Clinton's Crisis: Truth or...Consequences

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There is throughout the account the sweet-and-sour scent of a high school romance. Lewinsky talked of presents they exchanged: he gave her a dress and a volume of Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass; she gave him ties and a statue of a frog (an old Clinton obsession), along with love letters and a sexually explicit tape; the packages were addressed to Currie and delivered by private courier.

Lewinsky also brought at least three microcassettes from her home message machine and played them for Tripp at the Pentagon. The President can be heard saying hello, but leaving no lengthy messages and certainly nothing incriminating. But in her conversations with Tripp, Lewinsky referred to the President's legal coaching: when she expressed fears about records of her comings and goings and what Currie might say one day in a sworn deposition, Clinton supposedly replied, "There's no proof. Look them in the eye and deny it."

Even more damaging are the conversations that occurred after Lewinsky was subpoenaed by Paula Jones' lawyers in December. She said Clinton told her to see his friend Vernon Jordan, and he'd help her out. She met him in his Dupont Circle office, and she presented Jordan a list of public relations firms she'd like to work for. The next time they met he picked her up at the Pentagon to go meet a lawyer and draft her affidavit. "Take your anger and frustration with the President and vent them on me," he told her at the time, adding that perjury in a civil case is rarely prosecuted. Jordan confirmed last week that he had indeed helped her find a lawyer and guided her toward several job possibilities in the private sector, at American Express or at Revlon, where he serves as a director.

In his statement explaining how one of the most powerful men in Washington came to be job hunting for a 24-year-old secretary, Jordan maintained that he helped Lewinsky because he himself stood "on the shoulders of many individuals who have helped me" and that "to whom much is given much is required." He also said that in their conversations Lewinsky had adamantly denied having an affair with the President, which begs the question of how that subject came up in the first place.

By last month the corridor conversations between Tripp and Lewinsky had gone from girl talk to a deadly serious question about whether to lie under oath about the behavior of the President of the United States. Lewinsky apparently told Tripp she intended to deny the affair in her deposition and urged Tripp to do the same. Lewinsky warned Tripp that if she testified about the affair while Lewinsky and Clinton continued to stand fast, she would be isolated and vulnerable and her job would be in jeopardy. Excerpts of a small portion of the tapes, released by Newsweek, quote Lewinsky discussing whether to lie about her relationship with the President. "I would lie on the stand for my family," she says. "That is how I was raised... I have lied my entire life." She adds, "I will deny it so he will not get screwed in the case, but I'm going to get screwed personally." She also discusses Tripp's faking a foot accident to delay the deposition, and quotes her mother as saying the idea is "'brilliant.'"