PAULA JONES SCREAMED WHEN SHE heard the news. ““Are you kidding me?’’ she asked one of her lawyers, Joe Cammarata. ““Come on. Really?’’ She had been drifting off to sleep in her modest Long Beach, Calif., apartment after putting her 9-month-old boy into his playpen when her phone rang last Tuesday morning at 7:15. The U.S. Supreme Court had just ruled that Jones’s sexual-harassment suit against President Bill Clinton could go forward. By a 9-0 vote, the justices had rejected the president’s argument that chief executives are constitutionally protected from lawsuits resulting from their private actions. Jones began to cry. ““I couldn’t believe they actually ruled for me,’’ she told NEWSWEEK. ““You know, I feel like I’ve been done so dirty, and now this. I got my faith back in the system.''
Bill Clinton was playing the role of world leader when the decision was announced. He had been bantering with European prime ministers at a NATO meeting under the ornate chandeliers of the Elysee Palace in Paris, and was preparing for a private meeting with Russian leader Boris Yeltsin, when his aide Bruce Lindsey delivered the bad news. For the cameras, the president kept smiling. Privately, Clinton, who is obsessed with his place in history, may have felt the weight of his own past. Clinton has always been skillful at staying a step ahead of his demons, and the president’s lawyer, Robert Bennett, dutifully went on TV to vow to crush Jones in court. But there can be little doubt that Clinton’s real goal is to make the case of Paula Corbin Jones v. William Jefferson Clinton go away, as quickly and quietly as possible. It may be difficult. ““I’m not giving up,’’ Jones vowed to NEWSWEEK. ““I want him [President Clinton] to admit what he did.''
Of all the scandals that have dogged Clinton through his first term, this is the one that haunts him the most. It is hard to know what is in Clinton’s mind, just as it is hard to know exactly what happened in an upstairs suite at the Excelsior Hotel on the afternoon of May 8, 1991. Clinton has to be wondering about the potential testimony of a state trooper named Danny Ferguson, who has already told news organizations that he escorted Paula Jones to Clinton’s suite that day, and that she later emerged, saying, according to Ferguson, that she was available to be the governor’s ““girlfriend.’’ In one sense, Ferguson’s account undercuts Jones, who claims that Clinton made what the Supreme Court chose to refer to as ““abhorrent’’ sexual advances, dropping his pants and asking for oral sex. But Ferguson is a first-person witness who can place Jones - at the time a 24-year-old, $6.35-an-hour low-level state employee - alone in the room with the governor. Ferguson, who worked for Clinton for years, could be a dangerous witness. His lawyer, Bill Bristow, told NEWSWEEK that his client is ““going to tell the truth and let the chips fall where they may.''
Only Clinton knows how damaging the whole truth would be if it ever emerged. It is perhaps a measure of Clinton’s reputation, even among those who know him best, that his political advisers want him to settle the case - quickly. The big exception is the president’s former counselor, George Stephanopoulos, who wants Clinton to fight on (page 36). Just about everyone else close to the president has the opposite instinct. The politics are obvious: the Democrats control the White House in part because of the gender gap. Female voters may begin to turn on Clinton’s party if they are subjected to endless news stories that pit a randy president against a 30-year-old mother. Money and respect for the office are also strong considerations. Michael Bragg, associate general counsel of State Farm insurance company, which is paying for part of Clinton’s legal defense, told NEWSWEEK: ““At this stage it just makes sense to everyone that the parties should sit down and talk to see if this case can be settled.’’ And Susan Webber Wright, the Little Rock federal judge assigned to hear the case, will push Clinton and Jones to make a deal. She thinks the suit ““demeans the presidency,’’ according to a source familiar with her thinking.
But making the case disappear won’t be easy. When the suit was first filed in May 1994, both sides were close to agreeing on a vaguely worded statement in which the president attested to Jones’s good character, asserted that she did nothing improper and acknowledged that the two might have met that day at Little Rock’s Excelsior Hotel (chart). Clinton meets plenty of people in hotel rooms, his aides say; one of them could have been Paula Jones. But those settlement talks broke down.
NOW, EMBOLDENED BY THE Supreme Court’s decision, Paula Jones is upping the ante. Jones may have once frequented the honky-tonks of Little Rock as a preacher’s young rebellious daughter, but today she lives quietly with her husband and two children in a middle-class neighborhood south of Los Angeles. At first regarded by the press and the White House as a hussy, she has spent the past three years trying to burnish her reputation. ““Do you think I’ve done this for three years just to end it all? No way. Why would I want to give up now?’’ she said to NEWSWEEK. She doesn’t expect Clinton to say that he dropped his trousers and exposed himself, as Jones has alleged in her complaint, but she does want the former governor to concede that he ordered a state trooper to ““come and get me and bring me up to that room.’’ In the meantime, she says, ““I can’t wait till those subpoenas start going out.''
Legally, Jones’s case is hardly a sure thing. She has at least three witnesses willing to say she was distraught after she emerged from her alleged hotel-room encounter with Clinton. She also claims that her reputation has suffered from all the publicity, and her lawsuit seeks $700,000 in damages. But there is no evidence that she suffered from a pattern of abuse, which is usually necessary to winning a sexual harassment case. Clinton’s lawyers might get the case thrown out before it ever goes to trial. Nonetheless, Clinton would still have to endure pretrial ““discovery.’’ Though the judge can limit ““fishing expeditions,’’ lawyers are generally allowed to search widely for incriminating evidence before going to trial. Witnesses testifying about Clinton’s past sexual predilections would be hugely embarrassing to the president.
Clinton’s lawyer, Bob Bennett, is an able spinner, and he took an early lead in the PR struggle by dismissing the case at the outset as ““tabloid trash with a legal caption.’’ The establishment press, including NEWSWEEK, basically followed this line. But the legal journalist Stuart Taylor Jr. wrote a long and much-read piece last fall in The American Lawyer, arguing persuasively that Jones’s allegations were fairly credible, and that she had been the victim of elitist bias (page 39). Since then Jones - and her case - has been treated with more respect.
For Clinton, the hardest question may be the political price of settlement. Paula Jones has always said that she wasn’t interested in money, and would give any award away to charity. But last week Cammarata said: ““She’s been put through three years of living hell and embarrassed all because of the White House. She’s entitled to money.’’ Still, if Clinton apologizes and pays Jones a significant sum, he will appear to be admitting guilt. While many voters have long regarded the president as a womanizer (and voted for him anyway), only about 30 percent in current polls believe that he harassed Paula Jones. That percentage would go way up if Clinton offers a hefty payoff. To NEWSWEEK, Bennett flatly declared: ““There will not be an apology.’’ He means that Clinton will not acknowledge making any improper advance, or express regret.
Like any good lawyer, Bennett can string out the case for months. (He has privately boasted about having put off the case until after the 1996 election.) It will be at least a year before Jones v. Clinton goes to trial under the best of circumstances, and Bennett could no doubt file enough motions to delay another year or even two. But that would mean going to trial just as Clinton is trying to write his final legacy and Vice President Al Gore is trying to win election as his successor.
Such political considerations narrow Bennett’s room to maneuver. He could demand that the pretrial depositions be sealed for privacy’s sake and to avoid prejudicial publicity. But he would be accused of covering up, and any really juicy testimony could leak. Jones is suing Clinton under an old federal civil-rights law because she waited too long to file suit under the state sexual-harassment laws. Bennett could file an appeal claiming that sexual harassment is not covered by the civil-rights laws. He can’t, however, appear to be making an argument that would seem to cut off the legal rights of other women without alienating the same female voters who re-elected the president in 1992.
There is one judicial order, however, that he would unquestionably appeal. In her complaint, Jones alleges that Clinton has ““distinguishing characteristics’’ in his genital area. If she is right, that would help prove Jones’s claim that Clinton exposed himself to her in the hotel room. In the event that Judge Wright requires President Clinton to submit to a physical examination to answer this particular question of fact, Bennett would appeal all the way to the Supreme Court. It is not clear exactly what constitutional authority he might rely upon to spare his client such indignity. Still, while denying the president blanket protection from lawsuits, the Supreme Court did write that ““the high respect that is owed the office of Chief Executive . . . is a matter that should inform the conduct of the entire proceeding, including the timing and scope of discovery.’’ The judge will have to be sensitive to the demands of Clinton’s job. Bennett could use the burdens of the Oval Office to plead for more time, but in that case, Clinton can’t be seen on the golf course too often.
Bennett is likely to try to get a sense of the scope of pretrial discovery before he makes any real move to settle. Initially, the president’s lawyer will try to get discovery limited to the question of whether Jones suffered any real harm from sexual harassment in the workplace. If not, Bennett will argue, the case should be thrown out without further ado. Jones’s lawyers, on the other hand, will want to zero in right away on Clinton’s supposed history as a skirt chaser. The Jones team - Cammarata and Gil Davis - has already drafted a stack of subpoenas. One would go to Clinton’s former gubernatorial chief of staff and self-described guardian against ““bimbo eruptions,’’ Betsey Wright. She will be asked to produce a list that she drew up to show Clinton while he was trying to decide whether to run for president in 1988. It named women with whom he had allegedly had affairs. According to ““First in His Class,’’ a biography by Washington Post reporter David Maraniss, Wright went over the list with the young governor, trying to figure out which women might talk to the press. A few days later he decided not to run.
Davis and Cammarata will want to put state troopers under oath to ask if they routinely procured women for the former governor. One trooper who will surely have to testify is Danny Ferguson - in part because he is a codefendant in the case. In an interview with ““60 Minutes’’ last March, Ferguson claimed that Clinton and Jones eyed each other across the lobby of the Excelsior while she was working the registration desk at a conference on ““quality management.’’ According to Ferguson, Jones remarked on Clinton’s ““sexy hair.’’ Clinton observed that Jones had that ““come-hither look’’ and instructed the trooper to invite her upstairs. To other news organizations, including the Los Angeles Times and The American Spectator, Ferguson has made off-the-record allegations. One claim: that the trooper sneaked one of Clinton’s old girlfriends past the Secret Service for a tryst shortly before Clinton was to fly to Washington for his Inauguration in 1993. The White House has called the allegation ridiculous.
BENNETT’S HOPES FOR KEEP- ing these sensational stories out of the record of the case turn largely on Judge Wright. A conservative Republican appointed by President Bush, Wright is not eager to preside over a notorious case. ““She’d just as soon not have it,’’ says a source who is close to her. Bristow, Ferguson’s lawyer, predicts Wright will try to narrowly limit the scope of questioning to focus on the alleged incident in the hotel room, and not the past sexual histories of either Clinton or Jones.
Though both sides are vowing all-out war, neither has endless resources. Under a pair of ““umbrella’’ policies for personal liability, two insurance companies - State Farm and Pacific Indemnity Co. - have paid most of the president’s legal fees in the case, already estimated to be in excess of $1.5 million. But the insurers long ago made clear that Bennett does not have a blank check. They have refused, for example, to compensate the media-friendly attorney for the time he spends talking to reporters, and they would obviously prefer a quick settlement to a drawn-out trial. ““Ultimately, this is the insurance company’s money,’’ says State Farm’s Bragg. On the other side, a Paula Jones Defense Fund has raised about $200,000, not nearly enough to pay the $1 million-plus in bills run up by Davis and Cammarata. Before the Supreme Court decision, phone calls offering help had tapered off to about three a month. In the 48 hours after the decision, the defense fund received 2,569 calls. Many came from right-wingers and inveterate Clinton-haters: talk-show hosts Bob Grant and Michael Reagan repeatedly broadcast the Defense Fund’s 800 number. The fund is planning a direct mailing this week to raise $150,000 to pay for a private investigator to track down reports of Clinton’s womanizing.
Davis, a genial Virginian who is running for state attorney general as a Republican, and Cammarata, a fast-talking New Yorker who once ran for class president at Georgetown as the ““Disco King,’’ portray themselves as David versus Goliath. But they have had powerful help. Davis was quietly prepped for his Supreme Court oral argument by conservative jurist Robert Bork.
For all the perks of his office, and despite his fondness for endless strategy sessions with scores of aides, Clinton is strangely alone on the Paula Jones case. During Whitewater, the White House created a team of damage-control experts known as the ““Masters of Disaster.’’ These aides put each scandal in a separate ““cylinder’’ to keep it from contaminating the rest of the White House. The Jones case was left essentially to Bennett, the president’s outside lawyer, with occasional assists from Stephanopoulos. When Bennett talks to Clinton about the case, the two men are usually alone in the room. Asked about the case by reporters, White House aides are likely to answer, ““Paula Who?’’ and begin looking at their watches. Staffers gossip about the case among themselves, but avoid any public engagement on the issue for two reasons. One is the seamy subject matter. The other is the fact that, unlike the Whitewater case and its offspring (Filegate, Travelgate, etc.), the Paula Jones case presents no personal threat to Clinton’s aides. ““There’s no fear element to this,’’ says one staffer. ““Nobody’s going to get called to testify. No one else is going to rack up legal bills or get their name in the paper. It’s the president’s deal.''
Clinton probably does consult Bruce Lindsey, his longtime personal aide and the chief keeper of Clinton’s secrets from Arkansas to Washington. Al Gore likes to be the last man to leave the room on most policy debates, but when the matter of Paula Jones comes up, it’s likely (and understandable) that he’s eager to head for the exit.
Clinton’s wife has always been his closest and most important adviser. On the Paula Jones case, however, Hillary Clinton’s involvement is, for obvious reasons, problematic. Whatever Clinton’s tendency to stray, close friends say his marriage seems strong, and has been made stronger still by the First Couple’s isolation in what daughter Chelsea calls the ““BWP’’ - Big White Prison.
In the end, the decision to settle or hang tough will have to be made by Clinton himself. He is not known for his decisiveness generally, and where past indiscretions are concerned, he is especially likely to dodge and hedge. Within the White House, he flatly denies making any kind of improper advances to Paula Jones - though he carefully stops short of saying he never met her, or that she never came to his hotel room. He just can’t remember, he says. To avoid having to one day explain exactly what he does remember under oath (his testimony would probably be videotaped), Clinton may have to weigh the pros and cons of apologizing to Paula Jones. He will have a lot to consider, besides his poll standing or his place in history. There is the pain he would cause his wife, and even more, perhaps, to his teenage daughter as she goes off to the fishbowl of college. Clinton has an amazing ability to twist free, to live always in the future. But the past has a way of catching up - even if you’re president.
