Pretend I'm Not Here

by Barbara Feinman Todd

  A day or two before my scheduled deposition, Mrs. Clinton’s lawyer, David Kendall, called me at home to ask me if I needed anything.

  Suddenly, everyone seemed very concerned about me. I directed Mr. Kendall to my lawyer.

  On February 12, 1996, my lawyer and I got in a cab and made our way down to the Dirksen Building on Capitol Hill. Dirksen is one of three Senate buildings, and it was built after World War II, complete with large hearing rooms to facilitate the emerging medium of television. I had spent plenty of time on the Hill, working on various political memoirs, but this was my first time being called there as a participant.

  I was nervous about being deposed, because I was scared I might misspeak or misremember and get myself into legal trouble. And there was the possibility, my lawyer warned me, that the committee might want me to testify at the televised hearings. It was a maddening waste of everyone’s time. I didn’t know anything about Whitewater. I hadn’t overheard anything or suspected anything. I had been focused on getting the book done and moving on; I didn’t care about a failed land deal from a decade earlier.

  It was a cold, drizzly, bleak Monday in February as the cab pulled up to the seven-story, marble-faced building. I asked my lawyer for the nine-hundredth time, “What could they possibly think that I know?”

  He was a backslapping good ole boy from Texas. “Nothing, darlin’,” he said, laughing as he paid the driver and held the door for me. “They know you know nothing. They just want to put the First Lady’s ghost up there in front of the TV cameras. They want to embarrass her, not you.”

  That was little consolation to me as my mind flashed on the image of Anita Hill facing down all those crusty white male senators, a veritable firing squad of old farts.

  We reported to room 534 Dirksen, the committee’s headquarters, and were ushered into a big room where, seated at a long conference table, were two men in suits. One of them was Viet Dinh, the majority counsel, who would go on to become an assistant attorney general under George W. Bush and the chief architect of the Patriot Act.

  The other was Glenn Ivey, the minority counsel, who two decades later would run for Maryland’s Fourth District congressional seat (but lose in the primary). Introductions were made and Mr. Dinh smiled at me and invited us to take our seats. A woman sat in a corner typing every word that was uttered. I kept wanting to slow down and annunciate. Did ya get that? I thought.

  I should probably confess something you may have already surmised: I’m not a very good grown-up. The more gravity a situation calls for, the more I want to misbehave, crack up, or make someone else crack up. Washington is a city full of people who take themselves too seriously, and this has had a perverse effect on me.

  So my lawyer knew he had his work cut out for him in terms of properly preparing and containing me. We’d already done deposition training 101: Be brief. The less you say, the less chance you have of screwing up. “Stick to yes or no whenever possible,” he coached. It sounds easier than it is, especially for someone who makes her living telling stories. “Yes” or “no” doesn’t make for great dialogue and does nothing for word count.

  He also told me to tell the truth. Duh. Darn, I was planning on testifying that I caught Hillary shredding documents stamped “Whitewater: Don’t Show Ken Starr.”

  He also told me not to speculate. Well, easier said than done. What if they asked me something I felt I should know? I was a people pleaser. Wasn’t this like a test that I could pass or fail? “No, just tell them what you know. No more. No less,” he said.

  They started by having me state my name and address. Easy peasy. I can ace this test!

  I used my best witness-being-deposed solemn voice. I figured if I drained any life from my tone, I had a fighting chance at staying out of jail and off camera.

  “Be boring,” my lawyer had implored. “You’re not a guest on Late Night.”

  I did great for the first few minutes. I followed all my lawyer’s directions and heeded all his warnings. Then Mr. Dinh pulled out what was labeled, I kid you not, “Feinman exhibit A.” It was a map of the White House residence. Exhibit A.

  Wow. I have my own exhibit!

  “Let me show you a sketch that we have of the third floor of the White House. And let me focus your attention in particular, north is facing down, so the top of the page is the south side—”

  “Here’s the thing, I don’t do directions,” I said.

  My lawyer shot me a warning look and then jumped in before I could say anything else, pointing at the map. “There’s the solarium, Washington Monument is over here.” He was like a stage mom trying to direct me away from the stage pit. I was a first grader in a giant ladybug costume who was leaning too close to the edge of the stage.

  Mr. Dinh echoed my lawyer: “The Washington Monument is at the top.”

  Everyone is so helpful! Mr. Dinh, the Republican, he was on my side!

  My lawyer gave me a glare that said, Remember why we are here.

  This was about my relative value as a smoking gun. Nothing more. Nothing less.

  We went on like this for several minutes, with them asking if I worked in this room or that room and if I ever heard any conversations about this person or that—all Whitewater-related names, the likes of which I’d heard on TV and read about in the newspapers.

  They asked me every which way you could imagine. It began to sound like Dr. Seuss. I do not like green eggs and ham . . . I did not hear any White House dirt, I did not see the President flirt. I did not meet a man named Jim. I heard no secrets regarding Susan McDougal or him.

  They were obsessed with “the book room,” near Mrs. Clinton’s home office, the room next to where we worked on the book. It was confusing because it was called the book room I guess because it had some books in it. It was here, apparently, that the mysteriously disappeared Rose Law Firm billing records were found. They wanted to figure out how subpoenaed records could just suddenly materialize.

  “Did you on occasion stay overnight in the White House residence?”

  “Toward the end of either—I think it was toward the end of July or beginning of August, I stayed over, I think, maybe four nights . . . because I was working late, and we just decided it would be easier for me and safer rather than going out late at night. And also, on July 30, I sprained my ankle and was hopping around and so it was just easier a couple of nights to stay over.”

  Then they asked me six different ways if I ever went in the book room when I was staying overnight. I kept telling them I only went in there twice, and when I did, I didn’t notice anything. I went in there to speak to Mrs. Clinton who was exercising in a room beyond that room. Actually, I remember taking a wrong turn and ending up in a closet of the president’s suits. I didn’t mention that. Only I could get lost in a closet within a storage room.

  “So you sprained your ankle on a Sunday?”

  YES, I CONFESS, I’M CLUMSY. LOCK ME UP AND THROW AWAY THE KEY.

  “Sunday night, I sprained it. Monday, I went to the doctor, and Mrs. Clinton told me to stay home and rest, and I would say that Tuesday and Wednesday someone came over and picked me up and drove me over to the White House.”

  “So this would be that one occasion on the Wednesday, right. And the record reflects that you had lunch at the White House. Is that consistent with your recollection?”

  “Yeah, usually when I was working in Mrs. Clinton’s office, one of the butlers would bring a sandwich up for me.”

  “A sandwich up,” Mr. Dinh repeated, as though I had produced the smoking gun. “Would you take that sandwich in room 323?”

  I CONFESS. I DID IT. I ATE MY SANDWICH IN ROOM 323!!! Sheesh, this was getting tedious.

  “Most of the time you worked through lunch?”

  “Yes.”

  “In room 323?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’d make a good lawyer.”

  Why? Because I worked through lunch? Lawyers work through lunch? I thought they went to fancy steak joints and dra
nk bourbon.

  “My father wanted me to go to law school, and you can put that on the record.”

  “I think you found a better calling.”

  “I’ll stipulate to that,” my lawyer interjected to laughter. I sneered at him. Why can he make jokes, but I can’t? I stole a glance at my lawyer while everyone laughed. We were all in this together, the mood seemed to suggest.

  What was “this” exactly, though? Mr. Dinh, a conservative, must be out to get Mrs. Clinton. Mr. Ivey, working for the Democrats, must be charged with protecting her. I didn’t want to get anybody, and I certainly didn’t want to help the Republicans. I wasn’t feeling real warm and fuzzy about my White House experience, but I didn’t know anything, and above all else I wanted to not be called to testify for all the world, or at least those who tuned in to C-SPAN, to watch.

  In the transcripts, we were already to page 43 and so far, our little comedy routine camaraderie aside, my testimony had been pretty unrevealing, certainly nothing worthy of putting me before a camera.

  The mood modulated back and forth between lightheartedness and interrogation. The two investigators became serious as they homed in on the dinner I shared with the Clintons and Kaki the decorator from Arkansas. They wanted to know what we talked about. I told them it was hard to remember because I was so nervous eating dinner with the president. I mentioned the early birthday present Kaki had given him, the framed sketch of all the movie stars.

  “Then the president spoke for a little bit about the movie High Noon.”

  “During this dinner, do you recall ever talking about Whitewater Development Corporation?”

  “It never came up.”

  “What about Madison Guaranty Savings & Loan Association?”

  “Never came up.”

  “Capital Management Services?”

  “Never came up.”

  “Did you talk about Arkansas at all?”

  “Not that I remember.”

  “Not even with Kaki Hockersmith and the president and First Lady?”

  “I have no recollection of that. I’m pretty sure it didn’t come up.”

  “Did you talk about the Whitewater hearings then progressing in the Senate Special Committee?”

  “No.”

  “Now that I’ve got your attention focused on this particular date, do you recall if you went into any other room on the third floor besides 323 and the sunroom, and obviously your bedroom that night?”

  “No. I went—after we ate dinner, everyone left, and I went back, straight back because I remember walking with Kaki and the president, and they went to the elevator, and I went back to our office to work.”

  “And the records indicate that that night you spent in the room next door, 324. Is that consistent with your recollection?”

  “Yes.”

  “And I take it you did not use the exercise room that night?”

  “No.”

  “And you did not get a video from the book room?”

  “No. I didn’t know there were videos in the book room.”

  “Well, next time you’re at the White House—I understand there’s no rental charges either.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind.”

  “Although it could lead to another subpoena,” joked Mr. Ivey. “You might want to try Blockbuster.”

  Hahahaha. Another subpoena! Those lawyers sure are a funny bunch.

  “Let me direct your attention now to Saturday, August 5. I’ve placed in front of you a record labeled S 020020.”

  I looked at the document. “They have my name wrong on this. Feinstein, Iceberg, we’re all the same.”

  My lawyer shot me a knock off the Borscht Belt routine look.

  “What’s the name on it?”

  “Feinstein,” I said, exasperated.

  (Twenty years later, rereading the transcript of my testimony, I wonder why I was fixating on minor irritations, and yet I was unfazed that I was under oath talking about the president of the United States and his wife. People around the White House couldn’t get either my name or my job right. I remembered one day I was called to the White House, and when I got to the gate I told the guard I should be on the list, that the First Lady was expecting me. “You’re here to do her makeup?” the guard had asked, looking down at a clipboard. I laughed. In a sense I was a makeup artist.)

  “Let me direct your attention to the entry labeled ‘8:30.’ Do you recall having breakfast with Kaki Hockersmith that morning?”

  “Yes.”

  “That indeed was you who is identified here as Barbara Feinstein?”

  “Yes.”

  “And let me ask you specifically regarding that breakfast, did you and Ms. Hockersmith have any discussions of Whitewater Development Corporation?”

  “No.”

  “Capital Management?”

  “No.”

  “Have you ever heard of a person named Seth Ward?”

  “Only in the last week from news accounts.”

  “So I take it that Mr. Ward did not come up as a topic of conversation, then, either?”

  Well, actually, I said to Kaki, the Clintons’ decorator, Please pass the croissants and do you think Seth Ward, one of the Arkansas businessmen caught up the Whitewater scandal, is guilty??

  “No.”

  It went on like this for a while, running through the same questions about a trip our editor made down to D.C. We went through the logs that documented both of us staying overnight at the White House, eating various meals, being taken out on the balcony by Carolyn Huber to watch the helicopter departure, et cetera. No, no, a thousand times no, I never heard anyone ever talk about Whitewater, and I never saw anything suspicious ever.

  “Have you ever had any discussions that you can recall of Rose Law Firm billing records?”

  “Do you mean with my sister? What we saw on the news last night?”

  “Let me just start with a specific. In the White House.”

  “No.”

  “At any time while you were in the White House?”

  “Let me think for a minute to make sure because I believe the answer is no.”

  The transcript notes a “pause.” I was probably thinking, This is when they start waterboarding me. I better come up with something. Except maybe waterboarding wasn’t even a thing yet.

  “I never had any discussions about any billing records in the White House. There was one occasion where the construction workers, who were there the entire summer making a lot of noise, broke through some plaster, and I believe Capricia [Marshall] came and unlocked a closet in the office where we were working, Mrs. Clinton and I were working, and I think there was some plaster or something, and Capricia was annoyed, and she relocked the door. And I have a vague recollection of somebody telling me that that was the closet in the office in which there were some records that had been publicized, that someone had put back in there or something. I don’t remember the details . . .”

  While I was recounting this last part, all three men’s expressions changed. Everyone sat up straighter, and both of the committee lawyers started scribbling wildly, their eyes widening.

  Uh-oh.

  My lawyer, on the other hand, became expressionless, but his eyes told me what he was thinking: Oh, darlin’, you just won an all-expenses-paid trip to the televised Whitewater hearings.

  We spent what would reap another ten pages of transcript talking about the closet-and-falling-plaster scene.

  “So somebody told you before Ms. Marshall came in the room, opened up the closet, and walked back out that it was the closet in which some things were put in there and removed?”

  “Right.”

  “And by this general ‘thing’ some files had been put in and removed and publicized, do you remember whether it was the box of personal files from White House deputy counsel Vince Foster’s office on the night of his death?”

  The press had been very interested in the fact that Maggie Williams, the First Lady’s chief of staff, had been in Foster’s
office the night of his suicide. A veteran Secret Service agent swore he saw her leave Foster’s office carrying two handfuls of folders. She swore that she wasn’t carrying any files and even took a lie detector test to prove it. I could see why Mr. Dinh was excited about my locked closet story. I just wasn’t willing to connect dots that I couldn’t verify should be connected.

  “I just don’t remember what it was.”

  “You just heard there were some records that were put in there and then removed and this had been publicized?”

  “Right?”

  “So the comment that somebody told you, this is the famous closet or something to that effect?”

  “Yeah, something like that.”

  “Or infamous, depending on one’s perspective.”

  It went on a bit longer, and then they dismissed us. My lawyer predicted I would get a callback. If only it were an audition for a Broadway show.

  The committee called my lawyer and said they wanted me to be a witness at the televised hearings. Shit. Shit. Shit.

  It didn’t matter that I didn’t know anything juicy and hadn’t done anything wrong. They just wanted to put me on camera and ask the First Lady’s ghostwriter about locked closets, falling plaster, and missing documents.

  Witnesses were judged for their composure, their appearance, their political currency. Women were judged particularly harshly. Anita Hill and Fawn Hall were both portrayed two-dimensionally and cartoonishly in the name of political expediency.

  “I can’t do this,” I told my lawyer. “Think of a way out,” I pleaded.

  “It won’t be so bad, darlin’.” I imagined he was already strategizing about which power suit and tie to wear. All he needed to do was look polished and powerful, sitting behind me, nodding knowingly or shaking his head disapprovingly, then leaning over to whisper wise counsel in my ear.

  “I can’t do this,” I muttered to no one in particular several times a day. On the day of the scheduled hearing, we got back in a cab and returned to the Hill. When we arrived at the Senate Green Room, my teeth began to chatter I was so nervous. I practiced saying, “No, sir.” “Yes, sir.” “I don’t recall, sir.”