“What are you talking about, George?”
“Just kill it.” Then I whispered. “I talked to Devroy. She says the ‘full confidence’ line will blow this out of control.”
“Fine. Good-bye.” The line was dropped.
Now there was nothing to do but wait for the first edition of the Post. So I kept a long-scheduled dinner with old friends, knowing full well that the calls would start as soon as the story hit the wire. Like clockwork, my beeper went off shortly after ten, just in time for dessert. I excused myself to return the first call — to Gwen Ifill of the Times, who had to match the Post scoop in her second edition.
Gwen had started covering the campaign back in the early days of 1991. If she hadn't been covering us, I'd have considered her a friend. I didn't mind getting yelled at by Gwen, or yelling back; that was part of my job. But there was one emotion I never wanted to hear in her voice, or the voice of any reporter, and that was pity. Pity meant, to borrow a Clintonism, that I was “bleeding like a stuck pig.”
“George,” Gwen said, her voice soft, “you're going to have to tell me about this.”
I did, and returned to my cake after hearing Gwen say, “You hang in there, OK?”
But dinner was over. The wires were calling now; I had work to do. On my way home, I stopped at the 7-Eleven by my house to pick up the Post. Above the fold, in the right-hand corner, was Saturday's lead: “RTC Lawyer Drew White House Ire: Clinton Aides Questioned Hiring.”
I sat in my car and scoured the story, thinking it wasn't so bad. The headline was about anger, not illegality; the subhead didn't suggest that Harold and I had demanded that Stephens be fired, just that we “questioned” his “hiring.” The rest followed the same pattern — not fun to read, but fair. It gave my side of the story, with no mention of “full confidence” from the White House. I never imagined that I'd reach a point in my career where my rage would be front-page news, or that I would one day read a story like this and consider it relatively good news. But I went to bed that night thinking things could have been worse.
SATURDAY, MARCH 26
The second I woke up. I reached for the Post. Still there. Reading it under the covers, I continued to believe this was survivable. Next I checked in with James, Stan, and my friend Eric to be sure. They all agreed: so far, so good.
But there was still Time. When I arrived at the office, Duffy was calling with a final question: “Did the president direct you to call Treasury about Stephens?” “No, absolutely not,” I answered. An hour later, Time's advance press release on the Monday edition started to whir through my fax machine:
GRAND JURY INVESTIGATING WHITE HOUSE EFFORT TO HINDER WHITEWATER INVESTIGATION
The most incriminating charges popped right out of the page. “Special Counsel Robert Fiske and a Whitewater grand jury are weighing charges that White House aides tried — though unsuccessfully — to force the firing of Jay Stephens.” Bullshit. I'm not a target. We asked how he got hired and if anything could be done about it. “Force the firing” is precisely what we didn't do. “The charges involve the actions of George Stephanopoulos, the president's most trusted political adviser outside of his wife and the vice president.” Yeah, right. The only reason they're saying that is because they're trying to kill me. Might be true, though? Nah, just building me up to tear me down. “An administration official tells Time: ‘Based on the facts we believe Fiske has developed during his grand jury session, it's possible that at least one and perhaps several Section 1505 indictments could issue.’ Section 1505 of Title 18 in the U.S. Code brands any attempt to ‘influence, obstruct or impede the due and proper administration of the law,’ a crime punishable by imprisonment of up to five years.”
Section 1505 indictments? Obstruction of justice? Five years in prison? What are they talking about? It was a phone call. You can't go to jail for yelling at your friend. Or can you? Maybe Stan's wrong; maybe I am in real trouble. Nah, those bastards are just trying to take me out — turn me into a junior H. R. Haldeman. And how could they get this from an “administration official”? Nobody inside would say that, would they? Or would they? I guess you never really know who …
My real friends, though, were already there. I didn't have to call; they just came.
Begala and Sperling, Dreyer and Boorstin, and Tony Lake took a break from real matters of state to join me in the foxhole. Brand plugged in by speakerphone, and we put the skills we had honed in defense of Clinton to work for me. Our strategy was inspired by the daredevil firefighter Red Adair. When I was younger, I had read magazine ads about how Red would creep up close to a blazing oil well, a Rolex strapped to his wrist, and blow out the fire with a blast of dynamite. By writing that I was being investigated for a Watergate felony, Time had ignited a political firestorm that I had to extinguish with a mini-explosion of my own. The Post story was a good start, but we had to do more. Instead of waiting Time out, I had to create my own story. Today.
Smothering the obstruction-of-justice angle was most crucial. That was my lawyer's job. He started calling White House reporters to make sure they understood that someone who asked a question about an official investigation without demanding action could never be charged with obstruction, especially if there was no corrupt intent. He gave the same briefing to the Sunday show hosts and to the legal experts most likely to be called by CNN and other networks. It wasn't enough for my lawyer to claim I was innocent; credible third parties had to back us up.
But I still had to take the lead in my own defense. I couldn't have my lawyer speak for me. If I didn't answer the charges myself — aggressively, immediately, on television — I would look guilty, which was almost as bad as being guilty. As always, CNN was the first stop. Their tape would run all day, color the network coverage that night, and influence the talking heads slated to appear on Sunday morning. ABC was also planning a story, so we decided to give them an interview too and then release these two transcripts to the rest of the press. After rewriting my notes three times and walking around the White House grounds with my friends to calm down, I sat in the Roosevelt Room for the interviews.
My script was perfectly consistent with my grand jury testimony. It had to be — any material discrepancy could lead to a perjury charge. I also tried to elaborate on my anger, emphasizing my gut reaction to what I thought was the outrageously unfair appointment of Jay Stephens. He had to be a vivid adversary, someone whose appointment Clinton partisans could attack and objective observers could question. People tuning in to this story for the first time would understand that it was wrong for a partisan opponent of the president to be conducting the investigation; they might even react as I had in the same situation. Mine was an instinctive response to a perceived injustice — a point that was echoed by our new White House counsel, Lloyd Cutler. Finally, I had to give viewers permission to suspend my political sentence and put me on parole instead. That required contrition. “Do I wish now that I hadn't lost my temper?” I asked ABC. “You bet I do.” I then apologized and said I'd learned my lesson. In his background interviews, Stan even tried to make my relative youth part of my defense by describing my outburst as a “temper tantrum” — immature but not illegal.
That night I attended Mary McGrory's annual St. Patrick's Day lasagna dinner. Another Clinton lesson: Don't get thrown off track. If I hadn't gone as expected, everyone would think I was ducking because of that morning's Post. At dinner, I had to demonstrate that I was taking the allegations seriously without appearing guilty. The first person I saw was NBC's Tim Russert. He was cordial but professionally correct; most of his Meet the Press broadcast tomorrow would focus on my story. Republican congressman Jim Leach, Clinton's chief congressional nemesis on Whitewater, would be a guest, but thankfully for me, the show's other panelist would be Speaker Tom Foley. He was also at Mary's that night, and halfway through cocktails he rehearsed an impassioned speech in my defense. Columnist Mark Shields chimed in with a supportive argument he had already made that night on CNN's Capitol Gang.
Saturday had gone as well as possible.
SUNDAY, MARCH 27
My mood took a slight dip when I saw the Sunday Times. Mack McLarty had asked Lloyd Cutler to look into my phone calls, and the Times was playing that up on page one as one of two “New Inquiries.” Not helpful. But all that mattered now was the talking heads — how they interpreted my story would set the conventional wisdom on whether I could survive. Unable to do anything about it, or even watch, I went to church.
“Your prayers have been answered.”
David Dreyer's text message lit up my beeper at the close of the liturgy. Within minutes, I was working the phones. Everyone reported the same good news — a clean sweep of the Sunday shows.
After talking with Mary Matalin, Marlin Fitzwater got my morning off to a good start on C-Span's Sunday Journal: “I have to admit that if you stand in George Stephanopoulos's shoes, it would be a little difficult not to be surprised and outraged by that appointment.” Chris Matthews made my case on CNN: “I find it very hard in reading the account of George Stephanopoulos that he was doing anything more than I would have done, which is to try to protect the president legally.”
On Meet the Press, Speaker Foley emphasized my bottom line (“The fact of the matter is that Jay Stephens was not removed”) before taking a swipe at Time. Then Congressman Leach weighed in. When he said, “I think the White House may have made a mistake,” but added that “some of it is pretty natural, and one of the figures in the White House is a young man, and I hope we don't make too much of this part of the story,” it felt as if the foreman had appeared to announce the jury's decision, a consensus verdict of Democrats, Republicans, and pundits: not guilty on all felony counts; misdemeanor violation settled by time served.
After celebrating my reprieve at lunch with Eric, I wanted to go home, but that was impossible. My building was surrounded by videocams and sound trucks, and my apartment had become a tourist attraction. For weeks, I'd been trying to unload my one-bedroom without even a nibble, but that afternoon's open house drew sixty-five alleged house hunters. So I circled the city in my Honda, monitoring my situation by cell phone. Leach's sound bite had set the story, and I had no intention of giving any more interviews. But I did want reporters to remember that I had been courteous and accessible under siege, so I returned their calls and explained that I had nothing more to say. Of course that didn't stop them from trying. Adam Nagourney of USA Today was most persistent. “C'mon, George, c'mon,” he insisted. “I need something new for my story. I need something new. Something fresh.”
“Fresh” was exactly what I didn't need. Anything inconsistent with what I'd already said could put me in jeopardy. I knew Adam well enough to be as straight with him as he was with me. “Fuck you, Adam,” I yelled. “Who cares about your story? This is my life.”
After deadline, I joined my old friends Dan and Karen for a movie, The Paper, that seemed to be based on this particular episode of my life. The film follows a day in the life of a New York City tabloid whose star writer is trying to trump up a scandal with several columns accusing the city's sanitation commissioner of various misdeeds. Finally, the hapless but not corrupt city official goes berserk and pulls a gun on the writer. As they cart the commissioner away, he asks the columnist why he made him look like a crook.
“You work for the government,” replies the columnist. “It was your turn.”
In the way that every pop song seems to have deep meaning when your girlfriend dumps you, this insight, I was certain, was the cutting edge of cultural criticism. Yeah. That's exactly what's wrong with the press today. Don't really care if they're right as long as they're first. Sell the scandal now, settle it later. Accuse you on page one, acquit you on page twenty-three. But by the end of the night, I was more relieved than bitter, and a check-in call from the president ended my hellish weekend on a high note. Reaching me as my friends and I finished dinner at our favorite Indian restaurant, he joked about the incident that forty-eight hours ago had seemed like a political death sentence. “So who did you in,” Clinton asked, “old Josh?” “No, Mr. President, I don't think so,” I replied with a weak laugh at the thought of how Josh would squirm if he heard the president talking about him like that.
MONDAY, MARCH 28
The Post headline was pleasantly muted: “Stephanopoulos Call Played Down.” The Times was even more satisfying, playing up the “man bites dog” angle of a Republican's coming to my defense: “Top Clinton Aide Gains Defender in Odd Quarter.” Never mind that both accounts were inside the paper; they were the official trial record. By 6:30 Monday morning, before a single subscriber had even received the magazine, the Time story was dead.
But when I got to the office, there it was. There I was, looking like the punch line to a bad joke. Iwanted to make the cover of Time in the worst way — and I did. Ba-dum. The photo appeared to be a hidden-camera shot of the president and me secretly plotting another Watergate — a grainy black-and-white image of me, haggard and shifty eyed, standing over a seated Clinton, his fingers pressed grimly to his brow. In fact, the Time editors had cropped several others out of a file photo of an Oval Office scheduling session, the kind where Clinton would complain about being treated like a pack mule instead of a president before adding five more events to his schedule. Even more disturbing was the headline: “Deep Water: How the President's Men Tried to Hinder the Whitewater Investigation.” Nothing nuanced there; indictment and conviction were conflated into a single phrase.
After a weekend on full alert, seeing the cover shut down all my defenses all at once — as if I were emerging from shock and feeling an injury for the very first time. Nothing else will matter. The picture says it all. Guilty as charged. Four million Time subscribers will see my mug shot, and I'll never be able to wipe the image away. A wave of vertigo swept through me, and I shook with anger — and shame. All weekend long, I'd been fueled by the sense of being wronged. But alone in my office, I also had to admit that I'd been wrong. If I hadn't made that unthinking phone call, there wouldn't be a cover photo. If I hadn't lost my temper, maybe I wouldn't have been called to testify. In the heat of the moment, I had forgotten the first rule of White House work: Never say, do, or write anything that you wouldn't want to see on the front page of the Post, or the cover of Time.
I skipped the morning staff meeting, but that evening I had a commitment that I couldn't avoid. Three thousand Greek Americans from all over the country were at the Washington Hilton for the thirty-first Biennial Congressional Banquet of the American Hellenic Educational and Progressive Association, and I was listed in the program as master of ceremonies.
I was exhausted by the weekend's fight, and the last thing I wanted to do was put on a tux and announce three hours of dinner speeches. But failing to show was the only offense this audience wouldn't forgive. The Greek community had always been there for me. Just that morning, for example, I had received a fax from Mount Athos, where the monks on the Holy Mountain of Orthodoxy wanted me to know they had celebrated a liturgy for my protection. Tonight, I had to return that spiritual favor and recognize the countless others I'd received from my extended family. But it would take more than loyal support and special prayers to get me through my night as toastmaster. I needed some jokes, so I called Mark Katz.
Mark and I had shared an office during the Dukakis campaign, where he served as chief joke writer. Hoping to coin a phrase as memorable as “Where's the beef?” or “Read my lips,” Mark, Andy Savitz, and I spent several afternoons crowded around a single computer screen, collaborating on dozens of possible debate lines. But the only one Dukakis actually used was one of mine (“If I had a nickel for every time you called me a liberal, Mr. Bush, I'd qualify for one of your tax breaks for the rich”). Given the fact that Katz was the only real comic in our group, that didn't seem quite fair. So when Mark was interviewing for advertising jobs, we made a trade. He could claim my line as his in return for a mild form of indentured servitude. For the rest of my life, whenever I needed a joke
, Mark had to write me one:
“As you can imagine, my mom was quite upset with Time. ‘George,’ she said, ‘you really should've gotten a haircut if you knew you were going to be on the cover.’”
Hm. I thought that was pretty good. Better hurry to the next one.
“Jay Stephens has nothing to worry about. I don't get even, I just get mad.”
My banquet jokes didn't even draw scattered giggles — just nervous silence. Only then did I realize how badly I had misread my audience. Although we were in the basement of the Washington Hilton, this wasn't your standard Washington roast — where political figures are expected to treat scandals with a dose of self-deprecating humor. Tonight was more like a family reunion, a celebration of clan pride. The AHEPAns who hugged me in the receiving line or approached the dais with Instamatics in hand either didn't know about my predicament or didn't care. To them I wasn't Nixon's Haldeman or Clinton's young man. I was their boy George. I'd made it to the top and made them proud — the highest-ranking Greek in the White House.
Catching my mistake, I pushed aside the rest of my prepared remarks and spoke from the heart about gratitude and responsibility, about how much I valued my Hellenic roots and how much I owed the Greek omogeneia. AHEPA had awarded me my first college scholarship; ever since I'd started to work in politics, the Greek community — Democrats and Republicans — had been my stalwarts. That night, they demonstrated their support again by pretending that the weekend's events had never happened. Reassured and humbled, I returned the favor by pledging to them that I would never let them down.
All Too Human: A Political Education Page 30