WASHINGTON – Conventional wisdom has the media running circles around the capital police in investigating the Condit-Levy case. Only, the conventional wisdom hasn’t looked at all the facts.
Yes, overly deferential Washington Police Department detectives didn’t pin the married congressman down, forcing him to admit his affair with the star-crossed intern, until the media embarrassed them into it, as I pointed out in an earlier column.
But the media haven’t been ahead of the cops in this case, nor have they been doing their jobs for them.
I’ve learned from my reporting and others’ that the Washington police knew about Democratic Rep. Gary Condit’s affair with Chandra Levy from the start and were questioning other Condit mistresses long before the media staked them out.
And they brought in the FBI to help them work leads soon after Levy vanished May 1.
What’s more, local police searched parks, rivers and buildings around Levy’s apartment within days of her disappearance. Recent searches have been redundant, done mainly for the cameras to blunt growing – and misplaced, as it happens – criticism they’d been dragging their feet.
Rock Creek Park: To hear personality journalists, police didn’t begin searching the park around Levy’s home until after they found out this month that she accessed a map of the Klingle Mansion on the Internet from her laptop computer. The Klingle building houses the park ranger and his staff.
“If we didn’t know until two weeks ago that she was on her computer May 1 looking at maps of Rock Creek park, and only after that – 11 weeks later – did they search Rock Creek Park, why should we have any confidence at all in the people who are conducting this investigation?” CNN’s Bill Press pontificated last week.
In fact, Washington police first combed the woods of Rock Creek Park for Levy’s body, or any clues, on May 16. They also plumbed the Potomac River that day.
Then, on May 30, they returned to Rock Creek Park with dogs, and searched the woods again, focusing on creek bridges near Levy’s Dupont Circle home.
Anne Marie Smith: Contrary to her claims, Smith didn’t volunteer her illicit relationship with Condit.
San Francisco FBI agent Margaret Eason brought the San Francisco-based flight attendant in for questioning in late May, as WorldNetDaily first reported. Smith went public on Fox News Channel with her affair and other charges on July 2.
So Smith and her lawyer, Jim Robinson, have been somewhat disingenuous in criticizing authorities for not investigating Condit’s involvement with Levy sooner, and for not being more aggressive in finding Levy.
Jennifer Thomas: The FBI approached Otis Thomas, not the other way around, back in May about what he first claimed to be his daughter’s alleged affair and love child with Condit.
His daughter, who denies even knowing Condit, refuses to talk to the police, and now Thomas has recanted his story.
But Thomas, a minister, has not plausibly explained why he would have made up such an unflattering story about his own daughter, one that he confided to Levy’s mother before Levy turned up missing.
Again, authorities were working the alleged Condit-Thomas angle long before the press. But you’d think it was the other way around – the police following leads laid out by the press, as if the tail were wagging the dog.
Ironically, the press has got much of its scoops from the police. My sources tell me that the cops even leaked press developments to the press. The Washington Post was tipped off that Smith was going to drop her bombshell on Fox the night before she appeared.
So, while the police here could be doing more to find Levy – and to investigate a possible Condit role in her disappearance – much of the police-bashing is unfounded.
