Eyes On The Oval

• Share

Her eyes seemed to say, don't hit me. Her shoulders were hunched and her forearms raised, as if to ward off a blow. When Betty Currie became the object of a terrifying media scrum last month, after testifying before Kenneth Starr's grand jury in Washington, she looked for all the world like an innocent victim caught in the teeth of scandal. But last Friday the world learned that Currie has some teeth of her own.

The New York Times reported that Currie, Bill Clinton's personal secretary, told Starr's investigators that the President had led her through a sugarcoated account of his relationship with Monica Lewinsky: We were never alone, right? But Currie's memories of Lewinsky differed from the President's. She reportedly told Starr's lawyers that Clinton and Lewinsky sometimes had been alone together--and the stone wall surrounding the President's inner sanctum finally seemed to crack.

The White House tried to patch up the damage, saying that Clinton had merely been "checking to see if Mrs. Currie's recollection was the same as his." Currie's lawyer strongly denied "any implication" that Clinton had tried to influence her version of the story. But the reports stung the White House because Currie, 58--a bighearted, churchgoing matron--had a kind of credibility no one else in this mess could muster. She is a Clinton loyalist, a reluctant witness squeezed between her devotion to her boss and her obligation to the facts. She was Ken Starr's dream come true.

Currie has an irreproachable air, yet her name has turned up again and again at the heart of the scandal: it was Currie who frequently cleared Lewinsky into the White House and received her packages; Currie who referred Lewinsky to superlawyer Vernon Jordan for one job and, through deputy chief of staff John Podesta, to U.N. Ambassador Bill Richardson for another. And it was Currie who allegedly collected from Lewinsky a dress and other gifts Clinton had given the former intern--items that were under subpoena by lawyers for Paula Jones. It isn't known who asked Currie to collect those gifts, which she held for weeks before turning them over to Starr. But it's hard to imagine her lying to protect anyone.

That's because Currie is not just another cold-eyed operative whose job it is to clean up after a politician. Her colleagues, cooler and more cynical than she, describe her in terms that are saintly but at times faintly patronizing: quiet, motherly, floating serenely above the madness of the West Wing, greeting big and little fish with the same understated warmth. From her perch outside the Oval Office she sees all, hands out candy from a communal bowl and is never too busy to coo at a newborn or look after a needy young staff member or intern. "She answers phones, places calls for the President, does some mail and greets people," says a senior Clinton adviser, "but she has a fair amount of time on her hands." He means she's not a player.