CHAPTER SIX: SHE ASKED FOR IT REPEATEDLY
JUST A FEW WEEKS before Troopergate broke, and about ten weeks before Paula Jones's press conference, the White House arranged a meeting between President Clinton and a woman who had worked for several months as a volunteer in the White House Social Office. Kathleen Willey requested the appointment with intent to beg Clinton to help her find a paying job. Her husband Ed Willey was facing disgrace and financial ruin as a lawyer who had bilked clients out of substantial sums of money to cover his personal tax liens. Kathleen Willey was desperate. Strained by their financial quagmire, their future was on the rocks, and Kathleen believed her best hope was a full-time, salaried position. Clinton had always been friendly and approachable to the Willeys, so she pressed for an appointment with him. The White House scheduled her for a November 29, 1993,meeting with the president.
During that encounter in the Oval Office, Willey told Clinton she and Ed were in serious trouble and that she needed a job badly. He comforted her and expressed sympathy for what she was going through. He also kissed her, put his hand on her breast, and put her hand on his erect penis. She was shocked. Her first reaction was to slap him, but "I don't think you can slap the president of the United States like that." [1] She left hurriedly and saw head of the U.S. Treasury Lloyd Bentsen, [2] chairman of the OMB Leon Panetta, and chairperson of the Council of Economic Advisors Laura Tyson outside the Oval Office waiting to meet with the president. [3] She couldn't believe what had just happened.
Kathleen and Ed Willey met BillClinton in 1989 at a political rally in Charlottesville, Virginia for Virginia Lieutenant Governor Douglas Wilder, [4] and again at a 1991 event for Clinton. [5] When Clinton announced his bid for the White House both Willeys were enthusiastic about his campaign. Virginia's first Clinton for President headquarters opened in Ed Willey's office in 1991. [6]
In October 1992, Kathleen Willey and a few other local Democrats greeted Bill Clinton at the airport as he arrived in Richmond, Virginia for a televised debate with George H. W. Bush and Ross Perot. [7] Clinton, suffering from laryngitis that day, whispered to Virginia Lieutenant Governor Donald S. Beyer, "I remember that woman from some fund-raising activity, but I can't remember her name." [8] Beyer replied, "That's Kathy Willey." [9] Video footage of this airport greeting depicts this conversation. [10] Nancy Hernreich, Clinton's Little Rock office manager who later became his director of Oval Office operations, approached Kathleen Willey that day and asked if the governor could have her phone number. [11] Willey obliged, and later that afternoon, Clinton called her at home. [12] Noting his raspy voice she commented, "It sounds like you need some chicken soup." [13] Clinton, ever the smooth operator, responded, "Would you bring me some?" [14] She hedged; Clinton said he'd have to call her back, and later that afternoon he did. Clinton asked again about the chicken soup but Willey told Clinton she'd see him that evening at a fundraiser after the debate; in her words, she was "starting to get the drift" [15] of Clinton's interest in her and "my instincts told me he wasn't interested in chicken soup." [16]
Despite sensing Clinton's inappropriate interest in Kathleen, the Willeys remained active supporters of Clinton's campaign and flew to Little Rock with their two college-age children on election night to celebrate Clinton's victory. [17] In April 1993, Kathleen Willey landed a volunteer position in the White House Social Office. [18] Still living in Richmond, she traveled by train to the White House a few days a week to help coordinate events like receptions and the White House Christmas party. [19]
Working in the White House wasn't an unfathomable leap in lifestyle for Willey. She and Ed had married in the early 1970s when she worked as a secretary in his real estate law practice. [20] One colleague of Ed's described him as "very prominent, very well-liked ... an attractive guy," and said Kathleen was "involved in a number of charitable organizations." [21] The couple had two children, a son and a daughter. [22] Ed's practice succeeded wildly in the hey-day of the 1980s, but when the real estate market crashed they continued living an extravagant lifestyle even as their income dwindled. [23] They lived in what Willey called a "traditional Southern marriage" and her husband "took care of the finances." [24] They still found a way to donate money to Clinton's 1992 campaign and other Democratic causes, [25] but the trappings of a successful life were about to come crashing down around them.
By the fall of 1993, Ed Willey's embezzlement scheme had been exposed, and creditors hounded them. [26] One day, Kathleen Willey was driving to a Red Cross Meals-on-Wheels volunteer appointment when her husband called her. [27] He asked her to sign a note promising to repay $274,000to help them escape legal trouble and criminal charges for his embezzlement. [28] She signed the note, which obligated the Willeys to come up with the money in just two weeks. [29] Over Thanksgiving, with that deadline only days away, Kathleen Willey told her family she intended to ask the president for help finding a job, to get herself and her husband out of their mess. [30]
Nancy Hernreich arranged the appointment for her, and on the afternoon of November 29 at about 3:00 p.m., Willey sat across the desk from Clinton in the Oval Office. [31] He asked her if she'd like a cup of coffee and escorted her through a hallway into a private kitchen, handing her a Starbucks mug of coffee. He showed her around the small hideaway office off the end of the hallway, pointing out his collection of political buttons. After a couple of minutes of small talk, she was near tears as she told Clinton about her husband's financial trouble. The bottom line, she told the president, is that she needed a job. [32]
She felt embarrassed and walked back down the hallway toward the Oval Office. When she reached the door that led to the Oval Office, Clinton caught up with her and hugged her. "I'm really sorry this has happened to you," he said. With her back against the door, coffee mug still in her hand, Clinton kissed her. "I was shocked," Willey told reporter Michael Isikoff almost five years later -- off the record. "It was like an out-of-body experience." [33] She tried to push away but Clinton just said, "You have no idea how much I wanted you to come to Williamsburg and bring me that chicken soup." Willey asked if he was concerned about people waiting outside, but Clinton brushed it off, saying he had a meeting but he could be late. Clinton took the coffee mug out of Willey's hand and said, "I've wanted to do this ever since the first time I laid eyes on you." He began kissing her again, and his hands were "everywhere" -- on her breast, up her skirt, in her hair. [34] He put one of her hands on his crotch. Willey told Michael Isikoff she knew Paula Jones was telling the truth because during this encounter Clinton's face was "beet red," just the way Paula later described him. [35] Someone knocked on the door, causing Willey to disentangle herself and say she had to go.
Willey was shaking as she walked out of the White House, trying not to look at anyone. When she spotted Linda Tripp, a former co-worker, Tripp said, "Where's your lipstick?" Willey took her aside and told her what had happened. Tripp shook her head and said to Willey, "I could always tell the president wanted you." [36] Indignant, Willey insisted that wasn't why she had gone to see Clinton that day. Years later, Linda Tripp would tell a much different version of this conversation. That evening, Willey drove over to her friend's house and recounted the story again. Two other friends later testified that Willey told them about the incident the day it happened. [37]
The day before, the stress of their financial situation had become too much for Ed, and he had left their home to stay at a friend's house for the night. [38] By the evening of November 29, Kathleen Willey was upset about her encounter with Clinton, but she was much more concerned with locating her husband. [39] She couldn't contact him. She found out the following morning that at about 5:00 p.m. the previous evening-a couple of hours after her encounter with Clinton - her husband, then sixty years old, had walked off into the woods and committed suicide by shooting himself in the head. [40]
***
Without a doubt, November 29, 1993, was "absolutely" the worst day of Kathleen Willey's life. [41] In the midst of her grief, her desperation heightened. Clinton called her the next day. Though she was terribly upset and on sedatives she remembers him saying "You never saw this coming, did you?" and telling her he hoped she would return to work at the White House. [42] A friend had her hospitalized a few days after her husband's suicide. [43] Her legal troubles intensified; she was on the hook for the $274,000 note she'd signed at her husband's request. She was "sued the day after the funeral for half a million dollars." [44] An insurance policy on her husband's life provided some money but she renounced it, allowing it to go to her children to avoid its seizure by her creditors. [45] Clinton came through on a paid position for her (though he later denied any personal involvement getting her the job). [46] The White House hired her in the White House Counsel's office in March 1994, [47] but that only lasted six months. [48] In 1995 the White House sent her on at least two State Department trips at taxpayer expense, giving her the chance to visit locales like Copenhagen and Jakarta. [49] In September 1996 Clinton appointed Willey to an unpaid position with the United Service Organization, [50] which oversees the social needs of military service members. [51]
A friend told her the White House was just trying to keep her quiet, but Willey didn't seem to understand that, or care. [52] She needed help, and a connection to the president of the United States was more help than most widows find. She managed to "hold off a mountain of crushing debt" and "restore her family to financial security." [53] Even while taking full advantage of the White House jobs, one of Willey's friends told Michael Isikoff that the November 29, 1993, encounter left Clinton a "fallen hero" in Willey's eyes. [54] Willey genuinely looked up to Clinton and thought he was a wonderful president. Whatever betrayal she felt after his sexual advances in 1993 was nothing, however, to the betrayal she felt after her story hit the realm of public knowledge four years later.
As one reporter later put it, by 1997 Kathleen Willey "had, it appeared, emerged from a clouded past into the clear vista of the future," having survived her husband's wracking financial ruin and suicide. [55] She had "endured tragedy and scandal only to become a potential witness against the president of the United States." [56]
Kathleen Willey's name first appeared publicly as the target of a subpoena in the Paula Jones lawsuit in July 1997. The Supreme Court had just denied Clinton immunity from suit and the Jones lawyers busied themselves tracking down women as potential witnesses to Clinton's sexual predation. Willey came to their attention because of an anonymous phone call received by Jones lawyer Joe Cammarata in January 1997 while Cammarata was preparing for Supreme Court oral arguments. [57] The caller refused to give her name but gave enough detail about an incident of unwanted sexual advances inside the White House in 1993 to allow the Jones legal team later to identify the caller as Kathleen Willey. Willey denied she made that call but there existed so many similarities in the caller's and Willey's lives that the Jones team (and later a federal judge) thought it probable that Willey and the caller were one and the same. So, Willey was ordered to testify in the Paula Jones case.
Today, Willey still maintains that she did not make that call. She never intended to go public about her experience with Clinton. "I think it was either Linda [Tripp] or Julie [Steele]" who made the call to the Jones lawyers, Willey told me. Julie Steele was once a close friend -- the friend to whose home Kathleen went the evening after her encounter with Clinton in the White House. But Steele was facing financial difficulties of her own and from the moment Willey confided in her about the harassment from Clinton, Steele constantly pressured Willey to sell her story. Long before Willey's name ever entered the public realm, Steele even went so far as to buy a stack of tabloids and sit down with Willey to talk about which tabloids to contact.
"I kept telling her I would never voluntarily tell my story," Willey recalls now, but Steele kept pressuring her to "just make it quick and dirty" by going for as much money as possible. "She eventually sold me out for $15,000," Willey says. Steele ran to the tabloids and sold them pictures of Willey and her children, traveling the country to get the highest price. The betrayal Willey still feels comes through in her voice as she confides to me, "That was the end of our friendship."
Before the May 1997 ruling by the Supreme Court in the Jones case, reporter Michael Isikoff spoke to Cammarata about the anonymous phone tip. [58] Isikoff thought Kathleen Willey was the caller and met with her in February and March 1997. [59] She denied she'd made the anonymous call, but eventually told Isikoff her story. She would speak only off the record, and hesitated to speak at all. She expressed concern for what her story would do to Chelsea Clinton, and she didn't want to hurt the president. She gave Isikoff the names of two friends whom she'd told of the November 29, 1993 incident immediately after it had happened. Isikoff now had two leads: Tripp and Steele.
Steele confirmed Willey's story to Isikoff in March 1997. [60] Tripp corroborated learning of a sexual encounter between Willey and Clinton on that fateful day in 1993, but told Isikoff it had been something Willey had been excited about. [61] Isikoff later wrote, "Sorting out the women's conflicting accounts is next to impossible. In Tripp's version, Willey was on a single-minded mission to ensnare Clinton. In Willey's, Tripp was consumed with the notion of a romantic attachment between the two [Willey and Clinton] and was constantly egging her on." [62]
Isikoff might not have been able to discern who was telling the truth at the time when he was writing his book, but by February 1999 Tripp herself told Larry King and his national audience that Kathleen Willey is "an honest person" who is "telling the truth." [63] Willey comments now that Tripp's "180 degree" turn-around was "bizarre," but chalks it up to the fact that Tripp felt "personally wronged" after being fired from the White House back in 1994. "Linda was very loyal to the Bush White House and hated the Clintons and their entourage," Willey tells me. The two women were friends while they worked together at the White House, but Tripp was so angry about being fired that their friendship ended bitterly.
When Lloyd Cutler moved in as the new White House Counsel in 1994, Willey was allowed to stay on while Tripp was shunted to the Pentagon. Willey tells me that when Tripp was told she was about to be fired, Tripp "went to [Bruce] Lindsey," a White House advisor and loyal Clinton confidant. Tripp told Lindsey that she knew "about something that happened in the Oval Office" and that he should think twice about firing her. This was no doubt a reference to Kathleen Willey's story. "Next thing you know," Willey sighs, "she's making $90,000 working at the Pentagon." Tripp was still furious over being fired from the White House though, and for some reason blamed Willey for it. On Tripp's last day in the White House in April 1994, she pointed at Willey and yelled "I'll get you for this!" And she did. By corroborating the essence of Willey's story -- that Willey and Clinton had a sexual encounter in the Oval Office in November 1993 -- Tripp relentlessly dragged Willey into the Paula Jones case even though Tripp initially made it sound like the encounter was something Willey had wanted.
Ironically, Willey surmises now, by giving into Tripp's threats and transferring her to the Pentagon, Clinton inadvertently set himself up for the real trouble with Monica Lewinsky; when the White House sent Monica to the Pentagon to keep her away from Clinton, they sent her right into Linda Tripp's path -- the one person with incentive and determination to get the president. "Linda Tripp was so devious; if there was anyone she could team up with to get at Clinton, she'd do it," Willey explains. "Of all the people in the world," Willey chuckles, for the White House to "put Monica in [Tripp's] vicinity -- someone really messed up on that one. They could have put Monica anywhere, but they sent her to the Pentagon where Linda Tripp befriended her."
Tripp did her best to get back at Willey and Bill Clinton. Tripp's conversations with Isikoff helped get the story off the ground. After their victory in the Supreme Court on May 28, 1997, the Jones legal team hired investigators to track down Willey. [64] In July 1997 they were getting close, and Willey was getting nervous. She called Nancy Hernreich at the White House and warned her that a reporter had been asking her questions. [65] On July 4,1997, Jones lawyer Joe Cammarata called Willey at her home. [66] She ignored the call and found an attorney for herself.
While Isikoff was talking to Kathleen Willey and others in an attempt to sniff out the Lewinsky scandal, Tripp called Willey one night. Willey hadn't spoke with Tripp in years. Tripp hinted that Clinton was having an affair with an intern and kept "trying to tantalize me with all these details," Willey recalls. Willey thought to herself, "Be careful," not wanting any part of whatever drama Tripp was cooking up. During the phone call, Tripp's call waiting beeped and she asked Willey to hold. When Tripp clicked back over to Willey she said, "Monica?" Willey answered, "No, it's me, Kathleen," and Tripp, sounding confused, hurriedly ended the conversation. Willey, of course, didn't make sense of that incident until months later when the Lewinsky scandal had broken. Recounting it to me years later she sounds bemused at the twisted set of circumstances she found herself embroiled in.
On July 25,1997, Paula Jones issued a subpoena to Kathleen Willey [67] and the game was on. Willey's lawyer, Dan Gecker, had called Clinton's attorney Bob Bennett a couple of weeks earlier to try to find out what the White House's response might be if Willey was forced to testify. [68] Gecker's primary concern was his client's privacy; Willey did not want to open herself up to the Clinton spin machine by making her story public know 1- edge. [69] Receiving no definitive answers from the Clinton camp, Gecker objected to the subpoena, claiming Willey had no useful information for the Jones case. By the end of July, though, Willey's name began appearing in the news as an important potential witness. Other than a remark by Bill Bennett to Newsweek, the president and White House aides refused to comment on what Willey was expected to say. Spokesperson Mike McCurry even warned reporters to think twice about covering the Willey subpoena at all. [70]
When asked about Willey as a potential Paula Jones witness in early August, President Clinton "froze and glared at the reporter as he finished the question." [71] Clinton answered, "There was a request to be left alone and not harassed and we're just trying to honor it," (referring to Willey's attempt to quash the subpoena) and returned to listing his fall 1997 "priorities" including "education standards, entitlement reform, tobacco restrictions, campaign finance, expanded free trade treaty-making powers and limits on greenhouse gases blamed for global warming." [72] But the Kathleen Willey story was not going to disappear any time soon.
When the infamous Matt Drudge posted the bare outlines of Willey's probable testimony -- being groped in the Oval Office -- on the Drudge Report Web site on July 29,1997, Newsweek decided to run a story, even though Isikoff could only quote Linda Tripp and Julie Steele, since Willey was fighting the subpoena and still refused to talk on the record. [73] Willey was horrified when the Drudge story hit; her lawyer called her that day and told her, "You've been sold out. The Sun [a tabloid] has the story and your picture's been sold for $15,000." Willey said, "It's Julie [Steele], right?" and her lawyer said it was. Willey was devastated at being dragged into the spotlight, particularly by a person she once considered a dear friend.
When Isikoff questioned Steele again, this time she told him she'd lied to him in March 1997 at Willey's request, and that no such incident like Willey described ever happened. [74] The way Steele talked to Isikoff, though, made it seem as if her retraction in August 1997 was her way of trying to avoid being named in the story. [75] (She paid dearly for this choice. In January 1999 the Office of Independent Counsel had her indicted by a federal grand jury for lying to federal officials when she repeated this retraction to them. Steele's trial ended in a mistrial in May 1999. Steele stuck to her revised story -- that Willey never told her about a groping -- even in the face of at least three friends who testified Steele had told them about Willey's sexual encounter with Clinton well before 1997. [76])
The August 1, 1997 issue of Newsweek carried a banner headline: "A Twist in the Paula Jones Case." [77] Isikoff quoted Clinton's lawyer Bob Bennett saying Clinton had "no specific recollection of meeting" Willey in the Oval Office, and while Clinton may have consoled Willey around the time of Ed Willey's death, it's "preposterous" to suggest that Clinton made a sexual advance in the turmoil of Kathleen Willey's distress. [78] The article quoted Linda Tripp on seeing Willey emerge from the White House that day" disheveled. Her face was red and her lipstick was off. She was flustered, happy and joyful" Tripp told Newsweek. [79] Bob Bennett told America, "Linda Tripp is not to be believed." [80] This stung Tripp, who had been conversing with the White House (and Monica Lewinsky), trying to be a team player. [81] Julie Steele confirmed Willey's account of receiving a phone call from Clinton back in 1991 (the "chicken soup" conversation) but backtracked from her initial interview with Isikoff and said now that Willey had told her weeks after the alleged incident merely that Clinton had made a "pass" at her. [82]
A few days after the August 11issue hit the stands, Isikoff received an anonymous phone call from a woman who told him that something similar to what happened to Willey had happened to her in the Oval Office, most likely after Willey's encounter. [83] She said after meeting Clinton many times at Democratic events, she would often be invited to the White House. On one such occasion, Clinton took her from the Oval Office through the same hallway into the private office. Clinton began kissing her and touching her breasts. She pushed herself away from him and Clinton turned away from her and "finished the job himself." [84] The woman said she'd been stunned; she'd never had a man take advantage of her like that. The woman refused to give Isikoff her name, citing her husband's on-going activity in Democratic politics, but wanted Isikoff to know "there are a lot of us out there who are not bimbos." [85]
Willey's attorney tied up the subpoena with legal objections until a court hearing in November 1997, when a judge gave Paula Jones permission to depose Willey. [86] The day before that hearing, Willey and her lawyer met with Bob Bennett, and Willey told Bennett that if forced to testify she'd have to admit that Clinton's advances on November 29, 1993 had been "unexpected" and "unwanted." [87] Willey said later that she had "felt pressured by Mr. Bennett," who had opened the meeting by telling her that the president "thought the world of [her]" and then said, "Now, this ...was not sexual harassment, was it?" [88] When she remained silent Bennett pressed, "Well ...it wasn't unwelcome, was it?" [89] After she said it was, Bennett suggested that she find herself a criminal lawyer, intimating that she'd face perjury charges if she dared tell her story under oath. [90] Bennett later told the press that "any suggestion that I threatened or intimidated her in any way is a bald-faced lie." [91] In Clinton-speak, it must depend on what the words "threaten" and "intimidate" really mean.
Before Willey was ordered to testify at her deposition, the Clinton team publicly kept quiet about her, hoping the subpoena would be quashed and she would keep silent. Strange, disturbing incidents occurred regularly, however, which left Willey feeling insecure and unsafe even before her deposition. She sensed she was being watched and followed, and her suspicions were confirmed by a number of people in her hometown informing her that strange men were asking about her. Before these things began to happen to her, Willey says, "It just never occurred to me that people would do things like this." But it wasn't difficult for her to guess who had the most motive to have her watched, followed, and intimidated. "I just know these people are so good, they are surrounded by layers and layers of people who will intimidate people like me," she told me, talking about the Clintons. "I was terrified. This is just the way these people do business."
A few months before her deposition Willey had three tires replaced on her car. "I remember standing at the tire place," she told me, "on a warm September day, waiting for them to fix my car." The mechanic approached her saying "It looks like someone has shot out all your tires with a nail gun; is there someone out there who doesn't like you?" I can hear the shiver in her voice as she says, "That really got my attention; that's when I started getting worried."
Just two days before her deposition, Willey disclosed later to the FBI [92] and in a lawsuit against the Clintons, [93] a man approached her while she was jogging. [94]The man, wearing sweat pants and a baseball cap, asked her questions. [95] He knew the names of her lawyer, her cat (Bullseye, her pet of thirteen years who had disappeared two months before), her kids, and about how her tires had been slashed recently. [96] "You're just not getting the message," the stranger said ominously. [97] "And you know, the message was to go into that deposition and lie," Willey said. [98] The threat left her "very, very, very frightened." [99]
Recounting the incident to me years later she says, "I can't tell you what it was like when this creep said 'Did you ever get those tires fixed on your car?' and told me what a 'nice cat' Bullseye had been. That's when I knew these people meant business." She remembers going home that day, shaken, sitting alone in her living room thinking "This is a whole new ballgame, and I am out of my league."
The harassment continued for months. Her mail carrier pulled her aside one day and warned her that a "creepy, scuzzy-looking" guy had shown up at the post office trying to get directions to Willey's home. A shopkeeper in her small hometown warned her that after Willey had come into the store recently, a man had come in asking questions about her. And on and on until Willey felt she was constantly looking over her shoulder. It was not the life she had worked so hard to build for herself. "I was a soccer morn," she says reminiscently. "A stay-at-home morn, and I loved every minute of it." She felt woefully unprepared to deal with this sort of intimidation.
***
On January 10, 1998, Paula Jones's lawyers deposed Kathleen Willey. [100] President Clinton was scheduled for a deposition the following week. Willey was the consummate hostile witness, volunteering nothing, answering in tight-lipped monosyllables. [101] The Jones lawyers had to ask exactly the right questions to get Willey to testify about anything untoward that occurred on November 29, 1993. The depositions in the case were ordered to be kept secret by the court, but newspapers immediately reported from "sources" that Willey had indeed testified about an unwanted groping incident in the Oval Office. [102]
Parts of her deposition didn't square with how she'd told her story to reporter Michael Isikoff nearly a year earlier, but that's because with Isikoff she spoke freely, confident she was off the record. In her deposition she was forced to talk against her will as another victim of the Clinton version of the Cruel Trilemma. Her story implicated Clinton, not herself, yet she was understandably reluctant to testify and did so only under threat of being jailed for contempt of court. Her deposition evinces a genuine struggle on her part to walk a fine line between avoiding perjury and giving as little information as possible that might damage Clinton. But that couldn't possibly have anything to do with the string of intimidating incidents throughout the preceding months, Bennett's non-threats, non-intimidation five weeks earlier, nor with the terrifying verbal threat made against Willey and her children by a thug just two days earlier.
In deposition she described most of the conversation leading up to the sexual advance as occurring while she and Clinton were sitting across from each other at his desk in the Oval Office [103] , though she had made it sound to Isikoff as if they went to the little kitchen and office almost immediately. She testified that when she got up to leave, Clinton walked over and hugged her. (She still hadn't testified about being led down the hallway into the private office.) Finally the Jones lawyer pried it out of her that she and Clinton had a cup of coffee in the private office. After more step-by-step questioning, she had to admit that the goodbye "hug" Clinton initiated as she was leaving the private office "just continued longer than I expected." The lawyer had to ask, "Was there any kissing involved during that hug" for Willey to answer, "There was an attempt." As easily as extracting a sliver from underneath a fingernail, Jones's attorney finally elicited the crux of Willey's testimony: "He put his hands -- he put my hands on his genitals," but only in response to the very specific question "Did Mr. Clinton ever seek to take either of your hands and place it on his body anyplace?" Willey volunteered absolutely nothing else, and later in the questioning the lawyer thought to ask, "Did Mr. Clinton attempt to touch your breasts?" to which Willey answered reluctantly, "I think so." The lawyer patiently followed up: "And what's the basis for your thinking so?" Willey said shortly, "I have a recollection of that." Jones's attorney asked further, "Was he successful?" and Willey answered simply, "Yes." When the question had been in posed in every possible way Willey finally testified that after kissing her Clinton had said something about" always wanting to do that." Lawyers everywhere hope their clients will be as closed-mouthed as Willey under cross-examination.
Closed-mouthed, but truthful. Willey told me that one of the attorneys who represented the House of Representatives during the Clinton impeachment proceedings asked her why, after all the harassment, she had decided to go into that deposition and testify truthfully. As a law-abiding, upstanding citizen Willey told him "I had no choice," even though she desperately wanted to stay out of the deposition altogether. The House attorney told her, "If you had gone in there and lied, you would be dead today. Telling the truth was your life insurance policy." Willey says that the gravity of that statement still chills her blood.
Whether by instinct or design, many women whose stories we've revisited here have acted similarly, raising their public profiles in hopes that status as a newsworthy name would lessen the chance they would simply disappear under suspicious circumstances. Like Elizabeth Ward Gracen and Sally Perdue before her, Kathleen Willey suffered months of harassment and intimidation designed to keep her quiet.
The following Saturday, January 17, 1998, Clinton testified during his deposition [104] that he never attempted to kiss Willey, never attempted to touch her breasts, and never had any form of "sexual relations" with Willey. He "emphatically" denied Willey's claim that he ever put her hand on his genitals. Why, the lawyer asked, would she tell a story like that if it weren't true? Clinton responded long-windedly:
She'd been through a lot, and apparently the, the financial difficulties were even greater than she thought they were at the time she talked to me. Her husband killed himself, she's been through a terrible time. I have- I can't say. All I can tell you is, in the first place, when she came to see me she was clearly upset. I did to her what I have done to scores and scores of men and women who have worked for me or been my friends over the years. I embraced her, I put my arms around her, I may have even kissed her on the forehead. There was nothing sexual about it. I was trying to help calm her down and trying to reassure her. She was in difficult condition. But I have no idea why she said what she did, or whether she now believes that actually happened. She's been through a terrible, terrible time in her life, and I have nothing else to say. I don't want to speculate about it.
Clinton made a much worse witness than Willey, from the defense lawyer's point of view; he talked too much and offered too much information unrelated to the specific questions asked of him. Clinton testified that he had casual conversations with Willey sporadically during the campaign and when she volunteered in the White House, but the November 1993 meeting was the first time he had ever talked with her one on one. In fact, Clinton testified, he "vividly" remembered meeting with her that one time in the Oval Office; it stuck out in his memory because Willey was "so agitated and she seemed to be in very difficult straits." Of course, when Willey's name first appeared in the press back in August 1997, Clinton's lawyer had said Clinton had "no specific recollection" of meeting with Willey. [105] Clinton deigned to express sympathy for the distraught Kathleen Willey even as his smear machine kicked into high gear.
***
From the beginning of Willey's unwanted thrust into the scandal spotlight, the White House and the press treated her more gingerly than Paula Jones or Gennifer Flowers. Columnist Arianna Huffington wrote just after Willey's name surfaced in August 1997, when Willey had yet to say one word about what happened to her and the only information available came from Linda Tripp: "The first lesson learned from Bill Clinton's latest bimbo eruption is that she [Willey] wasn't a bimbo." [106] The August 11 Newsweek article noted that Willey, then fifty-one years old, had suffered emotional distress over the financial devastation and death of her husband. It went on to describe her as a "former flight attendant" who had been "married to the son of an influential Virginia state legislator." [107] The couple" drove expensive cars, skied at Vail, and ... contributed to the Democratic Party." [108] Not one word suggested Willey as another bump on the road to bimboland.
Within days of Clinton's January 17, 1998, deposition the Lewinsky scandal was bursting wide open. Willey was in the shadows of coverage and commentary compared to Linda Tripp and Monica Lewinsky. Articles discussing her testimony, however, continued to describe her in much more flattering terms than Paula or Gennifer ever drew. The Washington Post called her an "energetic woman in her early fifties" with "one of the most prominent political surnames in this politics-obsessed capital," referring to her late husband's father, powerful Virginia state senator Edward E. Willey. [109] After mentioning the difficult period Willey had suffered through over her husband's suicide, the Post concluded, "Today Willey lives in rural Powhatan County about thirty miles west of here, in a handsome house on a large, wooded lot at the end of a single-lane gravel road." [110] Patently, living in a "handsome house" rather than a trailer accorded Willey more respect than previous Clinton accusers. Another paper referred to Willey as a woman who had been dragged into "besieged celebrity," [111] painting her as a casualty rather than coquettes like Flowers and Jones.
At the end of January 1998, one article portrayed Willey as a virtual paradigm of virtue, observing that after her husband's untimely death her "life had come to revolve around her children and charity work."[112] For some reason (class bias? scandal fatigue?) the press treated Willey as a real person rather than writing her off as a slut or bimbo. Even when the White House got busy that spring and began another round of Clinton versus Women smearing, the press remained relatively reluctant to jump on the bandwagon.
Willey refused to speak out publicly for almost two months after Clinton's deposition and Kenneth Starr's sting operation using Linda Tripp to tape Monica Lewinsky erupted into the most tantalizing scandal to rock Washington in two decades. It may not sound like a lot of quiet time, but remaining taciturn for two months must have felt like two years to a woman caught in the middle of such a highly publicized political scandal. In January 1998 the Los Angeles Times stated after talking to Willey's lawyer that "Willey is not particularly interested in building Jones's case." [113] By late January, Monica Lewinsky's infamous "talking points" memo had been discovered as a "key piece of evidence" in Starr's investigation. [114] The talking points, a three-page memo that Lewinsky had given Linda Tripp, spelled out in detail what Tripp "should" say about the Kathleen Willey incident, with an obvious eye toward discrediting Willey's story. The talking points instructed Tripp to say things like:
You and Kathleen were friends. At around the time of her husband's death (The president has claimed it was after her husband died. Do you really want to contradict him?), she came to you after she allegedly came out of the Oval and looked (however she looked), you don't recall her exact words, but she claimed at the time (whatever she claimed) and was very happy ....
[Y]ou now do not believe that what she claimed happened really happened. You now find it completely plausible that she herself smeared her lipstick, untucked her blouse, etc .... [115]
The relevance of the talking points to Starr's investigation concerned whether Lewinsky had been instructed by Clinton, Vernon Jordan, or anyone associated with Clinton to issue those talking points to Tripp, thereby encouraging Tripp to lie under oath in the Paula Jones civil suit. The relevance of the talking points to Kathleen Willy was that they possibly represented the White House's first attempt to discredit her.
Meanwhile, Clinton's deposition had not yet been unsealed for public viewing, so during January and February 1997 his version of their encounter was still left to speculation. In mid- February, Starr subpoenaed Willey. [116] The substantive veracity of her story could bear on Starr's ability to show that Clinton suborned perjury if he was behind the talking points attempting to influence Tripp's potential testimony about the Willey incident. It could also directly prove presidential perjury if Willey's story held up enough to contradict Clinton's (presumed) under-oath denial of it.
At the same time, Willey's former friend Julie Steele told Clinton's lawyers that Willey had asked Steele to lie the previous year to support her claim of an unwanted sexual advance, providing the Clinton scandal team with something to point to in an attempt to discredit Willey. [117] By early March, when Willey was still expected to testify before a federal grand jury in Starr's investigation, her story was, as one reporter wrote, II fraught with contradiction." [118] Another paper said "In the fifty months since [Willey's encounter with Clinton allegedly] occurred, there have been fragmentary and conflicting accounts of what happened, many leaked to the media by unidentified people with political or financial interests in the scandal." [119] With her name, reputation, and credibility being bandied about in the press, it should have surprised no one that by mid-March, Kathleen Willey steeled herself to suffer whatever fallout would come from publicly telling her story.
On March 15, 1998, a week after testifying to Starr's grand jury, Kathleen Willey appeared on CBS's 60 Minutes with Ed Bradley. On March 13 significant portions of her deposition and Clinton's deposition had been publicly released, so Clinton's denials and Willey's stilted version of her story were public knowledge. The day the program was to air, 60 Minutes executive producer Don Hewitt told the press that Willey's story was "very believable and very persuasive and leaves little doubt about what happened." [120] Willey agreed to appear on 60 Minutes for one reason: the show's producers told her that a White House operative had been threatening her former friend, Julie Steele, about possibly revoking Steele's adoption of a child. [121] No matter what had gone wrong in her friendship with Steele, the idea that the Clinton White House dared threaten a mother with taking away her child infuriated Willey enough to tell her own story about what Clinton had done to her. [122]
One reporter surmised that unlike Gennifer Flowers or Paula Jones, Willey would be more difficult for the White House or press to dismiss because "[s]he has no known connection to the right-wing conspiracy cited by Hillary Clinton" and "there's been no talk of book or movie deals for Willey, or exclusive payola stories with supermarket tabloids." [123] The fact that her deposition showed how the Jones lawyers had to "pull the damaging testimony from a reluctant Willey" also "tends to enhance her credibility." [124] Hmmm. What would the Clinton spin machine come up with to smear this one? The nation wouldn't have to wait long to find out.
***
On 60 Minutes in March 1998 Willey said she was breaking her silence because "too many lies are being told, too many lives are being ruined." [125] Journalist Roger Simon evaluated her appearance and concluded: "Willey was calm during the 60 Minutes interview. She was sometimes shy, sometimes a little hesitant, but she appeared credible." [126] The Los Angeles Times reported that "Willey appeared tense but resolute" in her interview. [127] "She spoke slowly and softly and paused frequently as she offered her account of the events of more than four years ago." [128] The story she told on 60 Minutes tracks very closely with the account she'd given Michael Isikoff twelve months earlier, even though Isikoff never included her statements in any article since she had been refusing to speak on the record. As tens of millions of American households tuned in (making that 60 Minutes show the most-watched program of the week) [129] Willey told the public what happened to her on November 29, 1993: [130]
I went in, and the president was at his desk, and I sat down in the chair across from him, and I obviously looked very distraught. He asked me what was wrong. I told him I had a really serious problem and that I needed his help. And, he said, "Would you like a cup of coffee?" And I said, "Yes, I would."
So he walked to... a door on the other side of the Oval Office, which led into a hallway, into his small galley kitchen, and there was a steward in there, I remember. And the president took a -- a coffeecup down out of the pantry, and -- a Starbucks coffeecup, I remember -- and, he poured me a cup of coffee, poured himself a cup of coffee, and we started walking back down the hall towards the Oval Office and he said, "Why don't you come in here into my study? We can talk better in here."
And, I stood and leaned -- I was leaning against the doorjamb. He was in the office. We were standing facing each other, and I told him what had happened [to her family finances). I didn't give him all the details. I just told him that my husband was in financial difficulty, and that things were at a crisis point, and that I needed a -- a regular paying job, and could he help me ...
He did seem sympathetic.... I had the feeling that he was somehow distracted when I was talking to him ... he was not really listening, but I know that he did. I know he knows how distraught I was and how upset I was, because I ...was very worried ... about my husband, and -- and -- and what was going to happen ...
He said he would do everything that he could to help, and I turned around ... out of the office, and he followed me to -- I thought he was going to open the door to the -- to the Oval Office, and right as we got to the door, he stopped and he gave me a big hug and said that he was very sorry that this was happening to me. And -- I had -- had no problem with that, because when I saw -- every time I saw him, he would hug me.
... And he took the coffee cup out of my hand and he put it on a bookshelf, and ... this hug lasted a little longer than I thought necessary, but at the same time -- I mean, I was not concerned about it. And then he ... kissed me on -- on my mouth, and pulled me closer to him. And ... I just remember thinking, "what in the world is he doing?" ... And, I pushed back away from him, and -- he -- he- he -- he -- he's a big man. And he -- he had his arms -- they were tight around me, and he -- he -- he touched me.
[Q:] Touched you how?
Well, he -- he -- he touched my breasts with his hand, and, I -- I ... I was just startled ...
[Q:] This -- this wasn't an accidental grazing touch?
No. And -- then he -- whispered -- he -- he -- said in -- in my ears that, "I -- I've wanted to do this ever since I laid eyes on you." And ... I remember saying to him, "Aren't you afraid that somebody's going to walk in here?" ... [He] said, "No. No, I'm -- no, I'm not." And -- and then ... he took my hand, and he -- and he put it on him. And, that's when I pushed away from him and -- and decided it was time to get out of there.
[Q:] When you say he took your hand ... and put it on him ... Where on him?
On -- on his genitals.
[Q:] Was he a -- aroused?
Uh-huh.