"One of the guys said, 'God, and you look so nice,'" she recounted. "And I started to get defensive, saying, like, 'Hey, they're opinion shows, they cater to a certain demographic, and that demographic is a very real demographic.' And I'm getting uppity about it, and he said, 'God, you sound like a stripper defending your profession.' And I'm like, 'Are you calling me a whore?!' And then someone chimed in: 'A media whore!'"

The exchange stung, said Ms. Auerbach. But she regularly confesses much, much more before large crowds at the Moth, the "urban storytelling" series held at the club.

"I can be a bad little girl!" she once declared. "I can embrace my inner whore!"

She wasn't talking about working in right-wing broadcast journalism. She was describing her first concerted attempt to have a one-night stand with a painter named Daniel in Montauk.

"I can fuck Daniel!" she enthused. "This will be great!"

Ms. Auerbach explained how she got more from Daniel than a single night of sweaty lovemaking. Arriving home from work one day, "I pulled down my skirt and I'm looking through: OH MY GOD I SEE SOMETHING!"

It was crabs.

Later: "The pharmacist says, 'Are you sure you haven't been hiking? Maybe it's a tick.'"

Ms. Auerbach is a woman addicted to public confession. She put that stage performance on a tape reel she distributes to comedy festivals to advertise her talents as a monologist. She hopes those skills will one day translate into a job as the host of her own self-help TV show.

Presently, Ms. Auerbach has a five-year plan to broadcast a message of honesty, empowerment and self-esteem to fearful, weepy women everywhere. But right now, she said, her offstage confession-that she works at Fox News-is making her double life all the more painful.

Ms. Auerbach was sitting in a café on the Upper West Side on a Sunday evening, wearing a pink sweater, blushing like a secretly naughty bride and punctuating her story with that crackling laugh. She veered between her obsessions with tarot cards (she once gave an on-site reading to a Fox producer) and women's identity issues ("A lot of women cry a lot and want to be loved a lot and have something safe"), but continually returned to the thorny reality of her day job, which clearly challenged her self-image as a cultural healer.

"I'm constantly attacked," Ms. Auerbach complained. "I mean really, like I feel like I might as well be a Bush daughter. Especially if you run in a liberal crowd that's interested politically in what's going on, you are attacked."

Ms. Auerbach said her work on the line desk, managing satellite feeds and news crews for affiliates, is the equivalent of waitressing, only she serves up conservative news. No one else at Rupert Murdoch's cable channel knows what she does at night.

"I can walk into a room if I want to and light the room up," she said. "I think I have that ability. I've been told that I'm very charismatic onstage. And yet at Fox, often I will shower the night before and my hair will be like this"-she splayed her fingers in the air-"and I'll walk in wearing jeans or whatever, and I slump down in my chair and I really feel like I'm camouflaged. That's how I survived there this long, but I think it's really killing something in me. I think it has. It's really terrible."

Her next monologue at the Moth is on May 17 for a "storytelling slam" competition. Might she tell some stories from the bowels of Fox News Channel?

"One of my best friends says, 'You're going to write a show about it, because it's just too funny,'" she said, but added that "there would be a fear of doing that. I would be afraid. I don't think they like that kind of publicity."

And she wouldn't be inviting, say, Roger Ailes to her next stage performance?

"No!" she said, horror-stricken at the thought. "But he doesn't even know me. He might after this, and I might get fired ….

"It's kind of like dancing drunk at a company party," she explained. "It's inappropriate, and you don't want people to see you that way …. I don't want people imagining me talking about going to, you know, the pharmacist."

Andy Borowitz, the comic author and CNN contributor, said that Ms. Auerbach had won a number of competitions at the Moth. "To get to her level, you have to complete with people who take it very, very seriously," he said. "She's very charismatic. She's got a lot of character."

One story in particular stayed with him, he added, "something about her mother and sex toys. That detail is lodged there."

"My mom gave me a 'back massager' when I turned 16," Ms. Auerbach explained.

Early on, Ms. Auerbach seemed destined for showbiz. As a teenager in the late 80's, she was the Le Clic Girl, a model for an instant camera called Le Clic, produced by a company her father ran. After graduating from SUNY Purchase in 1994, she started off as a page at CBS, shuffling audience members into The Late Show with David Letterman. "On my hosting reel," she said, referring to the tape she sends out for on-air gigs, "Dave Letterman bumps into me and has me wave to everyone and introduces me."

She tried Off Broadway acting, but she didn't like how her emotions waxed and waned with audience approval. So she moved to California and got into documentary filmmaking.

"I was working for two lesbian documentary filmmakers in Sausalito and one of them fell in love with me, and I got caught in a bizarre lesbian love triangle," said Ms. Auerbach. "I had no idea about it until it was too late, and then I went back to New York and got into this kind of news world."

She got a job at Worldwide Television News as a "broadcast coordinator," helping outsource news crews around the globe. While there, Ms. Auerbach got a preview of the conservative media universe. It centered on a mystical figure named "Jonah."

"When I was living in California, when I was very lonely and had no friends, I fell in love with a street sign named 'Jonah,'" she explained. "I have no idea why, but I became obsessed with it, and I thought that I was meant to marry a Jonah. Maybe I was a Jonah in a past life. I had no idea what Jonah meant."

One day she got a call from a man named Jonah, who was looking for a news crew in Japan. "I flipped out, because I'm like, 'Oh my God, this is my future husband!' And I'm so excited, and I'm on the phone with Jonah!'" she recalled.

After some extended flirting, she had the man fax her a handwritten note that she immediately analyzed using a book on graphology. "The loop of his 'J' meant he was strong and passionate and I had met my soulmate and it's crazy!" she said. "I was so crazy!"

But when they met one night on the Upper West Side, she knew within 10 minutes that he wasn't the fantasy Jonah. It was Jonah Goldberg, the conservative columnist at The National Review, son of right-wing Web pundit and Bill Clinton antagonist Lucianne Goldberg.

Ms. Auerbach laughed so hard and loud she could hardly breathe. The man sitting behind her at the café made a pistol with his hand and pretended to shoot. Her laugh was exceptionally loud.

After meeting Mr. Goldberg, she said, she concluded: "The universe is totally fucking with me!"

Mr. Goldberg noted that he was heavier at the time, but when he looked at Ms. Auerbach's picture on her Web site, he didn't recognize her. "It did not ring a bell," he said. "I truly, honestly don't remember it. Clearly, she got a very good handwriting analyst."

Ms. Auerbach was recently inspired after meeting Joy Behar, one of the co-hosts on The View.

"I was convinced I'd be great on The View," said Ms. Auerbach. "And I came up with a great campaign strategy, and I sent candy bars that my boyfriend doctored and Photoshopped with my name. And after the second batch of candy bars, I got a call and got an interview."

Ultimately, they were looking for a conservative mom, she said.

Ms. Auerbach next tried to get a gig as a "roving reporter" for Oprah.

"To get her attention, I didn't send her the chocolate," said Ms. Auerbach. "She's losing weight. My mom told me she loves when people get her dogs treats or presents, so I got a big, clear box and I got little treats and I got a pink frame-because pink's her favorite color-and a picture of her and her dogs, and put this whole care package together. I haven't heard anything, but I did it. I went for it."

If nothing else, Ms. Auerbach has had the personal traumas of a proper feel-your-pain TV host: She wrote a one-woman show about her mother, who was sexually abused as a child and suffered a difficult divorce after 25 years of marriage. (It's called Tarot Reading, developed with Coleman Hough, the screenwriter of the Julia Roberts movie Full Frontal.) She said she had an abusive boyfriend whom she got the courage to dump after Sept. 11. Now she has a boyfriend who lives in Massachusetts and won't marry her.

She wants to get on TV and help other women sort through the kind of issues she grapples with, which she said all women experience.

"Someone once asked me, if I could be any verb, what would it be?" she said. "And it's 'connect.' So for me, if I'm onstage or I'm in front of the camera, it's about connection for me in a really honest, soulful way-either to make fun of myself or make fun of what's going on. That's something I'd like to do. I'd like to have a more positive effect on the world."

In the meantime, she's at Fox News Channel.

She said she gets good reviews at work, although she was chastised last year for not recognizing a Washington, D.C.–based correspondent when she met him.

"I went to the Democratic National Convention and I was sitting eating dinner, and one of the correspondents from D.C. said, 'Who are you?' And I said, 'Who are you?'" Ms. Auerbach recalled. "And that was really embarrassing. It was really bad. In my review this year, they said, 'You do a great job, but you really should watch the news channel a little bit more, because you didn't know this guy and that's a big deal.'"

(She wouldn't name the correspondent, but she said it wasn't Carl Cameron, Jim Angle or Brit Hume.)

Ms. Auerbach considered her job at Fox News a kind of spiritual testing ground for someone who wants to continue having a soul.

"And I work in a basement," she said. "So I don't get a lunch break. No windows. Monitors above my head-20 monitors this way, 20 monitors behind me. I remember before we went to war, and I was still hoping we wouldn't go to war, my boss came over to me and said, 'Listen, when we go to war, we're going to be 24/7 and you're going to have to come in for the weekend.' And I'm listening to her and it's like wah-wah-wah"-Ms. Auerbach sounded like the teacher from Peanuts-"and I see above me: 'Bubonic Plague; Files Missing in Texas; North Korea Nuclear Standoff' …. It's Armageddon! We're going to die!"

She let rip another piercing cackle. The man behind her straightened up, eyes widening in disbelief.

Ms. Auerbach recently came to terms with the possibility that she might not make it on television. It happened when she had a flu shot that made half her face go temporarily numb.

"And I thought I was dying," she said. "And I'm in the emergency room right after I sent the Oprah video, and my boyfriend is parking the car, and I'm thinking I'm going to die, and I'm thinking, 'I'm not married yet, and I'm not the host of my own show, and nothing in my life has happened the way it was supposed to.' And all of a sudden, I felt overcome with peace, like it was O.K., because I had love in my life and I worked really hard to have a healthy relationship, and I may not be married but I have this beautiful thing, and I may not be the host of my own show yet, but I put myself out there. And it was the first time in my life I realized it's not about the getting, it's about the process. And that helped fill me with peace. And when I didn't die, I said, 'I'm going to hold on to this.'

"But yeah," she added after a long moment, "I want something to happen."

If you've ever wondered where casting directors find the tough guys who play the wiseguys in gangster movies and on HBO's series The Sopranos , well, on the night of Jan. 10 most of the fellas were at an art gallery, looking at photographs of themselves that were a vast improvement over the mug shots some of them had sat for in the past. The party at the Glenn Gale Gallery on East 36th Street was for an exhibit of photos taken from photographer Adolfo Gallela's new book, Cinema Wiseguys. Gesturing toward the black-suited men filling the gallery, Mr. Gallela said, "These are the guys you gotta have to make a mob movie. The background guys."

The crowd, dressed in a combination of wiseguy black and downtown black, seemed pleased. "He caught the essence of our personalities," said Dominic Chianese, who has a role in The Sopranos .

An Ozone Park, Queens, native, the 50-year-old salt-and-pepper goateed photographer, who has his fiancée's name, Heather, tattooed on his arm, said he had told his subjects before taking their pictures, "Come as you are–not as a caricature of a wiseguy. If you want to wear a suit, fine." He said most the photos were "as real as I could possibly get, which is only so real with these guys, because they're living in that kind of fantasy world. Most of them have been in jail."

Mr. Gallela said several of them were just boys in the Italian 'hood when they were signed up for an instant shot at stardom. He said that David Chase, the creator-producer of The Sopranos , helped things along by "deciding to have East Coast actors instead of doing the Hollywood thing. It's like, one of them becomes a plumber, one becomes a wiseguy, one becomes an actor."

The party attendees included Frank Vincent, Mike Starr and Gaetano LoGiudice of GoodFellas ; Joseph Rigano of Casino and Analyze This ; and Vito Antuofermo of The Godfather: Part III . The Sopranos cast was represented by Michael (Scuch) Squicciarini, Mr. Chianese, Vincent Pastore, Tony Sirico and Tony Rossi.

"I'm the first guy you see Tony Soprano kill," boasted Mr. Rossi. "But I still got a shot at coming back to life. In dreams . He has nightmares of me already. And then they might do a flashback of who I was before I ratted everyone out."

"I'm a hairdresser, really," said Mr. Rossi. "I am." He handed over a business card from a salon on 57th Street.

One man, who identified himself as Charlie the Hat, said he got into show biz after he got out of prison. "I used to sell cars that weren't mine," he said. All his life, he said, he was around the mob aura. "I always hung out with them type of looking people," he said. "Some were real, some weren't. And that's how it went." Anyway, one day, "I was at the races, just walkin' by. They asked me to wave, so I waved. Another guy didn't show up for the movie, so they pulled me in."

Mr. Gallela said most of the subjects were photographed at his apartment, which he said was located in "an old fur place" near the garment district. The décor is bovine. "I have this thing about cows. My sheets, pajamas, curtains, computer covers, rugs," said Mr. Gallela. "Everything's cow. I have a '70 Dodge convertible–all-cow interior." He said the cow theme helped bring out the unique facial expressions in his subjects: "When they walked in, they were like, 'Whoa.'"

"It's mob night!" announced Frank Adonis, who was in Raging Bull , GoodFellas and Casino . He was asked if this is how mobsters really dress. "These are my rings. This is what I wear," he said. "All Italians dress basically the same, whether they're wise guys, actors or lawyers."

Mr. Antuofermo, a former middleweight boxing champ, said, "After all those years breaking my butt boxing, I get more recognition from The Godfather than any of my fights." To achieve the menacing look in his portrait, he said he had imagined his wife cheating on him. "I'm really jealous."

Mr. Squicciarini, who plays Big Frank Cippolina on The Sopranos, said he was born and raised in Brooklyn. "Now I reside in Queens, right by Kennedy Airport," he said. "The planes fly right over the house. You gotta hold stuff down to keep it from shaking." He said he was discovered two weeks after getting out a jail, while working the door at a bar. "Today, I put all my tough-guy stuff on the screen," he said. "I work, then I wanna go home, put on my fat pants and relax."

–Jean E. Herskowitz

Toobin Tied Up

Jeffrey Toobin was standing in the middle of the large clubby lounge at Patroon, greeting guests who came to celebrate the publication of his A Vast Conspiracy: The Real Story of the Sex Scandal That Nearly Brought Down a President , just out from Random House. ABC president David Westin and his wife Sherry Rollins padded across the checked carpet.

"Millennium! Millennium!" Mr. Toobin shouted to his network boss. (In addition to his gig as a New Yorker staff writer, Mr. Toobin is ABC's legal analyst.)

His other boss, New Yorker editor David Remnick, was there with a posse from the magazine. In a little lounge area hung with blinds, George Stephanopoulos, wearing a pair of brushed copper spectacles, was chatting with New Yorker staff writer Rebecca Mead. Around 7:30 P.M., Nation media columnist Eric Alterman approached and took a dramatic look at his watch. Mr. Stephanapoulos left with Mr. Alterman; they were off to their monthly lefty journalist meeting. Meanwhile, International Creative Management agent Esther Newberg chatted with Random House Trade Group president Ann Godoff over by the fireplace.

Back in the big lounge–where posters of the book jacket reminded guests of the good old days, just last year, when book parties had actual books one could take home–some guests speculated as to whether or not Mr. Stephanopoulos was dating Bebe Neuwirth, as had been reported.

But where was Lucianne Goldberg? She had R.S.V.P.'d–but that was before Mr. Toobin's book was published. After she read the book, Ms. Goldberg sent Mr. Toobin an e-mail that read, "I've just finished reading your book, and it's going to piss a lot of people off." Mr. Toobin e-mailed Ms. Goldberg, telling her to let him know if she was one of those people. He learned from the Drudge Report on Jan. 9 that she was. "War: Lucianne Goldberg Calls Toobin Book 'Malicious and Defamatory,' Threatens Libel Suit; Lawyers Demand Random House Pull All From Shelves!!" read the headline. Among other things, the book claims Ms. Goldberg committed adultery.

A little after 8 P.M., Mr. Toobin sat down in a beige velvet mohair banquette and talked about his tie. It was an Emengildo Zegna with a red, white and blue abstract pattern, a Christmas gift from his in-laws. "It's like the love tie," he said, referring the famous tie Monica Lewinsky gave to President Clinton. "I have tried over the past year to get one of the famous love ties. It's like a historical artifact at this point. I learned it was only for sale by Zegna in 1996 and discontinued after that. I called various department stores. My result was total failure."

–Elizabeth Manus

Hurricane at the U.N.

Publicists for Universal Pictures expelled a sigh of relief when United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan waltzed into the Jan. 10 screening for The Hurricane in the United Nations' Trusteeship Council Chamber. "We didn't know he was going to come," said one flack. "We had hoped but weren't sure. He is the head of the United Nations."

But Mr. Annan was already in the house–he was at the United Nations that day for an event with Al Gore–and thus it was easy for him to introduce the cinematic life story of Rubin (Hurricane) Carter, the New Jersey boxer who was wrongly accused of triple murder and spent almost 20 years in jail.

"We deal with some very painful issues here. It's not every day that we have the chance to have this kind of occasion," Mr. Annan told the assembled mix of Hollywood and human rights types.

Mr. Washington and Mr. Annan slipped out before the screening, the former because he needed a good night's sleep before taping an episode of CBS's The Early Show and then flying to Chicago to do Oprah, and the latter because, well, he is the head of the United Nations.

Lesra Martin, who helped free Mr. Carter after reading his autobiography The Sixteenth Round as a boy, said, "I could never imagine that the first book I ever read would land me in the United Nations."

After the film, Mr. Carter addressed the group. He said he'd been having a great time being portrayed by Mr. Washington. "When I walk down the street now, people come up and say, 'You don't look like Denzel Washington,'" said Mr. Carter.

At 11 P.M., the guests piled onto buses–the A-list got limos–and vroomed to a buffet dinner at the Waldorf-Astoria.

Mr. Carter momentarily bypassed the buffet in favor of offering some political hors d'oeuvres. "Since we're in the forum of the U.N., we want to say something, say something that's important," he said. "Like: The U.N. should create a youth congress where young people can debate these issue that these old people can't solve–the death penalty, the writ of habeas corpus, wrongful conviction, literacy. You guys, young people, ought to be dealing with that, not these old farts. Their lives are finished, your lives are just beginning."

–Deborah Schoeneman

Frank DiGiacomo is on vacation .

may have been a necessary vindication of the rule of law, as the Maryland state

prosecutor insists. But actually sending her to prison-a conviction on either

felony count carries a maximum sentence of five years-would constitute terrible

and unwarranted punishment of a woman who already is enduring a life sentence

of public humiliation.

Even if decency did not

argue against the imprisonment of Ms. Tripp, there are other good reasons why

she should be allowed to arrange some lesser sanction for her offense. Much as

conservatives might insist otherwise, the proper aim of the courts is justice,

not vengeance. The fact that she and her friends tried to abuse the law for bad

motives is no reason for the law to be misused against her (even though

Lucianne Goldberg's grandstanding offer to go to jail in Ms. Tripp's place is

tempting).

It's not easy to advocate mercy for Ms. Tripp. She committed

a miserable act of betrayal against Monica Lewinsky. She did so, moreover, not

to protect herself, as she continues to claim, but in pursuit of personal

profit and political mayhem, as the tapes of her conversations with Ms.

Goldberg have proved. She taped Ms.

Lewinsky and then disseminated those recordings after she had been warned that

it was unlawful to do so.

Worse still, she seems

wholly unrepentant, spewing fresh outrages and lies almost every time she opens

her mouth. She regards herself as a noble "whistle-blower," when everyone knows

she was only a scheming voyeur. Her latest obnoxious pronouncement-that Hillary

Rodham Clinton and Lieut. Gov. Kathleen Kennedy Townsend of Maryland are

lurking behind her legal troubles-only underscores the fraudulence of her claim

that she is the victim of a "political prosecution."

Meanwhile, Ms. Tripp's

friends on the right cannot be of much help to her anymore. Having insisted all

last year that even the President must be subject to "the rule of law," they

become hypocrites when they suddenly demand leniency for Ms. Tripp.

Yet despite all that,

she should be permitted to negotiate a deal, pay a small fine or perform some

community service, and go home.

The statute under which

she has been indicted is a foolish contrivance that is not often invoked even

in the few states that have tried to outlaw so-called "one-party" telephone

recording. Although state officials have said that such cases are prosecuted

sometimes on the county level, an assistant state prosecutor in Maryland with

16 years' experience told me he has never actually heard of anyone being

prosecuted under the statute before; he was even more certain that nobody has

actually done time for this "crime." Maryland's highest court was so ambivalent

about the criminalization of one-party taping that the State Legislature

amended the law to make ignorance a valid defense-which is not the case in

other criminal proceedings, there or elsewhere.

The prosecution of Ms.

Tripp may also jeopardize important constitutional rights. Under a grant of

immunity from the independent counsel, she provided information that would tend

to incriminate her. The Maryland authorities have not only sought to obtain

that evidence, in possible violation of the Fifth Amendment, but they also

attempted to call her former attorney before the grand jury in a blatant breach

of attorney-client privilege.

Those civil liberties concerns have to be balanced against

respect for the law, as the state's attorney in Howard County, Marna McLendon,

noted in endorsing the Tripp prosecution. "People are waiting to see what the

message is for this alleged violation of the Maryland wiretap law," Ms.

McLendon, a Republican, told the Baltimore

Sun . "There is this issue of accountability, because there is sufficient

evidence to move forward."

A wiser solution may be

found in a Maryland legal procedure known as "probation before judgment," which

resembles a plea bargain except that no finding of guilt is necessarily entered

on the record. If she is willing, Ms. Tripp could be appropriately sanctioned

without a trial or a criminal record-a proportionate response, like the sanctions

recently accepted by the President in the Paula Jones lawsuit. (Based on her

remarks about the First Lady and her grandiose view of her own behavior, Ms.

Tripp may also need professional counseling.)

It shouldn't be necessary to recapitulate all the mean televised

mockery and public opprobrium inflicted on Ms. Tripp since January 1998 to

suggest that she has suffered enough. The one citizen who may remain

justifiably unsatisfied is Monica Lewinsky, and Ms. Lewinsky has chosen not to

pursue a civil lawsuit against her former friend. While there are others who

surely deserve to be held accountable and probably will not be, including

Kenneth Starr, that doesn't mean Ms. Tripp should be treated as a scapegoat.

Her case challenges everyone, and especially liberals, to

consider what we mean when we praise ourselves as "compassionate." Feeling

sorry for the innocent victim is never difficult. The truer test of compassion

is to be merciful and just toward those whom you have every reason to despise.

But before proceeding to my Gettysburg address, let me recount some reflections prompted by a return to the scene of the crime–the Senate chamber–for the Virtual Monica testimony last week.

(1) President Claus von Bülow Explains It All.

There have been recurrent movie references in the Senate Chamber today, Saturday, Feb. 6, the day the virtual Monica Tapes were finally played. Well, recurrent Charles Laughton references. This afternoon, one pro-impeachment manager compared Representative Ed Bryant's questioning of Monica Lewinsky to Charles Laughton in Witness for the Prosecution . Then Clinton defender Nicole Seligman tried to reverse that verdict by comparing the prosecutors of Bill Clinton to Charles Laughton as Inspector Javert in Les Misérables . But if you ask me, the most apt cinematic comparison, in any case the best cinematic parallel to Bill Clinton, is Jeremy Irons as Claus von Bülow in Reversal of Fortune .

Let me explain by reference to an illuminating encounter I had with Dominick Dunne during a recess earlier in the trial. I'd asked Mr. Dunne, the astute, indefatigable Yoda of trial reporters (who's covering the impeachment case for Vanity Fair ) about his now-severed friendship with Lucianne Goldberg, Linda Tripp's literary agent. It had been reported, and Mr. Dunne confirmed to me, that he'd learned about the President's affair with a White House intern from Ms. Goldberg some time before the scandal broke. He had kept her confidence, but now will no longer speak with Ms. Goldberg because he disapproves of her role in Linda Tripp's secret taping of a friend.

Mr. Dunne and I exchanged early Lucianne Goldberg sightings. I have a pretty vivid memory of her flamboyant presence from covering the 1972 Presidential campaign, a lingering image of Ms. Goldberg curled up chummily in the lap of one of the pilots in the cockpit of the 727 jet that served as George McGovern's press plane, as we came in for landing. It was, to say the least, a fairly informal atmosphere on the McGovern "Zoo Plane," as it was known, and I could be wrong about the plane being in flight at the time, although many on the plane certainly were. It was only later that it emerged, in one of the minor Watergate disclosures, that Ms. Goldberg was amassing frequent-flier miles on the McGovern plane at least in part on behalf of Richard Nixon's "dirty tricks" squad.

I had occasion to consult Ms. Goldberg a quarter-century later, shortly before she became involved in the Monica Lewinsky matter, on a question involving an earlier President's paramour: John F. Kennedy's mistress Mary Meyer, the talented, beautiful woman who slept with J.F.K. three decades before Monica's thong was a gleam in Bill Clinton's eye. Ms. Goldberg had been the literary agent of the late Leo Damore, author of a successful if controversial Chappaquiddick exposé ( Senatorial Privilege ). Before he died, Leo Damore had gotten himself a big-bucks contract with a major publisher for a book he claimed would prove a conspiracy in the death of Mary Meyer, who was murdered in Georgetown in October 1964.

Unfounded conspiracy theories about that murder have flourished since the lone gunman arrested for the killing was acquitted in a circumstantial evidence case. (I've investigated and believe the lone-gunman, non-J.F.K.-related theory of the killing. Nina Burleigh's reinvestigation of the case in her carefully reported new book on Mary Meyer, A Very Private Woman , confirms my belief.) When I called Ms. Goldberg to see just what Damore had or didn't have (for an Observer piece–July 8, 1996) I found her quite frank and candid about her former client; she told me Damore had never come up with anything and had been driven to despair by his inability to prove a conspiracy.

And so, when Ms. Goldberg's own quasi-conspiratorial involvement in the Monica scandal broke, despite my doubts about the propriety of the taping I had to admire Ms. Goldberg's instinct for a window seat, sometimes even a pilot's seat, for some of the most intriguing political-historical mysteries of our era. From Watergate to Chappaquiddick to Monicagate. From one presidential mistress to another.

But Mr. Dunne trumped me with a story I'd never heard before–Lucianne Goldberg's involvement in the Claus von Bülow case. When he was covering the von Bülow trial for Vanity Fair , Ms. Goldberg was acting as literary agent for a strange hustler who'd first claimed (conveniently for Claus von Bülow) that he'd delivered drugs to von Bülow's wife Sunny (thus bolstering von Bülow's defense against charges he'd administered the injection that put her in a coma). But then the hustler had turned on von Bülow and was attempting to peddle secretly recorded tapes he'd made of conversations with von Bülow's appeal lawyer, Alan Dershowitz. He was the Claus von Bülow case's Linda Tripp!

The uncanny parallel between the M.O.'s of Ms. Goldberg's two would-be authors might seem to suggest that the case against Bill Clinton had its tactical precedent in the case against Claus von Bülow. But in the weeks since this conversation with Mr. Dunne I'd begun to wonder if the real parallel was not between the secret tapers, the hustler and Linda Tripp, but between the principals: between Claus von Bülow and Bill Clinton.

I know: It may seem a bit of a stretch, a little mean-spirited and disproportionate to compare Bill Clinton to Claus von Bülow. "Elvis for liberals," the comparison drawn by a Clinton supporter quoted in a Feb. 8 Washington Post piece (by Michael Powell) on liberals disaffected with Mr. Clinton, may be the more charitable linkage. But the piece on anti-Clinton liberals (which quotes from one of my previous impeachment dispatches to The Observer on the centrality of the Paula Jones allegation to the question of who Bill Clinton really is ) suggests that I am not alone among liberals in thinking that there's something darker than Fat Elvis beneath the Slick Willie surface.

Bill Clinton and Claus von Bülow: Both are charming seducers with a dark side, both sought to smear the women at the heart of the case against them: Sunny von Bülow was a drunk and a drug addict, according to Claus; Monica was "a stalker," according to Bill. Both Bill and Claus got away, or will get away with problematic acquittals that leave an aura of doubt shadowing them ever after.

By the way, I've been stunned by the virtually unanimous adoption of the word "acquittal" in the media and on the Senate floor to describe the projected outcome of Bill Clinton's impeachment trial. Let's look at this a little more closely. If you're put on trial for murder and the jury votes 7 to 5 for conviction you are not acquitted . An acquittal is when a unanimous jury votes 12 to 0 that you are not guilty. If the Senate votes by a narrow majority to convict Bill Clinton of one of the Impeachment charges he is not "acquitted," in the most commonly used sense of the word, the one used from trial jury practice. There are some differences in a Senate impeachment trial, obviously: Unlike a 7-to-5 hung jury, there's no chance of retrial in a Senate vote that falls short of a two-thirds majority for conviction. It's true, in other words, that Bill Clinton will walk , but it's not quite true to say he's acquitted . Or maybe he's acquitted in the classic Clintonian–didn't inhale, didn't have "sexual relations," depends on what "is" is–way.

But to return to the Bill Clinton-Claus von Bülow comparison, in some ways it may seem unfair to Bill Clinton, but in at least one way it's unfair to Claus von Bülow. The one thing Claus von Bülow never did was adopt a tone of self-righteous religiosity, the grand-standing penitent posture Bill Clinton has adopted in his endless succession of weepy confessions at an endless series of prayer breakfasts. The most damaging legacy Bill Clinton may have left us is the further erosion of any secular, sanctimony-free zone in our culture, the further pietizing of the Presidency that will ultimately redound in favor of the intolerant religious right. He will have made the mouthing of the right pious formulas the standard by which public officials are absolved, "acquitted" of responsibility for whatever secular abuses they've inflicted.

It's such a scam, Bill Clinton's religiosity. And yet he seems to have gotten even skeptical liberals to take this aspect of his con-artistry seriously. A scam we now know–courtesy of Sidney Blumenthal–that he used on his own wife when the Monica Lewinsky allegations first surfaced a year ago. As Mr. Blumenthal relates in his Senate testimony, the First Lady came to him on the day the scandal broke and told him the Clinton line on the Lewinsky allegation: It was all just a terrible misunderstanding growing out of Bill's need to " minister to troubled people." That it was "something he did out of religious conviction." Talk about the last refuge of a scoundrel: It's a refuge Claus von Bülow, to his credit, never sunk to.

But low as he sunk in his phony religiosity, there was nothing lower–well, nothing dumber –than Bill Clinton's remarks about God and Hitler at his most recent tear-stained appearance at a national prayer breakfast in the capital just a few days before the virtual Monica tapes were shown in the Senate chamber. In this appearance, in those remarks on God and Hitler the habitual piety of the First Penitent was taken to an almost unbearable level of moral idiocy.

It's true, some might say, the intensity of my reaction might be due to the special sensitivity I've developed to ill-considered Hitler explanations in the course of 10 years' work on a book on that subject. But Bill Clinton's remarks surpassed in oblivious toxicity almost anything else I'd come across in the decade I spent working on Explaining Hitler .

Did you catch Mr. Clinton's quote? It first attracted attention because some Christians found it offensive, although I think Jews should have found it far more repugnant. Here is what Bill Clinton–in his smarmy desire to suck up to the prayer-breakfast pieties, said: "Even though Adolf Hitler practiced a perverted form of Christianity, God did not want him to prevail."

Oh, I see, things really worked out for the best, in the best of all possible worlds in the Hitler era: It's a really heartwarming story, isn't it, the way it all worked out. Hitler didn't "prevail," because "God didn't want him to." We should be grateful . It just showed how darned perfect God's plan was. In fact Hitler did prevail for far too long: Six million Jews and 40 million others were slaughtered in the war, but, hey, it allows Bill Clinton to score brownie points at a prayer breakfast, to declare this a heartwarming victory for God and man. A shamefully simplistic way of looking at a question that has tormented intelligent believers ever after, those to whom Hitler's success –in murdering 6 million of his enemies–raises fairly troubling questions of theodicy. Questions (such as, Why did God permit Hitler to "prevail" for so long?) that Hitler's "failure" at the bitter end does not resolve.

Christians are I think justly upset that Mr. Clinton portrays Nazism as any "form of Christianity," however perverted. Nazism was primarily a racial rather than religious hatred–perverted Darwinism rather than a perverted Christianity–although this does not absolve non-"perverted," normative Christianity for tolerating, if not always encouraging, the 19 centuries of anti-Semitism that paved the way, helped create the climate, for Hitler's 20th. But for Jews (for this one, anyway) it's deeply offensive for the Holocaust to be exploited by Bill Clinton for some cheap feel-good moral about God. Bill Clinton ought to be impeached for this idiocy alone.

(2) Jane Doe Number 5, "The Vanilla Story" and Bill Clinton's Reversal of Fortune.

The real Claus von Bülow comparison is to be found less in life than in cinema. In the most telling exchange between Jeremy Irons as Claus and Ron Silver playing his defender (and later Bill Clinton's) Alan Dershowitz. "You are strange, aren't you?" Dershowitz asks Claus. In his wonderfully plummy mock aristo voice Jeremy Irons' Claus replies, "you have no idea ."

You have no idea : It suggests depths of possible decadence, depravity and weirdness utterly beyond the ken of a Cambridge-bound liberal. And I think that line– You have no idea –pretty much sums up the position Bill Clinton's liberal defenders find themselves in. They've gone out on a limb for a guy they really have no real idea about. Nor do any of us. When The Washington Post 's Michael Powell called to interview me as a liberal skeptical of Mr. Clinton he was working on the "beaten dog" theory of Mr. Clinton's liberal defenders: Liberals have been beaten down and left for losers for so long that when they find a winner like Bill Clinton whose poll numbers and electoral triumphs are like a sudden infusion of Alpo in their feed bowl they just can't help but fawn over him without asking too many questions about his behavior with others. Claus von Bülow was said to be quite well loved by his dogs.

No, I'm not comparing Bill Clinton's behavior to the gravity of the crime (attempted murder) Claus von Bülow was charged with. But remember, Claus von Bülow was acquitted (in his second trial)–even more definitively acquitted than Bill Clinton's imminent equivocal "acquittal." No, I'm not comparing the crimes they were acquitted for, I'm comparing the two men as enigmas , as figures whom we may just never know , about whom we have no idea .

It is here that the "Jane Doe Number 5" story comes in. It is in this context we must regard the apparent suppression of the Jane Doe Number 5 story NBC's Lisa Meyers has prepared, but which, as of this writing, has been held back for reasons which, if not sinister, have not been adequately explained by NBC News. The Jane Doe Number 5 allegations are just as irrelevant to the articles of impeachment being considered by the Senate as the substance of the Paula Jones sexual harassment allegations (as opposed to the obstruction of justice and perjury the President may have committed in trying to dispose of her sexual harassment-and-civil rights case.) But the Jane Doe Number 5 allegations are material–if true–to what I believe is a more important and more lasting question than whether Bill Clinton deserves acquittal on the impeachment charges–the question of just who Bill Clinton is and whether we'll ever know.

I don't know whether the Jane Doe allegations–that Bill Clinton sexually assaulted a woman thus identified in a hotel room back in 1978–are true. I hope they're not. The woman in question has apparently made and withdrawn the allegation in conflicting statements. NBC News ran a story on the allegations last spring, then for months pursued Jane Doe Number 5 for an interview. Finally last month she relented and gave one to respected correspondent Lisa Meyers in which she is said to have affirmed the allegations once again. It now looks like NBC is withholding the interview for politically sensitive reasons until after the impeachment vote, perhaps forever.

But the appearance of playing politics with something as explosive as this subject (it's possible that it's being withheld for valid journalistic reasons, but critics have pointed out that NBC ran with Anita Hill's allegations before thoroughly corroborating them) is just the kind of thing that gives rise to conspiracy theories and bitterness about the media's playing favorites, playing politics–it gives rise to the feeling that the truth is subordinate to power in the media.

If NBC is taking a kind of paternalistic stance–that the timing might look wrong in releasing it now in the final week of the impeachment trial, that the public or the Senators might not be able to "handle" the allegation, keep it in perspective, I would urge the network to reconsider its position. You just can't win if you try to "time the market" for political appropriateness. I would join my esteemed colleague Nat Hentoff at The Village Voice , who has been very strong on Jane Doe Number 5, in urging NBC: Release the Lisa Meyers story now! Release it for the sake of historical clarity so that conspiracy theorists are unable to say a vast Clintonian conspiracy suppressed it until the trial was over. Not because it's relevant to the articles of impeachment. But because it might be relevant to the larger, less easily resolved question: who Bill Clinton really is.

Who he is and whether we believe "the vanilla story" about Bill Clinton. By now you're probably familiar with the term "vanilla story," a locution which Monica Lewinsky may have succeeded in adding to the American slang lexicon through repeated usage in her memorably sharp and dignified Senate deposition testimony. The "vanilla story" was the innocuous cover-up story she told in her original Paula Jones case affidavit: She only met the President to deliver papers and pizza.

The vanilla story about Bill Clinton is that he's a bit of a womanizer, yes, but he's being persecuted by intolerant puritans for an illicit but not illegal episode of "consensual sex." But the Paula Jones and Jane Doe Number 5 allegations raise the question of whether, beneath the vanilla story about Bill Clinton his defenders propagate there's something darker than vanilla, darker than vanilla fudge. Nonconsensual sex in at least two flavors, so to speak, neither one palatable. And if we don't know whether Bill Clinton is as reckless and unscrupulous and criminally contemptuous of women in private as these allegations suggest, then we won't know how to judge his character in some other defining public acts. When he raced home to Arkansas during the 1992 New Hampshire primary to execute a brain-damaged black man, was it an act of principled belief in capital punishment or political grandstanding over the brain-damaged body of a prisoner incapable of defending himself? Or when, the week the House impeachment proceedings began, he ordered the bombing of a Third World pharmaceutical factory on apparently inadequate evidence of nerve gas production: Was he acting solely for national security reasons, or did innocent strangers in Africa die in part to save Bill Clinton's skin?

I don't know the answers to these questions, but I think the questions are important. And I fear that, with Bill Clinton's acquittal (as with the resignation of Richard Nixon and the failure to resolve such basic allegations as his role in the original Watergate break-in order) there will soon come a similar disposition to sweep all the loose ends under the rug and leave them unresolved. And the truth about who Bill Clinton is–like the truth about Claus von Bülow and Richard Nixon–is something we'll never know , we'll just have no idea about.

Which brings me to the Gettysburg battlefield. I'm really not one for battlefield tours of any kind, and somehow have never found myself stirred by the whole civil war re-enactment craze, and (terrible confession) never sat through more than a tiny percentage of the Ken Burns Civil War documentary.

But I must admit I found myself deeply stirred and disturbed by Gettysburg. Stirred in part because, as I related in my first Senate trial dispatch [Jan. 25] I'd found myself incensed by the presence of the Confederate flag (embedded in the state flags of Georgia and Mississippi) in the Senate subway tunnel, incensed by the ties of pro-impeachment partisans like Bob Barr and Trent Lott to white supremacist organizations like the Council of Conservative Citizens–and wondering whether the nation had ever really assimilated the moral inequivalence of the two sides to the Civil War. (Memo to Senator Charles Schumer, your press secretary appears to be stonewalling my attempt to get an answer to this question: Now that I've gotten Henry Hyde's pledge to support a joint resolution condemning the racism of the C.C.C., will you introduce such a resolution in the Senate, and if not, why not?)

We've adopted a kind of vanilla story about the Civil War, and you can see it at Gettysburg. A battle, you'll recall, which could easily have been the breakthrough that won for the Confederate states the right to continue enslaving, breeding, raping and murdering millions of black people. You see the vanilla story of the Civil War here at Gettysburg in the cozy nonjudgmental juxtaposition of monuments to both North and South that line roads here like the one called West Confederate Avenue, monuments like the one to the North Carolina Confederate troops which speaks of their "glorious" role in the battle.

I don't know. I don't think so. They may have been brave individually, those soldiers. They may have been "just following orders" with great skill and determination. But a "glorious" role? Serving the cause of the enslavement, murder, rape and commercial breeding of human beings cannot be, in any strict construction of the word, "glorious." It reminds me of the attempts that have been made by post-war nationalist historians in Germany, to separate the role of Hitler's SS from the "ordinary German soldiers" of the Wehrmacht. Who were supposedly dedicated to fighting for their country and not for racist extermination and mass enslavement as the SS explicitly was. It is hard for me to stomach calling the Wehrmacht war a "glorious" one (and there is plenty of evidence emerging that "ordinary German soldiers" facilitated the mass murders Hitler's SS was committing).

Is it unfair to compare the army of the Confederacy to that of the Wehrmacht? I've argued that the two racist regimes they served were different in degree, not in kind. But we have been raised and inculcated with a kind of vanilla story about the Civil War, that it was a war of (well meaning) brother against (well meaning) brother. Moral equivalence between blue and gray equals vanilla.

It's a story that, as Tim Noah pointed out in a thought-provoking piece in Slate magazine ("Dump Johnson!" posted Dec. 31, 1998) may have had its origin in the "acquittal" (actually, failure of conviction, by one vote) of Andrew Johnson in 1868–and the distorted story about that first impeachment which confederate-sympathizing historians have foisted on posterity.

Mr. Noah makes a well-grounded case that the vanilla story about Andrew Johnson's impeachment is all wrong. That it was not an unprincipled partisan attempt by "Radical" Republicans to unseat a weak Democrat on trumped-up charges as most of us were taught in school. That, in fact, the drive to impeach Johnson arose from a principled antiracist opposition to a white supremacist President who was acting in a way that would deny newly freed slaves in the former confederacy their civil rights or hope for equality.

"Johnson really was advancing bad policies by impeding the extension of basic freedoms to black people," Mr. Noah argues. "This country is still suffering from the devastating after effects of this 'policy' failure." A policy which in fact did (when ratified by the corrupt Electoral College bargain of 1876) enable the ultimate triumph of legal segregation and racist discrimination in the South for a century to come.

Mr. Noah goes on to point out that in the most influential account of the Johnson impeachment (the chapter in Profiles in Courage about Republican dissenter Edmund Ross who crossed his party to save Johnson from conviction by one vote) John F. Kennedy parrots the pro-South historiography of the early 20th century which turns a genuine question of black and white into a moral equivalence vanilla. I found Mr. Noah's thesis about the misapprehension of the first impeachment (followed by David Greenberg's retrospective impeachment of Edmund Ross, also in Slate on Jan. 20), quite persuasive. And somewhat alarming: If we still get the first impeachment all wrong after more than a century, is it likely we'll come close to a true assessment of this one?

I don't in any way compare the personal sins of Bill Clinton with the gravity of the civil rights questions raised by the first impeachment. But this process, Bill Clinton's Senate trial has been so bastardized, truncated, pre-scripted, poll-crippled, Tripped-up and Starr-crossed, that it's likely we'll never know anything more, anything deeper than the vanilla story. Bill Clinton will light up a victory cigar and ride off to limo and memoir land. And we'll be left with that image of Claus von Bülow telling the man who would later become Bill Clinton's most forceful legal defender on TV: You have no idea .

When the Metropolitan Museum of Art throws its annual Costume Institute gala on Dec. 7, its only anchors in the past will be the theme, Cubism and fashion, and the event's glamorous history–this will be the 50th anniversary of what was once dubbed the party of the year. Save for some of the venerable partygoers, there will be no remnants of the Old Social Guard who long dominated the direction of the event.

Each year, the troika chosen to chair the event is interpreted as some indication of Manhattan's social climate. When, in 1995, socialite Patricia Buckley handed over the reins of the costume gala to Vogue editor Anna Wintour and socialites Annette de la Renta, the wife of the fashion designer, and Clarissa Alcock Bronfman, the wife of Edgar Bronfman Jr., chief executive of Seagram Company Ltd., the perception was that the city's meritocracy had succeeded its aristocracy.

But this year's trio of fashion designer Miuccia Prada, socialite Pia Getty (the oldest daughter of duty-free magnate Robert Miller) and art collector Paula Cussi, sends another message entirely: that power in the city increasingly has little to do with Manhattan at all.

New York is a metropolis of outsiders, to be sure, but outsiders who've chosen the city as their home. Ms. Wintour and also her rival, Harper's Bazaar editor Liz Tilberis, who co-chaired the event in 1996, are both British expatriates who at least maintain permanent addresses in Manhattan. Of this year's triumvirate, it can be said that only Ms. Getty makes her home in New York. Ms. Prada lives in Milan, and Ms. Cussi lives primarily in Mexico City, according to an associate.

Harold Holzer, vice president for communications at the Met, told The Transom that too much should not be read into the far-flung home bases of the chairmen. "This is an international event. It's not bound by any geographical constraints," said Mr. Holzer. "This may be yet another recognition of its global stature."

Ms. Prada and Ms. Getty are not unusual choices. For better or worse, they represent the current faces of fashion and society, respectively. (Ms. Prada's eponymous company will sponsor both the Costume Institute exhibit and the opening-night event.) Ms. Cussi is much more of a wild card. Like the appointments of such previous chairs as Mrs. Bronfman and, last year, Julia Koch, the wife of billionaire David Koch, Ms. Cussi's inclusion in this year's troika seems almost designed to accelerate her standing in New York social circles.

The Met's press office identified Ms. Cussi as a collector of contemporary art and a founder of Mexico City's Centro Cultural/Arte Contemporaneo, a museum. But in Latin America, she is still primarily known as the wife of Mexican media mogul Emilio Azcarraga Milmo, who was also known as "El Tigre" (that's "The Tiger," you gringos!). Azcarraga, who died in April 1997, is credited with building Televisa International S.A., the media conglomerate founded by his father, into the largest producer and broadcaster of Spanish-language programming in the world. Azcarraga was also the man who in 1988 threw $37 million into that 17-month black hole disguised as a sports newspaper, The National .

Azcarraga reportedly met and fell for the blonde (his third or fourth wife, depending on the source) while she was working as a weather reporter for Televisa–a bit of information that should deflate a bouffant or two among New York's patrician ranks. Although his marriage to Ms. Cussi ended in divorce, he reportedly was generous to her in his settlement and in his will. Ms. Cussi also made a big score when she sold her 16.9 percent stake in Televisa to Azcarraga's son, Emilio Azcarraga Jean. (A report in The Financial Times of London said that $400 million had been raised to buy out Ms. Cussi and another shareholder.

Since her ex-husband's death, Ms. Cussi has departed her post as vice president of the museum in Mexico City. She also made some headlines in London last year when the British Government tried to stop her from exporting from England an early, important Lucien Freud painting that she had bought at auction in 1994. Locally, however, Ms. Cussi is not much of a known quantity. Several observers of the social scene said they knew little about her. One Met source indicated that Ms. Wintour may have suggested Ms. Cussi as a potential chairman. But a spokesman for the Vogue editor said that Ms. Wintour was traveling and could not be reached for comment. Maria Kocherga, who cares for Ms. Cussi's art collection at the Mexico City museum, told The Transom that Ms. Cussi was also traveling and could not be reached for comment. No doubt New Yorkers will learn more about her between now and the time of Ms. Cussi's orchestrated invasion of the Metropolitan, which takes place, appropriately, on the anniversary of Pearl Harbor.

Dancing With Lucianne

Recent developments prevent Elizabeth Saloman from forgetting about Lucianne Goldberg. The literary agent-author's owlish stare and nicotine rasp seem to be riding every other airwave and cablecast devoted to the President's troubles. With each new interview, Ms. Saloman finds herself wondering, once more, whether Ms. Goldberg had any connection to her own tough luck six years ago.

Naturally, sex is involved. In 1990, Ms. Saloman shopped around a fiction manuscript titled Heroines , about a group of expensive hookers working for the top madam in Paris. The novel was never published.

Two years later, she picked up a copy of a novel by Ms. Goldberg, called Madame Cleo's Girls . The book, which also happened to be about expensive hookers working for the top madam in Paris, raised Ms. Saloman's suspicions, but she said that what really stunned her was that Ms. Goldberg had dedicated her novel to Bill Grose, then editor in chief of Pocket Books. "For William R. Grose, who took me to the dance," wrote Ms. Goldberg. "Thank you, Bill."

For Ms. Saloman, this cryptic dedication was a tip-off: Back when she was trying to sell Heroines , a friend gave Mr. Grose a copy to read. He just so happened to be the editor of Ms. Saloman's friend, a well-known reporter and author. The friend declined to be identified but confirmed to The Transom that he gave the book to Mr. Grose. "I did not speak directly to Bill," Ms. Saloman said. "He returned it to my friend and said, 'I love this book. It's so much fun but it is just too racy, you know, too graphic.' And that was the end of that."

After reading Madame Cleo's Girls , Ms. Saloman ferreted out what she claimed are other similarities between her book and Ms. Goldberg's. In each novel, one call girl is blond, the other brunette; one girl is from a New York-area family and one is from a small town in the middle of nowhere. Both main characters are studious and wounded by a first love that ended tragically. Both retire from the business when they marry men met indirectly through their work.

The Transom plowed through both works (Ms. Goldberg's novel is out of print but available at the New York Public Library), and while these little similarities do add up, the differences are greater. Madame Cleo, in a tax crisis, signs a book deal and gives a New York writer access to her life. Heroines is told through one girl's life. Heroines also deals with AIDS and homosexuality. Its abundant lesbian sex scenes, which apparently gave Mr. Grose the heebie-jeebies (not to mention the AIDS stuff), are nowhere to be found in Madame Cleo's Girls .

Ms. Saloman said that Ms. Goldberg's dedication "lead me to believe that Bill Grose, who I know had read my manuscript, gave [Ms. Goldberg] the idea. That dance thing implies that.… When Madame Cleo's Girls came out, I sent Bill Grose a letter saying … couldn't we have danced instead? And he never responded to my letter."

Mr. Grose said he did indeed give Ms. Goldberg the idea for the book. "But if there is an Elizabeth Saloman, I don't remember. The character is based on Madame Claude, a well-known Parisian. That is where I got the idea, probably from a magazine or something. But it was a long time ago."

Reached by phone for comment, Ms. Goldberg said, "Oh please! Bill Grose never gave me an idea in his life! He just gave me checks and lots of them." Ms. Goldberg said that she dedicated the book to him because "he gave me a great deal of money" for the book and has been close friend for 25 years.

"Well," she added, "this is what you get when you get a little bit famous–people out of the woodwork."

–Alexandra Zissu

The Transom Also Hears

… With the focus on bookkeeping these days at troubled theater production company Livent Inc., theater fans are wondering what will become of one project that had caught the eye of the company's since-suspended founder Garth Drabinsky. Before Mr. Drabinsky's departure amid allegations of financial irregularities, Livent was negotiating an option to possibly bring the Terrence McNally-Jon Robin Baitz collaboration House to Broadway. (Mr. McNally had written the theatrical dramatization for the musical adaptation of E.L. Doctorow's Ragtime , which Livent produced.) The two-act production, about a couple that must sell their house and the couple that buys it, is currently running through Sept. 6 at the Bay Street Theater in Sag Harbor, N.Y., starring Richard Dreyfus, Marsha Mason, Rue McClanahan, Daniel Stern and Deborah Monk. Mr. Drabinsky had even pledged $20,000 toward the Sag Harbor production. When Mr. Drabinsky was suspended from the company amid charges of financial irregularities regarding Livent's books, Mr. Hamilton said, "Livent picked up that responsibility and made good on it." While an agreement for the option had not been reached prior to Mr. Drabinsky's departure, Mr. Hamilton also said, "It is my understanding that Livent is still interested." A Livent spokesman, Ian Rand, sounded a more noncommittal note. "I think Livent's interested in a lot of projects," he said, "but we don't talk about any projects before a deal's done." Mr. McNally's and Mr. Baitz's respective agents, Gilbert Parker and George Lane, did not return calls.

… There is life after Pamela Harriman. Janet Howard, the longtime, long-suffering executive assistant to the late U.S. Ambassador to Paris, recently got her vice president's stripes at Coca-Cola Company. Ms. Howard joined Coke in 1997. She currently serves as director of international diplomatic affairs in Coke's Washington office.

According to Ms. Goldberg, she and Mr. Isikoff fell out over an Aug. 10 Newsweek article entitled "Lewinsky vs. Clinton," which Ms. Goldberg says portrayed her and her friend and client, Linda Tripp, in an unflattering light. "He made Linda and I out like the two witches of Macbeth , sort of plotting and scheming, which I didn't like," Ms. Goldberg said. (She didn't say what happened to the third witch.) "I didn't like the way they interviewed Linda," she said. "His magazine just has to be a little bit more fair when they deal with truth-tellers."

The falling-out could not have come at a worse time for Mr. Isikoff. It was back in October 1997 that Ms. Goldberg invited Mr. Isikoff to the Washington home of her son Jonah to hear Ms. Tripp's allegations against the President, a fateful meeting that helped expand the scandal to its current dimensions. Since then, Ms. Goldberg has been dispensing bits of information to favored reporters the way a zookeeper flips fish to seals. As the scandal rushes toward what may be its calamitous finale, Ms. Goldberg could be a conduit to the mother lode of scoops: Ms. Tripp's tape recordings of her phone conversations with Ms. Lewinsky.

So when Mr. Isikoff learned that Ms. Goldberg was angry, he tried to make nice. According to Ms. Goldberg, in the days after she recorded her answering machine message, Mr. Isikoff called repeatedly, asking for her forgiveness and arguing that in TV appearances he'd given Ms. Goldberg's side of the story. Still, the agent could not be appeased.

"I said, 'I'll let you grovel, but if you'll hold on a minute, I want to get this on tape because it'll be a collectors item,'" Ms. Goldberg told Off the Record. "So I put a tape in and he said, 'Fine, tape me groveling, I don't mind.' And he groveled some more. And he groveled and groveled . And I let him grovel."

Mr. Isikoff characterized the conversations somewhat differently.

"I did not retract anything or correct anything," he said. "What I apologized for was that, given that she was quoted in the article, I probably could have given her a better heads-up on what was said. The article is accurate, and we have no regrets about the article."

Answering machine warfare is nothing new for Ms. Goldberg. After receiving calls from an aggressive CNN producer in January, she recorded a message that told CNN reporters: "Lose my number." That one got played by Tom Brokaw on NBC Nightly News . "[Matt] Drudge has a Web site and I have an answering machine," Ms. Goldberg said.

Mr. Isikoff's groveling seems to have placed him back in Ms. Goldberg's good graces. The literary agent praised Mr. Isikoff, both as a reporter and as a physical specimen. "I find him small and perfectly formed," Ms. Goldberg said, before going on to laud Mr. Isikoff's reporting on the Lewinsky story. "Mike never gave up, and he deserves high praise."

"If I didn't like him so much personally, I simply wouldn't speak to him again," she added. "But he's a very interesting young man, and he deserves to live."

-William Berlind

When Charles Gibson took his seat in the anchor's chair on the set of ABC's World News Tonight the evening of Aug. 6, everything was going fine. The producer cued the bombastic musical intro, the cameras rolled, and Mr. Gibson, filling in for Peter Jennings, started delivering the 6:30 news. But then, about halfway into the live newscast, he was interrupted by a chorus of shrieking alarms and flashing strobe lights. Mr. Gibson calmly informed viewers that there was a fire in the building and cut to a taped news report as technicians figured out a way to shut off the alarm. Soon, smoke began to fill the hallways outside World News Tonight 's third-floor studio, and employees on the fourth and fifth floors were ordered to evacuate. Not long after that, the building was overrun by New York City firemen.

According to one ABC News producer, the fire originated in a wastebasket in the office of correspondent Bill Redeker, who is known to flaunt the office no-smoking policy regularly. "Everyone assumes it was a cigarette in the wastebasket," said another ABC source.

ABC News spokesman Eileen Murphy said the network had no plans to change the building's alarm system so that it would not interfere with live newscasts. "The reason we have a fire alarm is to alert people of a fire," she said. "I don't think that will be reconfigured." Ms. Murphy added that a memo had been circulated to the staff "to remind them of the company policy and city policy against smoking in the office." Mr. Redeker did not return calls for comment.

Advance Publications chairman S.I. (Si) Newhouse Jr. is trying to make amends with outgoing Glamour editor Ruth Whitney, despite Ms. Whitney's harsh public criticisms of Mr. Newhouse's pick to succeed her, former Cosmopolitan editor Bonnie Fuller. After her forced exit was announced on Aug. 10, Ms. Whitney told the New York Post , "I'm very disappointed with the replacement" and complained to Newsweek that she feared Ms. Fuller would cheapen her magazine. Then Ms. Whitney declined to accompany Mr. Newhouse when he addressed anxious Glamour staff members a day after the announcement.

But 30 years at Condé Nast's most profitable magazine has earned Ms. Whitney a certain amount of deference from her superiors even as they shuffle her out the door. (In a rare moment of candor, Condé Nast president Steve Florio last year told The New York Times , "Without Glamour , I don't even want to think about what the bottom line of this company would look like.") A source at Glamour reports that Mr. Newhouse recently called on Ms. Whitney and persuaded her to allow him to host a reception in her honor. "They are giving me a reception," Ms. Whitney told Off the Record. "Si came down to my office to talk me into it."

"There's nothing wrong with the retirement bit," she added. "I just wish I had been consulted in some way about possible successors." Ms. Whitney said she is concerned about the fate of her staff, which she described as "very anxious." Ms. Fuller has already had breakfast and lunch meetings with a number of Glamour editors, and will begin her new duties at Condé Nast on Sept. 14.

Meanwhile, over at Hearst Magazines, Ms. Fuller's successor, Kate White, is negotiating the cultural divide between the square middle-American ethos of Redbook and her new post as editor of the gleefully trashy Cosmopolitan . One Cosmo source reports that when Ms. White was introduced to her new staff by Hearst Magazines president Cathleen Black, only an hour after Ms. Fuller announced her departure, Ms. White was wearing a pink dress-a definite Cosmo no-no. To compensate for the fashion faux pas, Ms. White assured her staff that she would be wearing more black.

Sometimes newspaper writers who cover professional sports teams attempt to transcend the daily drudgery of locker-room quote collection by playing at being powerful. Sometimes their gambits backfire.

Earlier this summer, Marty Noble, who covers the New York Mets for Newsda y, was eager to swing for the fences. Mr. Noble, the senior man on the beat, told some of his colleagues in the Shea Stadium press box that he could get the Mets' manager, Bobby Valentine, fired if only he could confirm that Mr. Valentine had said a certain "seven words." Mr. Valentine caught wind of this, and the relationship between the two men, which was already a little strained-they hadn't spoken to each other since last season-deteriorated further.

After The Observer reported this state of affairs, Mr. Noble's editors at Newsday asked their man to repair his relationship with the manager. Even though they had detected no signs of an agenda in his coverage, they were concerned, according to a source, that the appearance of one might hurt the newspaper.

"We all agreed, including Marty, that it was a good time to clear the air," said Steve Ruinsky, Newsday 's assistant managing editor for sports. "But Marty was not told to do it. He didn't need to be. He had an interest in doing it as well."

So, on July 28, out at Shea, Mr. Noble buttonholed Mr. Valentine and attempted to make peace. According to sources in the press box who claim to have knowledge of the conversation, the exchange went something like this:

Mr. Noble: Let's try to put this behind us .

Mr. Valentine: You've got to be kidding. You go around telling people you have seven words to get me fired. You are trying to cause me to not have a job, and now you want to be my friend? What do you want to do, go to the movies? See a Broadway show? Get the fuck away from me .

Clubhouse versions being what they are-that is, a cross between Rashomon and Abbott and Costello's "Who's on first?" routine-it's not surprising that both men confirm they had a conversation, but deny that particular account of it.

"That's fascinating," Mr. Noble said. "It was nothing like that at all. What I told him is that there was no agenda. We discussed it and had an amicable discussion."

Mr. Valentine wasn't so sure about the amicable part. "We talked," he said. "It was brief. It was without much substance, but I was all ears. I was willing to listen to a guy who I've known for a long time to see what his story was. But the problem is, he didn't tell me his whole story. He was just doing something he was told to do."

After their little summit, Mr. Noble stopped coming out to the ball park, and his byline disappeared from Newsday 's sports pages, giving rise to speculation among baseball writers that he was ducking Mr. Valentine to avoid getting in trouble with his editors over his failure to kiss and make up with the manager. But his editors say that's not so. "He's been in the hospital getting some tests," said Bill Eichenberger, Newsday 's deputy sports editor. "This had nothing to do with his relationship with Valentine."

Mr. Noble got the O.K. from his doctors, so by Aug. 17, he was back on the beat, though not necessarily back in the good graces of Bobby Valentine.

-Nick Paumgarten

You can reach Off the Record by e–mail at

wstjohn@observer.com.

The literary agent continues to be the focus of enormous media attention. In the premiere issue of Brill's Content , she is blamed for all but creating the investigation into the President's relationship with Ms. Lewinsky. On Matt Drudge's new Fox News Channel show, she appears wearing a black ribbon because, she says, she's in mourning for America under Bill Clinton. On the Internet, she addresses her supporters as "my pretties" and mocks White House mouthpieces as "sock puppets." Meantime, friends of the President have launched a campaign against her credibility. Why do you trust anything that woman tells you? they say in anonymous messages on my answering machine. After I failed to get the Monica tapes out of her, I settled for taping Mrs. Goldberg, in what she said has been her most thorough interview.

"Have you been glorying in this?" I asked.

"No, and I'm annoyed by when people say 'Lucianne is exhilarated.' I am angry and my anger sometimes comes out. Now I sound like Kathleen Willey, because she said when she's nervous she sounds 'exuberant.' I'm not nervous. I'm determined because I think that our side is right, that some really nasty stuff has gone down, and Linda Tripp tried to tell the world about it, and then she had to go into hiding and I was left out there with the information. And I have not lied to anyone about anything."

"What about the semen-stained dress?"

"That is a true story. I'm not going to tell you all the details. That isn't my information to disseminate. However, there was a cocktail dress that she [Monica Lewinsky] was saving that was stained. And who has it now, I do not know."

"Is that gossip, Lucianne?"

"No, that's fact."

"You didn't see that dress."

"No, I did not. It's hearsay, O.K., but it was told to me by someone that I believe implicitly that has never lied to me and has no reason to lie to me. The press has seized on that because it is so sensational … I didn't leak that story, I told that story to a reporter in the very first days, because we were being drowned, and I thought, God, I gotta get their attention, they don't know how bad this is. And I thought, what's the most ick-making thing I've heard so far and that was right up there."

"A person you believe implicitly, you mean Linda Tripp."

"I'm not saying who I'm talking about."

'Spikey' Isikoff and Me

"How's your relationship with 'Spikey' these days?"

Spikey is Lucianne Goldberg's moniker for Newsweek reporter Mike Isikoff.

"I like Spikey. I'm getting along with him. I don't think Linda felt they treated her fairly … They said she wore stiletto-heeled boots. They had her dressed up like some Vegas hooker. She doesn't own stiletto-heeled boots. She's suffering now because she's isolated. And you have John Goodman playing you on Saturday Night Live , that's rather a blow to one's self-esteem."

"She didn't like that."

"None of us would. Somebody once told me of the Gabor sisters, you could say that they slept with donkeys and they would just go la-dee-da. But if you said that their dress was the wrong blue and they had a big stain on the back of it, they would sue you until they had every penny you'd ever made."

"What about the fact that Americans at some level seem to hate Linda Tripp?"

"A lot of this stuff that's being disseminated by the other side is provided to cover up the fact that this hurts terribly. When you love a man, and these people who are pro-Clinton love him, when you revere a man and he's one of your generation, and he's you, and he does something like this, it is painful, and they don't want to hear it."

"But if Linda Tripp died tomorrow, the way people would talk about her was, 'She taped her friend.' And she did."

"Exactly. But they don't know the story, and I am proscribed from telling the whole story. Because one day soon, Linda Tripp will be free and everyone has the right to their own story, and I'm not going to do anything but nibble around the edges of it, to keep their attention, and hopefully open a few minds to where the same American people that are being fair to Bill Clinton in these polls will turn around and be fair to Linda, at least they will listen to her."

"What about Brill, is any part of this a Goldberg conspiracy?"

In his "Pressgate" piece, Mr. Brill suggests that Lucianne Goldberg's desire for a book deal was the impetus for the entire Lewinsky investigation.

"I don't know that that case can be made with anything but laughability. I didn't mean for it to come out this way. I wanted Linda in better shape to defend herself. And the way it came out, if Newsweek had brought it out–that's why it's so ludicrous to say I was the source for Drudge, the last thing I wanted was for this story to come out earlier than Newsweek bringing it out. That's why we sat down with Isikoff. I wanted it to come out in a respected news publication."

"You didn't want it in Matt Drudge?"

"I would not."

She's Mrs. Portnoy in the Making

"What about the new Monica we see in the latest issue of U.S. News & World Report ? This is a shrewish Monica, a Mrs. Portnoy in the making."

"That's bang-on."

"I hate to say it, but that's not very good for the Jews, right?"

"There are two questions I ask: 'Is it good for the Jews?' and 'Will it make me sweat?' Is it heavy lifting? And it's not good for the Jews, and it should make the rest of the world sweat when they realize how ambitious and pushy and needy and clever this kid is."

"Do you know this girl from the tapes?"

"I know this girl from having been alive for 62 years. This is every wife's nightmare, that this girl will get your husband in the cross hairs and aim at him. I very seldom feel sorry for Bill Clinton, but he didn't have a chance."

"Why not?"

"Because he's such a pushover."

"It's shocking to read that this girl was going to kick the testicles of the President flat as a pancake."

"Well, this girl has a real maggoty mouth. Every third word is a swear word. I can say that because I swear like a teamster. It's quicker. But I'm a different creature."

"Brill says you were trying to make a book deal for Linda. What's the deal?"

"Down the line, I may do just that. But when she came to me, this was not about a book deal. But you see, that has always been the White House disinformation, too, you know, evil money-grubbing Mrs. Goldberg, hint hint, wink wink, in New York City, wink wink, is doing in the President just to make a crummy gossipy book. That is all spin and it has nothing to do with why Linda came to me. I always think book. You know, I'm a literary agent. That's what literary agents do."

"Do you think there's anti-Semitism here?"

"I always think there's anti-Semitism."

"But you're not Jewish."

"But people I love are. My two sons are Jews, my husband is a Jew. What, I'm not going to look for anti- Semitism in the world? My daughter-in-law is black, I'm not going to look for that kind of stuff in the world?"

"You grew up in Virginia, Episcopalian. Still Episcopalian?"

"I still believe in Jesus Christ. I don't go to Episcopal services anymore because they're so dull."

Imagine Monica in Young Frankenstein

"Do the Clinton people know what is on those tapes?"

"I don't think they do. Because I think they would have leaked more of it now. Because I will guarantee you, without being specific, that the [ U.S. News ] tape is the milder of the tapes."

"Mild. This is a 24-year-old girl being highhanded with the President."

"She didn't see him as the President. That wonderful line from Young Frankenstein : 'He was my boyfriend!' She saw him as her married lover. She had absolutely no respect for the office whatsoever. She called him 'the big Schmucko,' and worse.

"What could be worse than kicking him in the balls?"

"There's one tape in which every sentence contains an 's' word or an 'f' word. It's just vulgar. This is a girl who is so angry and so hurt and does not have a mature vocabulary or self-knowledge to demonstrate that to an older friend. See, these tapes were made at the time he was dumping her."

"I don't think he's good at saying No to anybody."

"He was not calling her anymore, not inviting her over to the White House anymore for, ha ha, a movie and hugs."

"Do you have sympathy for her?"

"No. Because I think she's enjoying this. She craves attention, she's very needy. In her fantasy life, we all have a fantasy life, I think she felt this kind of attention would be just the right amount."

What Will Madeleine Albright Do?

"What will happen if hard evidence of an affair comes out?"

"Well, that's the question. What's somebody like a Madeleine Albright going to do, who says, 'I believe him'? People are going to have to start leaving him, because he is going to take an awful lot of very good, decent people down with him. "

"Do you think he will go down?"

"I don't know at this point. I think he will be humiliated and discredited. But he'll be a lame duck after November. And I think he will just limp along wounded and bleeding and a laughingstock, and nobody will listen to him, and as a country we will suffer dreadfully from it."

"So it would be best if he would just go?"

"Well, of course. At least Nixon had the class to see that. Look what hanging on these last five months has done to this country. We're all screaming at each other. We're all saying blowjob at dinner parties. I mean, I'm sorry, I'm old enough to be shocked by that."

"But it's your fault, isn't it, Lucianne?"

"It's not my fault. No. Fault is a pejorative. You have to break some eggs to make an omelet."

"What if Starr can't make a case on obstructing justice?"

"Starr has so much that they don't know about, that it will blow them away. Not the sex. The sex is a foregone conclusion."

"But let's say it's just a guy lying about having an affair with a 24-year-old. People can excuse that."

"He is the President of the United States, he sets the moral tone for this country. And your kids will turn on you and say, 'The President does it, why can't I?"

"That's not a scenario where he's definitely out."

"No, but he's wounded and humiliated, his wife is humiliated and his credibility is totally besmirched. I mean, he came out yesterday, it was Father's Day, made a statement, Fathers raise their children to be honest, one of those boilerplate things. All that becomes laughable. And I tell you, you are never dead in politics until they start laughing at you."

"Is the country coming around to your point of view?"

"I don't think so. The polls don't reflect it."

"With Nixon, they switched to a negative point of view."

"That may happen to Clinton, but we live in a different time. Because I have friends whom I love dearly who don't have a problem with his having a little oral sex dalliance in the Oval Office. They say that's our boy, ha ha ha. I say I don't feel that way and let it go. I'm not here to convince anybody. I'm not proselytizing. I want to get information out that is irrefutable, that the office of the Presidency has been slimed, and this guy did it, and a lot of decent people have been roped in to cover up for him."

"What do you think about Brill?"

"I begrudgingly admire Brill because I admire tough-mindedness. I think he got something caught in his zipper because of this piece, and he'll be damaged because of this. But he will survive. He is very tough-minded. He fights back, he slam-dunked Tim Russert yesterday [on Meet the Press ]. He took his punch and he threw a better one. He said, Do you ever apologize for a mistake? If you're on those shows, there are certain lines you don't cross. And one of the lines is to counterpunch your host. And he's not afraid to do that."

"Did he deceive you to get you to talk to him?"

"He did deceive me."

(Mr. Brill declined to respond to Mrs. Goldberg's comments.)

"What does that make you think?"

"Well. Why should I be special to Steve Brill? You know. I'm the fool that sat down with him. I let him push my buttons. I wanted to believe that he really was going to look into who leaked my secret divorce records to U.S. News ."

"Did Brill make you think he was going to write your side?"

"I thought he was going to write the facts that I told him, and he didn't … He had an overarching view, and it made it a far more interesting story to have me and Linda, these two dragon ladies and what kind of fools are these people who don't realize that this whole thing was over a book deal. It's an egregious oversimplification, but it made a tighter, neater spine for his story … We had far more noble motivation. And there is no book deal. Where is the big book? Linda hasn't been writing a book these last five months."

"How do you know?"

"I know. I'm in touch with her lawyers and her friends. I'm not saying that down the road if she has an interesting enough story and can put it together, I wouldn't represent a book for her. But that's after the fact."

"If you were free to talk to her tomorrow and she said I want to do a book–"

"I'd say, 'Start typing.'"

Linda Tripp: 'Very Motherly'

"Why did you tell Tripp to tape Monica?"

"She was going to sit down with one of the crackerjack reporters in this country, Spikey, and she had very little evidence for this hair-raising tale she was going to tell him. I said, 'You don't have pictures, you don't have corroboration, you don't have anything to back you up. All you're getting sometimes is 15 and 20 phone calls a day.' This girl would track her down at her gym, at her hairdresser, when she was at a picnic with her family, she hounded Linda the way she hounded the President. Because Linda was sympathetic to her. Linda's a very motherly person. And Linda got ensnared by this creature. And I said, you cannot sit down with Isikoff unless you have some kind of proof. And she said, 'What can I do?' And I said if your basic contact with her is on the telephone, tape it. And she said, 'Oh, God, I feel so sleazy.' I said, 'Look, this whole thing is sleazy.'"

Zuckerman's Oral Sex Whoppers

"This was after the Willey incident where she was enraged?"

"Yes. Because [Bob] Bennett had called her a liar on national television. He said Linda Tripp is not to be trusted. I tell you I didn't blame her at all for her fury … I've been slimed. The Times tried to do an over-lunch with me at the Four Seasons. I did that. With Judith Miller and Doreen Carvajal. We were at the Four Seasons and seated at the banquette and I look up and there, chest-high to the table, is Mort Zuckerman. He says hello to Judy, hello to Doreen, he gives me a whitefish handshake. And without further introduction, he launches into three oral sex jokes. Clinton oral sex jokes. Unfunny and three lines apiece, and poof, he's gone. I said to Judy Miller, that was a very bizarre performance. She laughed. I guess they're friends. I assume all liberals are friends and play softball in the Hamptons. The next thing I know, Whammo, U.S. News does a piece that includes my sealed divorce record. It was very surreal."

"When you said that this woman ensnared Linda the way she ensnared the President, aren't you creating a dragon-lady image?"

"I'm not creating any image of her at all. I am telling you what she is from my knowledge of Linda and having heard those tapes."

"Who snared who? Didn't Tripp ensnare her?"

"Linda was in her office, she saw her every day. And Linda doesn't have a big social circle. She had a telephone. Monica could reach her by phone, she knew she would be home, unlike some of her cute little contemporaries, they were all out in the club. Linda was always there to listen to her whining and keening."

"Why didn't she shut her up? She was interested?"

"Well, of course. I would be, too. If somebody was giving you–you should excuse it–a blow-by-blow description of her romance with the President of the United States, you wouldn't want to listen? Nobody would want to hang up on that."

'He Can Move Into a Bordello'

"What do you think of men who play around?"

"I think in some cases it's justified. I don't think it's right. But I'm willing to hear their story if it affected my life at all."

"What if their spouse doesn't find out?"

"Then they hurt themselves eventually, in their own conscience. Now some people don't have a conscience. I don't think Bill Clinton has a conscience. And he doesn't understand that he's done something wrong. Let him fool around when he retires from the Presidency. He can move into a bordello. No one cares. But his job is to maintain a high moral standard for the kids of the country. That's what we elect him for."

"What do you think of Matt Drudge?"

"I think he's one of the most quirky, original, different creatures to show up on the scene virtually in my lifetime. I think what you see is what you get. He doesn't pretend to be anything that he isn't, and I find him extraordinarily refreshing. So he gets a few things wrong, so did Walter Cronkite. He's a very brave kid."

"Is there any seriousness there?"

"He's far more serious than I am. He's serious as cancer, this kid. He sees himself as a patriot. He sees this as trench warfare."

"Do you like surprises?"

"No, I don't like surprises. But I do like justice and I do like the truth. And to be conned by the President–I can take being conned by a senator or a minister, because you kind of expect it. I don't want to be conned by the President of the United States."

"What if the President invited you to a White House dinner?"

"This President, I wouldn't go. Because it would be hypocritical. I've spent six years criticizing the man."

"Would you take his phone call?"

"That would be very tempting. Out of curiosity, I guess I would."

"Would you tape him?"

"Yeah, I probably would. It's legal in New York."