This game of hardball is the uncomfortable reality facing Clinton in the Paula Jones case. Kathleen Willey denies she made the call to Cammarata, and her lawyer, Daniel A. Gecker, says she “has no information relevant to the Paula Jones case,” and will ask a judge to quash the subpoena. Willey’s lawyer also said that she was “outraged” to be drawn into the case, and added that she “had and continues to have a good relationship” with the president. Her lawyer’s statement does not address whether there was an alleged sexual encounter with Clinton. Gecker declined to comment on any part of this story to NEWSWEEK, saying it was a “horrible injustice and invasion of privacy” to publish any details about his client’s private life. For his part, the president, through his lawyer, Robert Bennett, “adamantly denies that at any time the president ever said or did anything that was at all improper.”
The story behind last week’s headlines is complicated and murky. Even in the most straightforward sexual-harassment cases, only two people know for sure what happened; motives and perceptions can be mixed, and change over time. Willey could be a shaky witness. She was suffering through a family crisis at the time of the alleged incident, and was later briefly treated for emotional distress. Whoever first called Cammarata told the lawyer that “her husband” had killed himself, and that the suicide had been reported in the conspiracy literature of the far right as one of the “strange deaths” that have befallen Clinton associates. This clue led Cammarata to the widow of a Democratic fund raiser named Ed Willey Jr.–who had killed himself on Nov. 29, 1993. NEWSWEEK began investigating the allegations after getting a tip from Cammarata last January, but received no other help from Jones’s lawyers and shared none of its findings with them. What, if anything, really happened between Clinton and Willey remains unknown. It is possible, however, to reconstruct how the charge arose, and to shed some light on credibility and motive.
A former flight attendant, Willey was married to the son of an influential Virginia state legislator. She drove expensive cars, skied at Vail and, with her husband, contributed to the Democratic Party. In 1992 she helped organize fund-raisers for the then candidate Bill Clinton. A friend of Willey’s, Julie Steele, says she was present when Willey got a call at home from Governor Clinton on Oct. 14, 1992, the day before a presidential debate held in Richmond. According to Steele, Clinton told Willey he was suffering from laryngitis. Willey suggested chicken soup. Willey told Steele that Clinton asked, Why don’t you bring me some? Willey declined, but she was “definitely flattered,” said Steele.
Willey landed a volunteer job in the White House social office after the election and commuted from Richmond. About the same time, her husband, a lawyer deep in debt, was accused of embezzling $274,495 from a client. On Sunday, Nov. 28, 1993, there was a tense family discussion over how they were going to repay the money.
She needed a full-time, paying job. So the next day Willey came to Washington, and later told friends that she contacted Clinton’s appointments secretary and secured time with the president that same afternoon. This is not as remarkable as it might seem: though a low-level volunteer, she did have longstanding fund-raising ties to Clinton. Linda Tripp, then an executive assistant in the White House counsel’s office, recalls bumping into Willey in the West Wing after Willey had allegedly left the Oval Office. Willey was “disheveled. Her face was red and her lipstick was off. She was flustered, happy and joyful,” Tripp told NEWSWEEK. Willey said she had to talk to Tripp right away. According to Tripp, Willey said the president had taken her from the Oval Office to his private office, a small adjoining hideaway, and kissed and fondled her. She was not in any way “appalled,” Tripp told NEWSWEEK.
Tripp, who says she and Willey were once friendly but are no longer, agreed to speak to NEWSWEEK “to make it clear that this was not a case of sexual harassment.” Tripp’s account, of course, is still damaging to the president. Bennett, Clinton’s lawyer, says Tripp “is not to be believed.” In 1994 she moved from the White House counsel’s office to a higher-paying PR post at the Pentagon (a job she still holds). The next year she gave some testimony at the Whitewater hearings that was mildly embarrassing to the administration.
Willey’s friend Julie Steele raises further doubt about Willey’s description of the incident to her. At first, Steele told NEWSWEEK that Willey had graphically described being fondled by the president. Steele said that Willey had told her about the incident on the night it allegedly occurred, and that she had been distraught. But last week Steele admitted to NEWSWEEK that Willey had asked her to “lie” about what happened, in order to give credibility to the allegation that she had been harassed. (Willey’s lawyer refused to comment to NEWSWEEK on Steele’s charge, or on any other aspect of Tripp’s or Steele’s accounts.) In fact, said Steele, Willey had told her about the incident weeks after it happened, saying only that the president had made a pass at her. To Steele, Willey had not appeared upset by it at the time.
In December 1993, Willey got a paying job in the counsel’s office that lasted 10 months. In 1995, at the White House’s invitation, she served as a member of U.S. delegations to international conferences on social development in Copenhagen and one on biodiversity in Jakarta; State Department records show that she was the only American participant who had no apparent expertise in the issues under discussion. The cost of her trips to the taxpayers was about $7,000. Frank Provyn, the director of the State Department Office of International Programs, said he was “kind of surprised” to see her on the trip to Indonesia. But, he added, “a good way to get yourself into a jam is to ask too many questions when someone comes from the White House.”
Through Bennett, Clinton says he has “no specific recollection of meeting [Willey] in the Oval Office.” Bennett says that Clinton may have consoled her around the time of her husband’s death, but it is “preposterous” to suggest that Clinton might have made a sexual advance. (According to police reports, Ed Willey’s body was not found until the day after the alleged encounter.) Bennett says there is no record of Willey’s entering the Oval Office, but he acknowledged that friends sometimes drop by. Willey has told others that she saw Treasury Secretary Lloyd Bentsen waiting to see Clinton when she left the president’s office mid-afternoon. Bentsen’s calendar shows him meeting Clinton at 3 p.m. that day. Who’s telling the truth? It is always hard to know in these matters, and painful to find out.
