Day Of Deliverance

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If he had gone into a state-of-the-art laboratory to concoct the ideal judge to lighten his troubles, Clinton could not have conjured a better foil than Susan Webber Wright. Only a female Republican, Bush-appointed, generally unfriendly jurist could provide such a politically and legally sweet ruling. A Democrat, foreseeing the firestorm, probably wouldn't have had the guts to do it. Though criticism rained down on conservative talk-show hosts from callers outraged that one of Clinton's former law students had been allowed to preside over the case, the fact is that Wright is no fan of Bill Clinton's. She was frosted over the infamous incident involving final exams in the class she took from him: he lost her exam and offered to give her a B+; she fought with him, won the right to retake the exam and got an A. In fact, defense lawyers in one of the cases Starr brought in the Whitewater probe were worried about getting a fair shake. She also worked for Clinton's G.O.P. opponent when he first ran for Congress in 1974.

In her carefully reasoned ruling, Judge Wright didn't say Clinton was a Boy Scout. She threw out the case by arguing that even if Clinton did everything Jones accused him of doing, it still didn't amount to sexual harassment or assault under the law. There was no evidence, Wright found, that Jones had been harmed by the episode: Jones' argument that she didn't get flowers on Secretaries' Day, that her desk had been moved, that she was discouraged from going after a better state job and too emotionally distressed to function sexually wasn't convincing. Not in the light of her merit raises, her own testimony that there had been no retaliation or the fact that she had never complained to a supervisor, filed a complaint, missed a day of work or sought out a counselor. A single proposition, the judge said, was not enough to create a hostile environment. When Clinton allegedly exposed himself and asked Jones to "kiss it," he wasn't touching her. The pass may have been odious, Wright said, but Clinton wasn't accused of forcing himself on her or threatening her when she rebuffed the advance. As for all the other women Jones' lawyers outed, even if there had been a pattern of workplace harassment, that "does not change the fact that [Jones] failed to demonstrate that she has a case worthy of submitting to a jury."

Paula Jones was said to have been driving in her car when she got the news on her cell phone, pulled over and cried. Her family huddled in its rented one-bedroom condo in Long Beach, Calif., that afternoon. Jones' husband Steve, who has said of the President that he "hates the bastard," told TIME that "this is not over by a long shot. We'll fight until the last day. It's an injustice, a travesty." What especially galled him was the notion that Clinton's alleged behavior did not rise to the standard of sexual harassment. "If dropping your pants and waving your penis around is not sexual harassment," Jones said, "I don't know what is."