Visiting Havoc

NEW YORK: In what must be a disappointment to anyone who caught Larry King Wednesday night, Thursday's New York Times exclusive does not give details of an over-friendly message from President Clinton on Monica Lewinsky's answering machine. Rather it makes a far more damaging claim -- that Clinton suggested Lewinsky testify that her visits to the Oval Office were to Betty Currie, his private secretary. If true, it is a serious charge, exactly the kind of suborning of perjury and witness tampering that could get Clinton impeached. Lewinsky is said to have described these visits to anonymous sources; TIME has yet to corroborate the report.

For those who are tired of such secrecy in the Lewinsky affair, the motion filed in a Little Rock courtroom Wednesday may come as a relief. Judicial Watch, Inc., a public interest group, asked a federal judge to make public Clinton’s sworn deposition in the Paula Jones case -- on the grounds that it calls the President’s mental state into question. “If the allegations are true, the President's emotional stability as commander-in-chief may be at issue during a period when serious crises loom in the Persian Gulf and elsewhere,” the motion read. Such legal efforts may be akin to a snowball in hell, but one thing is clear -- in this case, the public's need to know is only intensifying.