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| Tripp called Starr's office on January 12 and agreed to wear a wire to an
already scheduled lunch with Lewinsky the next day. (Given
the new revelations that Tripp had been in touch with Starr's office at least a week
earlier, it's hard to believe he didn't have a hand in scheduling the lunch in the first
place.)
The cooperation paid off:
Tripp wound up an immunized witness in three of Starr's ongoing investigations,
which may also have the effect of immunizing her against prosecution in Maryland's
investigation of her illegal taping of Lewinsky.
Starr also managed to keep Tripp from being formally deposed in the Jones case, which
prevented Clinton's lawyers from having a chance to question the woman who would be
central to the impeachment crisis he now faces. |
| Busy Weekend |
| Finally, that busy weekend
before Clinton's deposition in the Jones case, |
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Tripp was meeting with both Starr and the Jones lawyers. |
|
In fact, the Sunday night before the
president's deposition, Tripp met first with Starr, and then one
of his deputies drove her to meet with Jones lawyer Wesley Holmes. |
| The next day, with Tripp's help, Jones' lawyers would ask
Clinton their fateful 95 questions about Monica Lewinsky -- some of which were suggested
by Tripp -- that would lay the perjury trap Starr would use to make his case for
impeachment. |
| Significantly, the Los
Angeles Times has reported, Starr did not instruct Tripp to keep her work for him secret,
contrary to Justice Department rules. |
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| Although the media is getting more aggressive about tracking
the Starr-Tripp-Jones connections, some leading reporters are still giving Starr the
benefit of the doubt. In a recent Washington Post story, for instance, Susan Schmidt --
another reporter accused of being the credulous recipient of Starr leaks -- wrote that
Tripp met with a Jones lawyer on Jan. 16, "unbeknownst to Starr."
Since Starr's own deputy drove Tripp home for that
meeting, it strains credulity to insist that Starr himself didn't know about it.
Maybe the best proof of collusion between Starr, Tripp
and the Jones lawyers is the fact that Starr's deputies already knew about her false
affidavit in the Jones case when they questioned Lewinsky Jan. 16 -- which, according to the Starr report, was a full day before Judge
Susan Webber Wright received it.
Both Ben-Veniste and Lars-Erik Nelson, writing in the New
York Review of Books, have seized on this inconsistency.
How could Starr have gotten the affidavit, which he
used to threaten Lewinsky with a perjury charge, without help from the Jones legal team?
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Given all the evidence, it's
impossible to believe Starr's friends Porter and Olson, as well as the Jones lawyers and
strategists, knew about the Tripp tapes for months without telling Starr. As Ben-Veniste asked in the Times, "Why would these lawyers
have kept this information from Mr. Starr?"
Despite their artful plotting, Tripp, Starr and Clinton's right-wing enemies were unsuccessful
in accomplishing what they wanted most: getting Lewinsky to say Vernon
Jordan told her to lie, or got her a job as a quid pro quo for her discretion.
Starr's report fails to point to any obstruction of
justice by Jordan or any evidence that he urged Lewinsky to lie.
In her final statement to the grand jury, Lewinsky
testified under oath that "Nobody ever told me to lie. And nobody ever offered me a
job in exchange for my silence."
Despite his awesome attention to detail, that's one
statement that Kenneth Starr somehow left out of his 445-page report to Congress.
That -- and the full story of his
relationship with Linda Tripp. |
Washington,
D.C.-based author-journalist Mollie Dickenson is writing a book on Whitewater. She is the
author of "Thumbs Up," the biography of Reagan Press Secretary James Brady.
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