by Larry King
NETANYAHU:$#8230;I have to tell you that usually you keep a level head with these things. And my rule in life and in political life in particular is$#8230;things are never as good as you think they are and they’re never as bad as you might think they are. They’re somewhere in the middle.
Clinton had scheduled three one-on-one interviews (radio, television, and print) that day to frame his State of the Union Address (now less than a week away), including an exchange with PBS NewsHour host Jim Lehrer. The State of the Union wasn’t the first question there either and he denied any “improper relationship.” He followed the same script in interviews on National Public Radio and in the congressional newspaper Roll Call, so it was pretty clear as I went on the air that night we were going to spend part of that hour talking about the all-too-familiar “he said–she said.” I wasn’t looking forward to it because all the talk becomes supposition. There were no witnesses. As I left for the Sunset Boulevard studio to do the live section of the show, I looked at my wife, Shawn, and made the observation, “I got a feeling this is a story that isn’t going to go away for a while.” It ain’t easy being a beacon of light.
We had a great panel to introduce the world to what will become, if not the first sentence, certainly the first paragraph, of the Clinton presidency. James Carville was the well-known spin doctor, who had been on the phone with the White House at least twenty times that day. Bob Woodward was assistant managing editor of the Washington Post. And Evan Thomas of Newsweek who heard ninety minutes of the taped conversations between Monica Lewinsky and Linda Tripp. The story, which first appeared in a Matt Drudge column on the Internet, said Newsweek was holding back publication. Thomas refused, as well he should have, to tell me how he got the tapes. And he said they were holding the story in order to check out facts. After that, I had other issues to understand.
KING: Why does this push the pope in Havana and the Middle East peace talks to second and third in the news?
WOODWARD: Well, because it’s about sex and it’s about the president. And there’s this lingering question in the country and in the world about Clinton’s credibility, and in fairness to him, there’s been no witness who has come forward who is really credible who can say, I saw and participated in criminal activities. This seems to get a foot in the door on that issue. And people want a resolution of it.
KING: So sex is still numero uno of interest?
WOODWARD: With all deference to the pope, sex still triumphs.
KING:$#8230;The end is like where?
CARVILLE: You know, seventy-two hours, forty-eight minutes, and twenty-three seconds. I don’t know but we’re all going to know the truth.
When the show was over I thanked everyone and then sat for a moment in the studio just thinking about the hour and how it fit into the entire day. One thing was clear: The Frenzy was going full throttle. I knew it because I kept thinking about the pope and the work he was trying to accomplish in Cuba and how the national conversation on relations between these two countries was obliterated by the fact all the network anchors packed their vests and were on the quickest flight, if there is such a thing, from Havana back to New York. I’m sure Fidel Castro was ticked at not being the lead and not being photographed in a business suit with the pope. Now that I think about it, I bet the pope was ticked too. And if I ever interview him, that will be my second question.
By the next day CNN, MSNBC, Fox, and the three networks were all running special reports with titles like “White House in Crisis” or “Presidency in Crisis” or “White House Under Fire.” We hadn’t gotten to the point where each day starts getting numbered as in “Crisis Day 436,” which began with Nightline during the Iran Hostage Crisis in 1979, but I knew that day was coming. After all, talk radio had spent the past six years numbering the days in office of the Clinton administration, as if this was a miserable experience for all of America, and I just knew the right-wing hosts were smelling blood. This was a gift that had been handed to them and I was certain the volume would be cranked all the way up as they did the “I told you so” routine. But having been in this business for a few years, I knew America was going to take a wait-and-see approach to the story as it does through every frenzy, despite the radio ranting, continuous TV coverage, and above-the-fold headlines. But it was The Topic. People couldn’t get enough of it. That too is the stuff of a frenzy.
By the second night (okay, White House Crisis Day 2), Larry King Live was well into what would be more than one hundred full hours on the scandal. Among the guests was Mandy Grunwald, who had worked with Clinton on both White House campaigns.
KING: As someone who knows the president and advised him a lot, what do you think he’s like now?
GRUNWALD: Probably the full range of emotions that he’s known for. He is probably focused on his State of the Union Address and is blocking out everything else when he deals with that. He has an amazing ability to set these things into different boxes and deal with the work at hand. It’s hard for the rest of us to understand how, with all of these charges going on, he could actually get any work done, but from all appearances he is.
See, another element of a frenzy is how days turn into seconds. The speed increases. The pundits were on all the shows saying Clinton should address the charges in the State of the Union Address, now six days away, he delivers to both houses of Congress because he will have the ears of the entire country. Of course, this was nuts because had Clinton said he was going to make a statement at 3:00 A.M. Sunday morning every television in America would have been tuned in, certainly more than would have watched the State of the Union Address.
The Topic at lunch the following day at Nate & Al’s was Bill Clinton and January. It was decided the president has tough first months of the year: 1992 he had to deal with Gennifer Flowers on 60 Minutes, 1993 he delivered his first State of the Union Address and was trying to learn the job, the 1995 State of the Union ran almost an hour and a half, in 1997 he was delivering the State of the Union when the O.J. civil case verdict came in, and now he was dealing with Monica. We agreed this was the toughest January of all. And in the first week of “the crisis,” we brought Gennifer Flowers into the studio.
KING: How do you explain that such a bright person and a brilliant politician would get like this?
FLOWERS: I don’t think you want me to answer this and be honest.
KING: Why? You know him. Why do bad things happen to good—
FLOWERS: I’d think he was thinking with another head instead of this one.
I knew the floor technicians were cracking up as she said it because of the quick crouches taking place behind the cameras. In fact, I imagine there were howls erupting in homes across the world. It was a line I’ve heard for years and, while a sweeping generality, it is probably one of the truest statements made along with “lift to left field when hitting a ball out of Ebbets Field.”
But anyone with the dream of running for president someday while watching these interviews that week had to be doing a checklist of potential problem areas. And if they weren’t watching the show, well, they had better be doing the checklist anyway. A frenzy can spread. I could see the announcement twenty years later:
My name is Zeb Biller and I’m running for president of the United States. In 1975 I got loaded while my wife was traveling, woke up with Zelda Gershenson. She is now a housewife in Otis, Indiana, and can be reached at 219-555-5555. In 1978 I met a girl in Chicago and we went out but I learned she was a he. You can reach Dave at$#8230;
It’s a scary thought. If the country insists that in order to be president there is a particular direction one’s moral compass must point, then all of these questions are relevant. If not, then a candidate can say “that’s none of your &%* business.” Or, we could keep doing things the way we do them now, which is called “I don’t know.” And “I don’t know” works just fine. There was a time when Tom Johnson of CNN asked me to write my thoughts about what questions are appropriate with regard to the private lives of candidat
es and I said it can’t be done. There are no rules, I told him. What if we make a rule that you can’t ask about a rumor? What if that rumor appears on the front page of the New York Times and is framed with the words “sources are saying”? What do we do if other news groups don’t follow the rule? Is this good? The answer is it’s moot.
And then there was the dress. It was blue. It was from the Gap. And it had semen stains. As we went on the air one evening I mentioned to the staff this story was starting to read like a bad novel and with this new element, the bad novel had just gotten worse. I talked with Dr. Henry Lee, with whom all of us first became acquainted during the O.J. trial, about plans to do a DNA test of the semen stain as a way of linking—or not linking—the president despite Clinton’s claim he never had “sexual relations with that woman, Ms. Lewinsky.” Lee said if a match isn’t made, the president is off the hook. We were coming out of the second commercial break of the show, and I realized the entire country was focused on presidential semen and a dress and an intern. I took the cue from the floor director and turned to Evan Thomas of Newsweek.
KING: Did you ever think we would be on international television talking about this subject?
THOMAS: No, I mean this is beyond belief but here we are talking about it.
KING: Why did we get to this?
THOMAS: Well, for a lot of reasons: a very aggressive prosecutor, an aggressive media, but also a president of the United States who apparently got himself into this fix.
The ratings were good for these shows. It was Jackie Gleason who had told me so many years earlier in Miami that he could win the Saturday night time slot by just doing sex. “Give me a good-looking couple,” he said, “and I can get better ratings. The thing is, going the sex route takes absolutely no ingenuity at all.” We weren’t going the sex route because there were greater issues: credibility with Congress, effectiveness with world leaders, and the state of the national soul. And that took ingenuity. But we talked about sex in every show. And I will tell you I was uncomfortable talking about it the first few times but, within a month of the story first being heard, talking about oral sex became the same as talking about Iraq.
The president didn’t allude to his problems during the State of the Union Address but ratings were better than for previous speeches. People tuned in to listen for the words. See, that’s another definition of frenzy: You listen and watch and read something you normally wouldn’t, just on the chance of getting one more nugget. In her first public statement Hillary Clinton told Matt Lauer on NBC there was “a vast right-wing conspiracy” fueling the charges against the president. I was more than aware when things didn’t go the way the White House hoped or expected that they would say the Haters were at work again. You’re either with me or against me and if you’re not with me then you must be a Hater. So this latest remark was simply a variation on a theme. I thought of a conversation I’d had on the air with Texas Republican Dick Armey during the debate about the Contract With America, and his view of the Clinton White House on bad days. “Jimmy Carter said ‘I don’t know what’s wrong with my presidency. I guess it’s because the American people are filled with malaise.’ Clinton says ‘I don’t know what’s wrong with my presidency,’ ” Armey told me. “ ‘It’s because the American people are full of malice.’ ” But there were also occasions, such as health care, where many in Congress as well as industry experts thought the Clinton White House just had a bad policy.
The conspiracy wasn’t made up of a bunch of guys sitting around a shack in Montana with a copy of the Bill of Rights and wearing camouflage. For one, those folks aren’t going to like the Republican way of doing things either. For another, they aren’t going to let Mrs. Clinton know they exist, so if she has just blown their cover on national television the vast right-wing conspiracy is going to have to look for another job. So I wasn’t buying the idea that the president’s problems were the work of the Haters quietly talking to each other. In this case, I figured it was the result of his own poor judgment.
Six weeks into the story we decided to bring on the great thinkers of the country to analyze the current situation and offer a perspective, quite possibly, that had yet to be considered. Political pundits, who have day jobs as comedians, John Stewart and Al Franken, appeared together:
KING: Why is this like a runaway freight train?
STEWART: Because in conversational rock, scissors, paper, oral sex beats almost everything. You can go on stage and talk about racism and religion and things but boy, oral sex, people love to talk about, and presidential oral sex? That’s just, there’s nothing better.
KING: Al, your thoughts on the humor in this?
FRANKEN: I’m troubled. And we don’t know. Nothing has been—
KING: All of it is conjecture.
FRANKEN: Right. And CNN, I’ve been watching a lot of you and Jeff Greenfield did that show on media frenzy.
KING: Right.
FRANKEN: —and talked a lot about get it first or get it right. So a lot of this is about leaks that aren’t proven. But there have been a number of news organizations that have not rushed to judgment. I’d like to salute them.
KING: Go ahead.
FRANKEN: Sailing Magazine. American Grocer Monthly.
People still tell me that show made more sense than anything else on television that evening. And Franken was right. I read American Grocer Monthly all the time and they still haven’t gone out on a limb with the story.
I was on Today talking to Matt Lauer about a book I’d written and after doing the required thirty seconds of the interview on the book, we spent the remaining three minutes talking about Monica. The topic was how everyone wanted a chance to have the first interview with her.
“Look, if I had God in the green room and Monica in the green room and both said this was the only time they had in their schedules for me to ask a few questions, I’d look at God and ask if we could find another time to talk.” It wasn’t shtick. I was serious.
That night I had a book party at Morton’s restaurant in Washington, D.C. It was the old Duke Zeibert’s location and even though the interior and the menu were new, in my head I could still see the old booths and Duke standing at the podium. He had died a few years earlier and as I went in for the party I thought about the great old guy and the jokes he would be telling right now. Tim Russert was the host of the party and Senator John Warner, Bill Safire, Greta Van Susteren, and Wolf Blitzer of CNN were there along with about 150 other guests. It was my wife, Shawn, who pulled me aside and said, “Look who’s standing over there.” I followed her finger into the crowd and saw Monica Lewinsky.
Producers at the television show had invited her attorney, William Ginsburg, to the party and in doing so added, “and bring Monica if she’d like to attend.” Nobody thought any more about it until she appeared. We had a good conversation, if you can have a good conversation with a hundred people listening in.
“I just needed to get out,” she said, “it’s been crazy.” She was right. More people were asking her to sign copies of my book than me. She didn’t. I did.
I told her she would get through this and that her father and stepmother are good friends of mine, and when she is able to talk publicly, Larry King Live would be the show to do. While she and I were talking, John Warner became aware of who was in the room with him and left. He didn’t want to be photographed because the picture could wind up with a future opponent, or if this issue went to the Senate, he could be charged with being partial. Word had spread quickly and soon all the cameras were lined up on Connecticut Avenue staking out the restaurant, staking out the underground parking lot, staking out every entrance to the building. Reporters were trying to talk their way into the party saying they had an invitation. This was the moment I understood the phrase “feeding frenzy.” Though we were in a great steak-house, it turned into a tank of piranhas and Monica was the source of food.
Monica and Ginsburg had dinner at Morton’s that night. When I left to go to work, the cam
era crews were still staked out on the street and producers were asking me what she talked about, how’s her mood, did she wear a blue dress, and every other possible insane question. I understood they were doing their job and I’d have watched their reports that night or the next morning but to paraphrase Ernest Hollings: Like laws, news just ain’t pretty to watch being made. Morton’s managers say that book party was the best night they’ve had to date and I can certainly understand why. The place was packed and any available table was taken by someone wearing a media credential. A lot of newsrooms bought dinner at Morton’s that night and I hope it cost them big-time because the fact I had written a book wasn’t mentioned in any of the stories about the Monica Watch.
Bill Clinton was subpoenaed August 17 and spent more than four hours answering questions from Ken Starr. As he did, the president’s “senior advisors,” as they were called, put the word out that Mr. Clinton would admit to having an improper relationship with Monica Lewinsky. When I heard this, the first thought was about Newt Gingrich. More back flips. Maybe even a high-five. Those who disliked Clinton had been given one more gift, they now had a president who had an eighteen-month affair with an intern, lied about it to the country for seven months, and now was probably going to have to face the music in front of a national television audience. House Republicans were pushing congressional hearings before the House Judiciary Committee using the mantra that lying about the affair was a high crime or misdemeanor.