Imagine that you are a career government worker. You had worked in
the Bush White House and grown to admire and respect the president, his
family and the integrity of his presidency. Though you voted for Mr.
Bush against Clinton you consider yourself to be aligned with neither
the Republican nor Democratic parties.
When Clinton wins the election in 1992 you remain at your job in the
White House and begin working with the new administration. You make
friends in the administration, such as Vince Foster. You even like the
president and vigorously support him against his attackers by writing
op-eds for newspapers.
As time goes on you begin to see things you don’t want to see; hear
things
you don’t want to hear. You observe rampant unethical behavior at the
highest levels in the First Residence. You witness the cavalier and
illegal handling of FBI files and the firing by the First Family of
loyal government workers in the travel office in furtherance of
political favors and perks for their friends.
You become aware of the First-Philanderer’s incredibly licentious
behavior and understand that his many extramarital affairs are common
knowledge to everyone working in the White House complex. You are
utterly repulsed by the moral environment of this White House and the
“tarnishing of the presidency” you had revered for so long, but you are
torn as to what you should do about it. You feel you have a duty, as a
citizen, to let people know about this outrageous behavior, sexual and
otherwise, permeating the White House. But you have completed seventeen
years of government employment and strongly desire to accumulate enough
years in service to secure your retirement. Your decision to remain
silent in the face of what you know about the misbehavior and the
cover-ups sickens you with guilt.
You know that you are not the only one in your situation bothered by
these things. In fact, your friend, FBI agent, Gary Aldrich, who you
know to be a man of impeccable integrity, publishes a book detailing
many of the sordid activities of which you are aware. You feel sorry for
your friend, but choose to remain silent as you watch him crucified by
the White House defamation machine for simply telling the truth. In
fact, you know that he probably doesn’t know as much as you do. You
consider, but decide against, writing a book “to set the record straight
from a west wing perspective which is far more telling than what Gary
had to say.”
Your friend, young White House intern Monica Lewinsky, begins to tell
you about her affair with the president. You counsel her for a year and
a half, and begin to feel like a mother figure to her. You are very
concerned about Monica because she is so distraught about the
president’s “mean-spirited and callous treatment of her.”
Newsweek reporter Mike Isikoff approaches you in March of ’97 after
Kathleen Willey tells him that you could corroborate her story that the
president sexually assaulted her. The last thing you want is to become
involved in this mess; you haven’t even talked to Willey for four years.
Monica approaches you on behalf of the First Boyfriend and urges you
to agree to commit perjury in the Paula Jones civil lawsuit with respect
to the Willey incident. You learn that Clinton had become aware of your
knowledge of this through the Drudge Report. Adding to your anxiety
about being called as a witness is the prospect of being deposed by Bob
Bennett, the President’s attorney who, on behalf of the First Libeler,
had called you a liar in a national newspaper.
When you tell Monica you will not lie, especially not in court, she
delivers a threat from the First Suborner that “you must lie. You must
be a team player. You are a political appointee. This is how you save
your job.”
Monica tells you the stark reality confronting you: “I’m going to
lie,
he’s going to lie, we are all going to lie. If you don’t lie, (you’ll
face) perjury, jail or worse.” You know that Kathleen Willey is an
honest person and is telling the truth and that the minor variations
between your story and hers are deliberate distortions by the White
House.
You know that you have to protect yourself because you are being
threatened by the First Obstructer through his anything-but-First
paramour, that if you don’t commit a felony on his behalf you’ll be
framed for one. You also feel betrayed by this young, mixed-up, morally
rudderless girl who you had been trying to counsel for months. You know
that Monica’s biggest fear in life (to the point of making her suicidal)
is that the First Unreciprocal Intimate Contactee would find out she had
shared “their” story with other people. You try to convince her to tell
the truth because if the truth becomes public she will no longer be
suicidal.
So at the suggestion of another friend you begin to secretly tape
record
Monica’s presidential threats and the rest of the details as an
insurance policy
against retaliation by the First-Thug. After becoming aware of Monica’s
DNA
tattooed dress, courtesy of the First-Stainer, you suggest to her that
she retain it as her own insurance policy.
After the Lewinsky story is nationally publicized you are watching TV
when the First-Prevaricator appears and before your eyes, denies the
existence of the affair with which you had become painfully familiar. As
the weeks unfold your reputation is soiled by the most vicious damage
team in the history of the western world.
Daily you are vilified in the press by the First-Ethicist and the
most ethical
administration in the history of the planet. Your actions and motives
are grossly distorted. You are excoriated as evil personified. Your
honorable actions in refusing to commit perjury for a felonious
president are characterized as the betrayal of a friend. You are amazed
at the injustice of being demonized while the real villains in this
matter are victimized.
You know that if you hadn’t taped Monica and convinced her to
preserve the
first-semen: a) the First Sociopath, with the help of his armies of
first-enablers, would have prevailed in convincing the public that
Monica was just one more lying whacko-bimbo trying to rocket to stardom
at the expense of the First-Victim; b) Monica would have ended up with
even worse treatment than you received — if that’s conceivable — and
you know that she wouldn’t have had the emotional stability to endure
it; c) the First-Survivor would never have been impeached and we would
never know which of the congressmen in both Houses would act with
statesmanship or out of partisanship; and d) the First-Spender would
have had the last 13 months to devote solely to the task of creating new
ways to further encroach upon our lives.
If you had it to do over again, what would you do?
