The Lives Of Kathleen Willey

When she appeared on 60 Minutes in all her high-cheekboned, Virginia gentry poise, Kathleen Willey looked like a woman whose most egregious lie might have been a fib about her dress size. But whether or not the former White House volunteer was telling the truth about her encounter with Bill Clinton, it seems that she has not been above baroque acts of deception.

In the summer of 1995, sources have told TIME, Willey was in the midst of a brief relationship with a British-born soccer coach whom she made the target of a bizarre ruse almost straight out of an Aaron Spelling production. In an interview with the FBI, Willey's former confidant Julie Steele has claimed that the onetime socialite told her lover, Shaun Docking, she was pregnant with his twins--even though Willey had told Steele she was not pregnant. Willey's motive? She wanted to get back at him for Fourth of July plans gone awry, Steele told the FBI. The plot grew more serpentine. Shortly after her announcement, Willey told Docking, who at 30 was 18 years her junior, that she would have an abortion. Then, on the morning of the "scheduled" procedure, she informed him she had changed her mind. Not long after, Willey had Steele call Docking and tell him she had suffered a miscarriage. According to two sources in close contact with her at the time, Willey never confessed to Docking that the pregnancy had been invented. Willey's lawyer did not return TIME's calls last week.

If there are no perfect Presidents, there are also no perfect witnesses. It is a measure of Clinton's good fortune--or careful targeting--that the women who have come forward to accuse him over the years have records just as mottled as his. But the disturbing story of twins both unborn and unconceived is the most damaging yet to a witness described as pivotal in Kenneth Starr's investigation of Clinton. For, as with Docking, Willey again asked Steele to engage in an elaborate deception, this time at the President's expense.

Steele claims Willey asked her to lie to Newsweek reporter Michael Isikoff about her alleged encounter with Clinton. Last spring Willey called Steele and asked her if Isikoff could come over to interview her. While Isikoff was on his way, Steele says, Willey called back and "told me exactly what to say." The directive: tell Isikoff the President had groped her on Nov. 29, 1993, and that Willey had rushed to Steele's house in the aftermath quite distraught. "I went along with it," Steele told TIME. "It was terrible, but Kathy and I were friends for 20 years, and she told me it wouldn't matter, that the whole thing was off the record anyway." Steele says that Willey never rushed over to see her on the day of the encounter, that she wasn't told of Willey's Oval Office visit until weeks after it occurred, that she was simply left with the impression that there might have been "mutual affection" between Clinton and Willey but nothing sexual. And Willey was not upset. Steele told her friend that Isikoff said Willey was tearful when relating the tale of the alleged groping to him. In response, Steele says, Willey laughed.