a lawyer who has read the President's deposition.
Clinton also said he could not recall being alone with Lewinsky, though he
might have done so in conducting official business.

That evening, a report on the internet that said Newsweek had declined to
publish a story it was preparing on an affair between the President and a
White House intern. It is not known whether Clinton was aware of the report.
But that evening, he canceled a dinner outside the White House with the
First Lady. Currie has told investigators, lawyers said, that the President
called her and asked her to meet him at the office the following day.

JAN. 18. Currie met Clinton at the White House, according to lawyers
familiar with her account. Lawyers familiar with the inquiry said Currie
recalled that President had asked a series of questions to which he supplied
the answers.

The lawyers paraphrased the President's remarks about Lewinsky as being
along these lines: We were never alone together, right? Clinton also
asserted to Currie that he resisted the former intern's advances, Currie has
told investigators.

JAN. 21. News organizations report that Starr is investigating whether
Jordan and the President took improper steps to hinder the lawsuit brought
by Jones. The focus is on Lewinsky's affidavit denying the sexual
relationship and her job offer from Revlon, which is retracted shortly after
the story breaks.

For the next several days, Currie was not at her desk in the White House,
prompting concerns about whether she had been contacted by Starr's
investigators, an Administration official said.

In fact, Currie was talking.

She provided investigators with the box of gifts and recounted some of
Clinton's remarks about Lewinsky.

After missing several days of work, she returned to her desk at the White
House, where she was warmly embraced by colleagues.


Copyright 1998 The New York Times Company



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