The Breach

by Peter Baker

  Thanks a lot, Lowell replied sarcastically, his television tuned to MSNBC. Ive already gotten that information from Lisa Myers.

  In delivering the report and accompanying evidence to the steps of the Capitol, Starr had dropped at the House door the biggest issue it had faced in nearly a quarter centuryand he had caught its leaders flat-footed. The House was so unprepared that it had not passed the rules required to deal with the receipt of the report. The Dinosaur Room meeting from earlier in the day resumed an hour after the unexpected delivery as Gingrich, Gephardt, Hyde, and Conyers continued thrashing about for a course of action. Confused by the turn of events, they authorized their aides to contact Starrs people once more to get a briefing about what was in the boxes, all of which would remain sealed and uninspected until the House voted on a set of procedures. In a twenty-minute call, Starrs deputies gave the aides a bare-bones description of what was sent but offered no advice about what to release or guidance about how graphic or sensitive the materials might be.

  I have very nervous members, Gingrich reported to the other House leaders. No one had a clue what was in the report and what they were about to turn loose on the nation.

  We need to do some kind of look-see, Conyers said. We dont know what we have.

  Gingrich did not want to do that. If they reviewed the report before releasing it, he felt, they would take political ownership of its content. Were damned if we do and damned if we dont, he said aloud. Why not release the report immediately and hold on to the rest of the material in the boxes for review, Gingrich suggested.

  Gephardt was unsure. The details that support the president could actually be in those boxes, he noted. That should be released at some point too.

  Finally, they seemed to reach a dealthey would release the main report by the end of the week, but Hyde and Conyers would look through the remaining evidence and determine what should be held back before releasing it.

  Across the Capitol, Tom DeLay felt bushwhacked. He had not even been invited to the meeting in the Dinosaur Room. Intent on revving up The Campaign now that the Starr report had arrived, DeLay was convinced that Gephardt and the Democrats were only feigning bipartisanship and had no intention of working with Gingrich and Armey on a legitimate impeachment inquiry.

  Theyre going to fuck us. Its a setup, he told his staff. Theyre going to screw us. Theyre going to leave us and theyre going to screw Newt and Dick in the back.

  Clinton was a mere spectator in all this. After apologizing to House Democratic leaders in a private meeting at the White House earlier in the day, he flew to Florida for fund-raisers and another stop on the contrition toureach time growing more expansive and expressive. Ive done my best to be your friend, but I also let you down and I let my family down and I let this country down, he told a group of donors in Orlando. But Im trying to make it right. And Im determined never to let anything like that happen again. Improbably he added, I hope this will be a time of reconciliation and healing, and I hope that millions of families all over America are in a way growing stronger because of this.

  When the cabinet arrived at the White House the next day, Thursday, September 10, no one knew what to expect. Cabinet meetings were rare enough in the Clinton era. Unlike his predecessors, he had never found much utility in them. Indeed, the cabinet had not met in nearly eight months, not since that day in January in the early throes of the Lewinsky scandal when Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and three other secretaries were dispatched to the White House driveway to vouch for the beleaguered president. I believe that the allegations are completely untrue, Albright had said then. Ill second that, definitely, Commerce Secretary William Daley had agreed, followed by Health and Human Services Secretary Donna E. Shalala and Education Secretary Richard W. Riley. Now they were being summoned back to hear from their leader why their faith had been misplaced.

  One by one, the government department chiefs made their way into the Yellow Oval Room in the private, second-floor residential section of the White House. It was a sizable group, about two dozen, since Clinton had given cabinet rank to a wide range of officials, including his domestic policy adviser, the national drug czar, and the head of the Small Business Administration. But there were few staff members, giving it a more intimate feel than a typical back-to-business meeting. Many of the cabinet officers found themselves strangely nervous. Some stared at their shoes, avoiding eye contact not only with the president but with each other as well. Others wondered whether their colleagues would stand by him. Would Albright resign? Would Shalala? Why wasnt Daley there?

  As everyone settled in, Clinton sat in front of the fireplace, while the cabinet members seated themselves in a series of chairs and couches arranged to face him in roughly three rings, almost amphitheater-style. Albright, befitting her rank as secretary of state, sat in the front. Vice President Gore arrived late, after everyone else had sat down, and took a chair to Clintons right.

  The president brought no notes and did not look at his top advisers as he started talking in a quiet, pained voice. Tired from his late-night return from Florida, he began by quoting the Bible, thanking everyone in the room for their support and acknowledging that he had put them in a difficult situation. He thought of the cabinet as something like a family, he said, and so he owed them an apology for what he had put them through. This had not been easy on him either, he assured them, nor for his wife and daughter. He was not proud of what he had done and was paying a price for his mistake. As tears filled his eyes and his senior advisers sat rapt and breathless, Clinton recalled that when he was the governor of Arkansas, he was often described as a good guy but ineffective. Now he heard himself depicted as the reverse. Its more important to be a good person than a good president, he said, and Im going to spend the rest of my life trying to atone for this.

  Opening up in a way none of them had ever seen before, Clinton told his cabinet secretaries that he had grown to feel like a person who was not himself since taking office. He had woken up profoundly angry every day for the last four and a half years, he said, the same time frame that he had been under investigation by Starr and his predecessor. And that, he suggested, had created a behavior pattern that was not justified but could be explained because he was not at peace with himself. His face tightened and he started to sound more agitated as he invoked his critics. Whatever he had done did not merit what they were doing. These people, he said fiercely, really wanted to destroy him.

  After about twenty minutes, he stopped, and an awkward silence filled the room. Finally, the secretary of state rose to her feet. For Albright, who was older than Clinton, the whole subject was extremely distasteful; her own marriage had broken up after a husbands infidelity. But she mentioned none of that, instead focusing on her role as ambassador to the world. She had been all around the globe in recent months, Albright told Clinton, and he should know the worlds leaders were behind him. And so was she.

  That set the tone. One after another, cabinet secretaries got up and said they too were sticking with him. They praised Clinton for the good he had done in office. He would get through this, they said, and so would they. The discussion leaned heavily on religious themes of sin and redemption, atonement and forgiveness. Labor Secretary Alexis M. Herman and Transportation Secretary Rodney Slater both cited Bible passages and told Clinton he was a good president who should not give up. In due season we shall reap if we do not lose heart, Slater said, borrowing from the book of Galatians. Agriculture Secretary Dan Glickman quoted Proverbs 23:7, For as he thinketh in his heart, so is he, adding that perhaps out of this Clinton could better understand himself and better lead the country. Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt talked of going to confession and how a sinner had to believe what he did was not right in order to cleanse his soul. If you ask God for forgiveness and your family for forgiveness, then as Christians, Lea Ellen and I can forgive you, added James Lee Witt, the director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency and, with his wife, a longtime Clinton associate dating back to Arkansas
.

  Finally, Shalala could not take it anymore. For her, there was far too much ass-kissing. As a cabinet veteran since the inception of the Clinton administration, she had accepted a lot she had not liked over the last six years, including the retreat on universal health care and the presidents signature on a Republican-authored welfare-reform law that she considered repugnant, all in the name of his political survival. But now she was furious. Everyone had worked so hard to get him reelected, yet that coveted second term had been imperiled because Clinton could not control his libido. And nobody in this room was telling him that what he did was simply wrong. Not the lying, the sex. Like everyone else, Shalala had known before she took the job that Clinton had had problems staying faithful to his wife, but this looked to her as if the White House was being infected with the loose morals of the campaign trail. This was not even an affair with a woman his age, which Shalala might have been able to understand. This was abusing his office for his personal gratification with a former intern barely older than his daughter. At fifty-seven, Shalala had spent a lifetime setting standards for young people. As the chancellor of the University of Wisconsin, she had once forced out a tenured professor for hitting on undergraduates. In the world she lived in, people in power were not supposed to take advantage of someone over whom they were in charge.

  Others knew of her strong feelings and were even counting on her to share them with the president. Before the meeting, Erskine Bowles, the White House chief of staff, had called to tell her not to hold back. The president still did not get it, Bowles said. Clinton thought it was all just a right-wing conspiracy to get him. Youve got to tell him the truth, Bowles told her. Youve got to be honest.

  And so she was. To her, she said, it sounded as if Clinton really believed that only his performance as president should matter, not how he conducted his private life. She asked him to reassure her that he believed character was as important as the policies he enacted, that how a leader behaved was as vital to the job of president as programs and laws.

  I cant believe that is what youre telling us, that is what you believe, that you dont have an obligation to provide moral leadership, Shalala told the president. I dont care about the lying, but Im appalled at the behavior.

  Clinton seemed taken aback. By your standard, Richard Nixon wouldve beaten John Kennedy, he replied sharply.

  Youve got to be kidding, she retorted.

  Others in the room were stunned by the exchange. It was a strikingly candid back-and-forth between a president and a cabinet secretary in front of so many people. No one else had the temerity to confront Clinton quite like that. And more than a few of Shalalas peers were distinctly uncomfortable that she had done so and privately disapproved.

  But others shared similarly wounded sentiments with the president, though delivered with less edge. Maria Echaveste, the deputy chief of staff, and Aida Alvarez, head of the Small Business Administration, expressed their disillusionment as women.

  How could you not see how important you were to us? Alvarez asked. Women felt a special bond with him because of his policies, she said, but were also quite moved by the pain he had inflicted on his wife and daughter. We want you to know that we hurt because were disappointed.

  Carol M. Browner, the head of the Environmental Protection Agency, brought up her ten-year-old son. She did not think it was her place to judge the president, she told him, but because of this scandal she had been forced to have excruciatingly difficult conversations with her son about issues she had not expected to discuss with him until he was much older. Her son, who had met the president, had asked extremely graphic questions. As she spoke, Clinton put his hand up to his face, appearing ashamed or perhaps trying to hold back tears.

  But then Browner quickly shifted tone and said this episode had given her an opportunity to teach lessons about forgiveness and to explain why she did what she did for a living. She supported what the president had been doing for the country and she wanted to keep doing it. I wouldnt be here if it werent for you, she concluded.

  By the time it came around to Bob Rubin, there had been plenty of pained and poignant talk. The treasury secretary, the subject of persistent rumors that he might quit, cut through it with a more characteristically blunt assessment.

  You screwed up, you screwed up big time, he told the president. But, we all screw up sometimes.

  Finally, the vice president spoke. He had remained completely loyal in his public pronouncements, never betraying a hint of disapproval of the president to the outside world. But now in this private moment, he sternly told Clinton that he had let everyone down. Gore too quoted the Bible and concluded that now it was time to move on: Mr. President, I think most of America has forgiven you, but youve got to get your act together.

  As the meeting broke up, Clinton and several members of the cabinet lingered to talk less formally for another twenty minutes. Among them was Shalala, who took the approach of the affectionate, if disappointed, older sister whose remonstrations were intended for his own good. If Clinton was angry with her at this point, it did not show. He wrapped his arms around her in a hug.

  Youre always tough on me, he said.

  Only when you deserve it, she responded.

  On Capitol Hill, restless House Democrats were meeting in full conference for the first time since Starrs report arrived the day before. Dick Gephardt explained the plan to release the report, possibly on the Internet, but also talked about how they were trying to push for a review period for the president first. Several of the African-American Democrats were outraged, including Maxine Waters of California, Sheila Jackson Lee of Texas, and Mel Watt of North Carolina, all members of the Judiciary Committee. This was a railroad, they complained. Waters declared hotly that she intended for the Congressional Black Caucus to serve as the fairness cops in this process, defending the presidents rights.

  The black members were quickly emerging as a powerful force in Clintons corner. Where other Democrats worried that their wayward president was dragging them down and were all too willing to cut him loose if need be, the African-American representatives expressed no such equivocation. Even though Clinton had often split from the generally more liberal members of the black caucus on important issues such as welfare reform, his popularity within the broader African-American community was strong and enduring. In part, that owed to a sense that, whatever their policy differences, Clinton understood and cared more about the black community than any previous president. It was not lost on them that one of his best friends was Vernon Jordan, a black man now sharing the legal hot seat alongside him. Moreover, many black congressmen and -women saw a parallel in Starrs relentless pur suit of the president and the prosecutorial excesses their constituents suffered every day. Clintons persecution complex resonated with them.

  To white House Democrats, the message was telling as well: No matter how alienated they might feel from Clinton, they had to remember that an important part of their political base back home viewed the case differently. Depending on the demographics of their districts, abandoning Clinton could place them in as much risk as standing by him.

  Henry Hyde held out a box of his favorite Monte Cristo cigars to his guests and then fired one up himself. Only David Kendall joined him in puffing on the stogies, much to the unspoken annoyance of almost everyone else in the room. Kendall and Chuck Ruff were in Hydes office in the Rayburn House Office Building to review their situation and see how much cooperation they could secure. Hyde was nothing if not gracious to his visitors.

  The cigar was one of the few small pleasures left in Hydes life. At seventy-four, he was heading into the twilight of a long and distinguished political career when suddenly he was confronted with a task he clearly did not savor. Growing up a poor Irish Catholic in Wheaton, Illinois, Hyde earned a basketball scholarship to the same school Bill Clinton would later attend, Georgetown University, where Hyde met his future wife, Jeanne Simpson. After serving in the navy during World War II, Hyde practiced law in Chicago, go
t himself elected to the state legislature, and eventually won his seat in Congress in 1974, representing an affluent district that included Hillary Rodhams suburban hometown of Park Ridge. In the House, Hyde became one of the most revered Republican members, loved for his quick wit and sense of decorum. He also developed into one of the nations foremost antiabortion champions, sponsoring a law named for him restricting Medicaid funding for the procedure.

  Over the last decade, though, Hyde had suffered through prostate surgery and the death of his wife after a forty-five-year marriage, fully recovering from neither. As he lumbered through the Capitol day after day, his gait slowed and his expression worn, Hyde seemed to be evolving more into an elder statesman for the party than the crusader of his youth. When the Lewinsky story first broke, he seemed to go out of his way to discount the possibility of impeachment, noting publicly that no president could be removed from office without a bipartisan consensus. But when Gingrich floated the possibility of taking the matter away from his Judiciary Committee and appointing a special task force, the old Hyde defied the Speaker and forced him to back down. Hyde held no great respect for Clinton and yet seemed to struggle with how to reconcile his personal distaste for sex scandal and his instincts for fairness. I hate that son of a bitch, he told a fellow Republican member of the Judiciary Committee shortly after the Lewinsky scandal began. I want to get him. But I want to get him in the right way.

  Whether Hyde liked it or not, the issue was now squarely before him. The question was what was the right way. He resolved to treat the White House as reasonably as possible but did not want to roll over either.