by Andrew Young
Although it arrived with Heather’s return address, nothing in this e-mail sounded like her, and Cheri called her as soon as it arrived. Heather answered, sounding very happy that we had called, and explained that she was out on a boat.
“Then you didn’t send me an e-mail?” asked Cheri.
“No, why do you ask?”
It took less than thirty seconds for the two women to agree that Elizabeth Edwards was the only person who could have had access to Heather’s e-mail account and the interest in sending the e-mail in question. The tone of the message and a word like “scum” were so out of character for Heather-but consistent with the attitudes of Mrs. Edwards-and only reinforced the suspicion that she was the source. The incident bothered Heather, because of the invasion of her account, but made us feel sorry for Elizabeth Edwards. She had cancer. She and her husband had just finished a grueling and failed campaign for president. And I believe that deep in her heart, she knew her husband was the father of Rielle Hunter’s baby and that her campaign against me was unfair and dishonest.
When Edwards finally set a date to meet me for a discussion that I intended to use to force an end to his deception, he insisted I come alone and asked that we meet in a restaurant. I agreed to leave Cheri home but demanded we get together in private. There was no way we could settle this in a public place. He agreed, and we settled on a date, Wednesday, June 18, and a place: the River Inn in the Georgetown district of Washington, D.C. I bought a plane ticket and was ready to depart on June 17 when Edwards sent word that he needed to delay our meeting for a day in order to attend the funeral of Meet the Press host Tim Russert, who had died unexpectedly. Despite the cost and inconvenience, I rescheduled my flight and arrived in D.C. on Thursd“ D.ay morning. (Only later would I learn that Edwards never went to the funeral.) Pam Marple, the attorney who wrote the statement declaring that I was Rielle Hunter’s lover, picked me up at the airport and drove me to the hotel, where I sat in the lobby.
The plan called for the senator to ring my cell phone and tell me the room number where I was to find him. Ninety minutes after the appointed time, I started leaving messages on Fred’s phone. When he called me back, he said, “He is about to call you. Calm down. Let’s get this taken care of.”
I called Cheri and told her it was finally about to happen. While I was talking to her, I saw one of the senator’s latest body men, Matthew Nelson, walk out of the elevator. “Hey, Cheri, I gotta go,” I said, and got up to speak to him. He was shocked to see me but tried to act nonchalant.
“What are you doing here?”
I told him I was visiting some friends and then asked him why he was in town. Matthew said he was there with the senator, who had just filled in for Obama at an event and gotten a five-minute standing ovation for his speech. He said Edwards believed he was going to get “V.P.” (This was not idle speculation. Tim Toben had relayed to me Edwards’s inside knowledge of polls that showed he would help Obama capture more votes in key states like Ohio and Pennsylvania than any other running mate.)
Just then my cell phone rang. I answered to hear Edwards’s familiar voice asking me to come upstairs. I said okay and then dialed Cheri for encouragement. She said, “Try to stay calm. And whatever you do, don’t hit him!”
On the elevator ride up I seethed and I thought about how only a consummate actor, or a psychologically disturbed human being, could have greeted me so cheerfully knowing what was about to happen. On the fifth floor I got out of the elevator and turned right to find the suite where he was waiting. I knocked and he answered with a Cheshire- cat grin and said how glad he was to see me. I responded that I wished I could say the same.
He led me into the suite and sat down with his legs folded up on the chair in a very casual way and acted like he was shocked to see me upset. He tried to talk about how he had just given an incredible speech and was certain to be picked to run as vice president. I cut him off, saying I had run into Matthew downstairs. For a moment he seemed troubled by this but then said he didn’t care because Matthew was loyal to him, not Elizabeth.
He said he didn’t know why I had come to see him and suggested I start the conversation. I began by asking why the “fuck” he hadn’t called me in three months. I criticized him for missing Eliza’s funeral and failing to call people whom he had promised to contact on my behalf.
After trying to minimize my complaints, he then tried to soothe my feelings. He asked why I was upset and told me he loved me. He insisted that our relationship was unch“onsanged and that he hadn’t been in touch with anyone because he was depressed about the election.
I exploded. I asked how many people did the shit for him that my family had done. I told him he owed us a call. And that it was inexcusable that he had skipped Eliza’s funeral. Bunny truly loved him, had given him millions of dollars and never asked anything else from him in return.
Backpedaling, he said that Bunny had assured him that she was not upset about the funeral. I corrected him, saying that Bunny was too dignified to complain, or say how much he had hurt her.
I hit a nerve. He put up his hands and talked about how we had been friends for years, had been through so much together, and that nothing had changed between us for him. He then used one of his old tricks, blaming someone else for his problems and trying to bond with me over marital problems. He said he knew Cheri was upset with me and that he understood what it felt like because Elizabeth was being hard on him.
Exasperated, I looked at him with fury in my eyes and said, “Jesus Christ.”
He told me that Elizabeth screamed all the time about me to him, and that he actually defended me. Edwards said that his wife believed that I had ruined the presidential campaign and their reputation. I told him of course she thinks that-he told her all that. He insisted, “I am going through hell.”
He was veering way off the main topic I wanted to discuss and I tried to bring him back in line by recalling that he had abandoned me, and my family. He denied this and said he wasn’t the kind of person to abandon someone he cared deeply about.
“Not that kind of person? Not that kind of person?” I then started to name people he had betrayed or abandoned without cause, including Elizabeth, Julianna Smoot, Josh Stein, David Axelrod, Bunny Mellon, John Kerry, Josh Brumberger, and others. Before I could finish, he lost his cool. He jumped up and slammed his fist down on the table. “No one fucking talks to me like that. No one.” When he ripped into Cheri, accusing her of talking to the press and others about Rielle and the baby, I shouted, “Bullshit!” right in his face.
He asked what the “fuck” I wanted.
I said, “Nothing,” and stood up. Our faces were about a foot apart over the coffee table and I was ready to fight him right there. He told me to get the “fuck” out. I told him he could read about it in the newspapers.
I flung open the door and it hit the wall with a loud bang. I walked down to the elevator trying to make a dramatic exit. I could feel him nervously looking at me as I pushed the call button. As I waited for the elevator, some of the drama drained out of the moment. Finally he walked down the hall and asked me to come back.
Afraid to leave things as they were, I went back to the room. In the tense first moments, he told me not to threaten him again. I told him not to “fucking” talk to me like that again.
We then had a much calmer discussion. He promised to stay in contact with me and not delay returning my calls. He also renewed his promise to help me in the long term by establishing the antipoverty organization with funds from Bunny Mellon where I would have a good job with health insurance and he could have a solid political platform.
Within twenty-four hours of our confrontation at the hotel in Georgetown, he went to see Bunny. During this visit he decided that he was setting his sights too low. Instead of $3 to $5 million, he now hoped to get as much as $50 million and her jet so he could circle the globe combating poverty. As a few more weeks passed, he had me contact her accountant, Kenneth Sta
rr (not the same fellow who was involved in the Monica Lewinsky case), to see if the foundation was feasible. The senator and I discussed strategy in five different phone conversations. Following his plan, I created a nonprofit corporation for this project, which we called the New Heritage Education Foundation. I broached the topic with Starr, who thought a worldwide antipoverty effort headed by Bunny’s friend John Edwards would be an ideal way to honor her life.
Once he realized that this foundation could become a reality and provide him with a permanent role on the world stage, the senator pursued it with enthusiasm. After one meeting with Bunny, the senator told Bunny’s friend Bryan Huffman he could be on the board of the foundation and “do great things.” He then called me and left a voice mail saying, “Bunny loves me.” Another message he left me said:
Andrew, hey, it’s John. I had a wonderful conversation with…
This call, and another voice mail in which he told me he was going to see Bunny to finalize arrangements for the foundation, gave me hope that the senator was finding a way to fulfill his promise that I would be employed into the future. I was also happy to be talking about something other than a secret girlfriend and his unacknowledged child. I shouldn’t have been so happy. Without someone to monitor them and clean up after them, Rielle and the senator wouldn’t be able to stay out of trouble for more than a few weeks.
Thirteen
TRUE LIES
With Rielle Hunter gone and John Edwards focused on the upcoming Democratic National Convention, Cheri and I thought we could take a few days to start putting our lives back in order. The Santa Barbara lease was ending in early August. In anticipation, we flew east and dropped the kids in Illinois to stay with family, then traveled on to Raleigh. We spent a couple of days moving our things into storage and cleaning up. On top of all the other frustrations we felt, we were dealing with a house that my boss told me I could never move in to.
As we moved through the rental house and sorted things into boxes and rubbish that could be discarded, I came upon a box of trash that Rielle had left behind after she stayed with us for a few weeks at the very start of her life on the run. A few things lying on top of the cardboard and papers caught my eye. One was a sheaf of pages ripped out of a notebook with “The Slut Club” written on the top line and a list of thirty-four men’s names below.
I also noticed a number of videotapes, including one marked “Special,” which had the tape pulled out and seemed intentionally broken. Cheri said, “Must be the missing webisodes Elizabeth was looking for.”
I couldn’t resist. With scissors, a pen, and some Scotch tape, I fixed the cassette and put a TV on top of some boxes to watch the video. As soon as I pressed play, we saw an image of a man-John Edwards-and a naked pregnant woman, photographed from the navel down, engaged in a sexual encounter. The images were recorded with the somewhat steady assurance of a professional, and the senator’s performance was ironically narcissistic. The video was without sound, and the angle was such that the woman’s face was obscured. (She obviously held the camera.) But given where we found the tape and the fact that the woman on the tape wore a distinctive bracelet I had seen on Rielle many times, it was safe to assume it was Rielle, and that it was filmed just before the election began.
As compromising images of a former presidential candidate and current contender for vice president flashed on the screen, Cheri and I dropped to the floor and watched, speechless. When we were able to talk, we debated turning it off, but neither of us could actually press the button. It was like watching a traffic pileup occur in slow motion-it was repelling but also transfixing. We also knew immediately that we now possessed something powerful. We weren’t going to use it in any nefarious way, but I planned to deposit a copy in a safe-deposit box and place at least one other with an attorney with instructions to make it public, if necessary, should anything suspicious befall us.
My fear may have been fueled by paranoia. However, it was justified. I had been uprooted and then isolated from friends, and I had read enough John Grisham novels to believe that superlawyers empowered with endless amounts of money could do terrible things. We were dealing with lots of rich and powerful people. The tape, I thought, might protect us.
We returned to California via Illinois, arriving on July 21. After seven months of being trapped with Rielle, we felt like celebrating. We used a cre›. Wdit left over from a hotel to stay overnight at Venice Beach, where the kids got to see Rollerbladers, fortune-tellers, and a few “You’re going to hell” evangelists on the boardwalk. In the morning, we drove back to Santa Barbara so we could close up that house. I turned off my cell phone and rolled down the windows to enjoy our last drive up the coast. When I switched the phone on again at the house, it rang almost immediately.
Pam Marple, the attorney who had drafted the statement declaring I was the father of Rielle’s baby, was calling from her office in Washington. She said someone from the National Enquirer had just called her asking for a comment on pictures they had showing John Edwards visiting Rielle Hunter-less than twelve hours ago-at the Beverly Hilton. A story on Edwards going to the hotel and speculating about the nature of the visit was already posted on the Enquirer Web site. Pam was upset and hoped I could tell her something about what was really going on. In fact, I didn’t know that Edwards had been in Beverly Hills while we were a few miles away at Venice Beach. I couldn’t advise her, nor could I inform her.
At first I thought they had pictures from the senator’s first visit with Rielle and the baby. She had taken photos of him with Quinn, and I thought that she may have given them to the Enquirer. Knowing that the senator could be in deep trouble, I wanted to help him, even after all that had happened. I tried to call Rielle but got no answer. As I hung up, the phone rang in my hand. It was the senator. I answered to hear him fighting tears and struggling to talk.
“Andrew, they caught me. It’s all over.”
The emotion in his voice and traffic in the background made it hard for me to hear him. I let him cry and blubber for a minute, and as he did I thought I heard a man who was finally facing the truth. I felt I needed to help him pull himself together. I started by going to my computer and logging on to the Enquirer Web site while I asked him what had happened.
According to the tale he told me, the senator had come to Los Angeles to see supporters and had arranged to see Rielle and Frances Quinn afterward. Bob picked him up in his BMW and drove him to the Beverly Hilton, where Rielle and Bob were staying.
“Did you see any cameras?” I asked him.
“No, definitely not. I mean, I guess there could have been one-I remember a room service cart-I guess a camera could have been there. Hell, they can hide a camera anywhere these days.”
“Well, they say in the article that y’all went out walking holding hands.”
“No, that’s BS. We didn’t leave the room.”
My guess was that Rielle had tortured the hotel staff in order to get an upgrade and was not in the room where the E›whenquirer guys had set up their stakeout. A glance at the Enquirer Web site turned up no actual photos of Edwards with Rielle or the baby. They only had pictures of him in public areas of the hotel. “I don’t think they’ve got what they say they have,” I told him. Then I asked, “What are you going to tell Elizabeth?”
“I already talked to her. I had to.”
Now a bit calmer, Edwards explained that he had been so alarmed by the encounter with the Enquirer guys that he felt he had to call his wife. But as usual, he didn’t tell her the truth. He told her that Bob and Rielle were blackmailing him. He went to the hotel because they were going to tell the world an enormous lie-John Edwards is the father of this baby-and he had to give them money or else. He also told Elizabeth that I wasn’t paying child support.
The story might have been logical if he had told Mrs. Edwards that I was part of the blackmailing scheme, but he had not. “It doesn’t make sense for you to be alone in a hotel room with my girlfriend for three hours, un
til two A.M.,” I said. “It’s stupid.”
A call waiting signal interrupted our conversation, and Edwards told me he had to go to Los Angeles International Airport to catch a flight home. He sounded a little like a man headed to the gallows or a little boy going to see his mother after he broke a window playing ball. He said he would call me from the airport. When I hung up and checked the message on my phone, I discovered it was Fred Baron. He sounded full of life as he almost shouted, “Hey, I’m out of the hospital and feeling great. I’m gonna beat this thing!”
Fred, whose cancer was progressing, told me he had recently spent several days at the Mayo Clinic undergoing treatment. He sounded so cheerful, I thought that he must not know what was happening with John Edwards. When I called back and informed him, he finally believed my insistent claim, which I had expressed to him for months, that I was not the father of Rielle’s baby. He accepted that I had never had an affair with her and that I had been protecting his friend the senator all along.
Fred was very upset. I could hear him telling Lisa Blue the news and saying, “Goddamn Edwards. What the hell was he thinking?”
Fred and I spoke nine times in the next few hours. He was devastated to learn the truth about a man he had trusted with his time, emotion, and fortune. Like someone who has been through a terrible trauma, Fred wanted to pore over the details. At one point we discussed the fact that Edwards had asked us both to see if we could get a fabricated DNA test showing he was not the baby’s father. Fred laughed and said, “That’s criminal. That’s ridiculous. And it’s not going to happen.” When we talked about how the Enquirer staff could have known that Edwards was going to be at the hotel, we had to conclude that they had been tipped off by Rielle, Bob McGovern, or someone either of them had told. In the end it didn’t matter, but it was natural to speculate. (The details ›. (in the Enquirer were mostly accurate, including some facts I wouldn’t confirm until much later.)