-- Choire Sicha

"The notion that I'm running from something …" Mr. Jordan paused for a beat. "There's nothing to run from."

There was a dash of annoyance in Mr. Jordan's remarks, but mostly he sounded quietly amused and confident that there was no question he couldn't field from the 62nd-floor corner office that he has occupied for approximately four weeks in the Rockefeller Center offices of Lazard Frères & Company.

"I'm fascinated by you guys!" he said, presumably meaning reporters, at one point during this impromptu interview with The Transom.

Barely a month into Mr. Jordan's new gig as a senior managing partner at the private Wall Street banking firm, New Yorkers have become equally curious about President Bill Clinton's best friend.

A minor controversy over Mr. Jordan's compensation at Lazard has put Mr. Jordan on the radar of the city's chattering class. Although Mr. Jordan has always lived out of a suitcase to some extent, the cocktail banter has begun flying over Mr. Jordan's decision, at age 64, to begin commuting between his home in Washington, D.C., and a two-bedroom suite at the Regency Hotel on Park Avenue.

According to Mr. Jordan, he may now work largely in New York, but he still lives in Washington (where he has remained of counsel to the law firm Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer & Feld, which he joined in 1982). "I still live there. I still pay taxes there," said Mr. Jordan.

Yet the perception here is different. The perception is that now that his close, powerful friend, the President, has become a lame duck knocking around the White House and making late-night telephone calls, Mr. Jordan has sensed that he must recast his power base while he still has the raw materials to do so.

"Vernon's power base is about to disappear," said one person with Washington and New York ties who knows Mr. Jordan. So, the reasoning goes, Mr. Jordan is bringing his considerable resources as a fixer to New York, where he has always kept a foothold. "New York is no stranger to me," said Mr. Jordan, who has a son and two daughters here, as well as grandchildren. He lived here when he ran the United Negro College Fund and the National Urban League. And he reportedly sits on the board of directors of 11 corporations, many of which are based in New York, including the American Express Company, the Revlon Foundation and the Ford Foundation.

And many of Mr. Jordan's friends place high in the city's hierarchy: ABC News' 20/20 anchor Barbara Walters; Richard Holbrooke, the United States permanent representative to the United Nations; billionaire Henry Kravis; Kenneth Chenault, president and chief operating officer of American Express Company; Warnaco Group's chief executive, Linda Wachner; literary agent Mort Janklow and former Ford Foundation president Franklin Thomas.

Of course, there is also new Westchester homeowner Mr. Clinton.

Asked if he will be seeing much of Mr. Clinton in New York, Mr. Jordan replied: "Well, I don't know when he's going to be here. If he's here, I'm sure I'll see him. Or I'll see him in Washington. I'm not going to stop seeing my friend Bill Clinton. He's still my friend."

But he characterizes the power-base theory of his move to New York as "nonsense, just nonsense. I was in Washington before Clinton came, and I'm still there," he said.

Asked why he took the Lazard job, Mr. Jordan called it "a new hill to climb" and "a new challenge."

Mr. Jordan may have a way to go before he proves himself as indispensable to the masters of Wall Street as he was to Mr. Clinton, but in this city where millionaires and billionaires pay thousands to sit next to Mr. Clinton at dinner in the Hamptons, Mr. Jordan's closeness to the President carries some currency.

When Mr. Jordan lunches at that power grid known as the Four Seasons restaurant, he always merits a great table, and, as one fixture at the restaurant noted, it is always the other patrons who get up from their tables to say hello to him. "He is the new king of New York," said the source, who also observed that Mr. Jordan is always charming and beautifully dressed.

Mr. Jordan has dined out on his closeness to Mr. Clinton in other ways. Not long after he signed with Lazard, the media reported rumors that in 2001, Mr. Clinton was also destined for the banking firm and an $8 million-a-year salary (not including potential bonuses). Mr. Clinton has since denied this, but one Lazard partner recalled that, recently, at a meeting of the firm's partners, Mr. Jordan said of that rumor: "He's not coming to Lazard-but I might have to make another call to Revlon," a reference to the fateful call Mr. Jordan had placed to the company owned by billionaire Ronald Perelman, at the request of Mr. Clinton, on behalf of Monica Lewinsky.

Mr. Jordan laughed when this was recounted to him and said that this account was "not true." He suggested that we had heard the punch line of a joke he had told about the First Lady that he had made at a dinner. "I had said, 'I hope she wins, otherwise I might have to call Revlon.' But that's an old story."

When The Transom replied that we were certain of the setting of the line, Mr. Jordan said: "I'm not aware of that."

Mr. Jordan said he was also not aware of any unhappiness on the part of his new partners at Lazard following a story that broke in The Washington Post on Jan. 22. At first, some of Mr. Jordan's Lazard colleagues were annoyed that his compensation was kept secret from the firm's other partners, especially in light of a policy of openness among partners that has been in effect at the firm for the last couple of years.

That annoyance was heightened when Mr. Jordan's actual salary was uncovered. According to the Post , Lazard had agreed to pay Mr. Jordan $5 million a year for five years, plus a housing allowance toward his suite at the Regency (a two-bedroom number at the Regency generally rents for $18,000 to $28,000 a month), plus any bonus that he may be awarded based on performance. (Sources familiar with the situation told The Transom that $5 million a year is the least that Mr. Jordan can earn).

Apparently, this figure is slightly above average as Lazard salaries go, and rather unusual for someone like Mr. Jordan who has virtually no investment banking experience.

Mr. Jordan would not comment on his salary package. "You know, I'm not in the Congress. I'm not running for office, so I don't think it's anybody's business," he said. He did add, however, "I am not aware of any unhappiness. I have gotten marvelous cooperation here. It's my judgment that we're just moving on and doing our business."

When asked about his lack of experience in the field, Mr. Jordan replied: "What do you mean my expertise is not in that? I can read, and I can add and subtract and multiply." Asked if he will specialize in any type of investment banking, he said: "I will probably be just as I was as a lawyer: a generalist, all over the place."

In other words, Mr. Jordan has always tended to cover all the bases, except, some contend, when it comes to the coming Presidential race. Sources connected to Mr. Gore's Presidential effort note that, in contrast to his closeness to Mr. Clinton, Mr. Jordan, a Democrat, has little relationship with Vice President Gore.

"That's another dumb impression you have," Mr. Jordan told The Transom. "I was on the … Vice Presidential selection committee. Al Gore is a longtime friend. I am supporting him with enthusiasm. I am not on his staff, and I do not talk to him every day, but I am fully supportive." Mr. Jordan said he has also contributed money to Mr. Gore's campaign but that he would not become any more involved in it. "I work at Lazard," he said.

The Transom Also Hears

… Notes from the Beverly Hilton: With Bill Clinton in Los Angeles on the weekend of the Golden Globes, the Left Coast was abuzz with rumors recently that our star-struck Commander in Chief was contemplating risking the cheese factor of the awards ceremony (Courtney Love's tits-on TV!) and presenting Barbra (Left Side) Streisand her Cecil B. De Mille award. According to Ms. Streisand's spokesman, Dick Gutman: "I don't believe it was ever contemplated. In fact, I know it wasn't the case that the President was at all thought of as a presenter for Barbra." Mr. Gutman explained that John Travolta, who played the President in Primary Colors , was supposed to co-present the award with Shirley MacLaine, but came down with a case of conjunctivitis. Mr. Gutman said he had heard that Mr. Clinton was in the hotel for a presentation he made at Cal Tech. "And there was some talk that Merv Griffin [who owns the hotel] had invited the President to stay over," but that never happened. A White House spokesman said only: "The President was never officially asked or invited to the Golden Globes." But did Ms. Streisand invite him to present her award to her? Replied the spokesman: "He wasn't invited at any level that we dealt with."

… The Jan. 21 edition of W.W.D. 's Suzy column wondered: "Is Elizabeth Hurley being eyed by a New York bachelor tycoon?" and "Does Hugh Grant know about this?"-making some Gotham gadflies remember that Ms. Hurley seemed glued to the hip, in a platonic sense of course, to billionaire Ted Forstmann at last December's Costume Institute gala. But anyone who saw Hugh Grant and Ms. Hurley in action at the Creative Artists Agency party at Muse following the Golden Globes ceremony would have dispelled that notion. One witness noted that at one point during the evening, Mr. Grant cut Ms. Hurley's wait time for the ladies' room considerably when he yanked her into the single-occupancy men's room and the two spent a considerable amount of time in there.

1. Is Hillary Depressed? Hillary Rodham Clinton is scheduled to speak to the National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League on the 26th anniversary of Roe v. Wade. It is at the same time that the question-and-answer phase of the impeachment trial is to begin in the Senate, and I choose Hillary. The First Lady wears a gray suit and is obviously depressed. She may as well be speaking to a funeral. Her voice is a monotone. She does not move her body at all for more than 30 minutes, merely moves her head in a practiced manner from one side of the audience to another. Dip to the lectern to get a line of text. Look up left. Look right. Open eyes to make some sort of connection. Dip back to lectern.

Her text is laced with bitterness about men. She speaks with anger of visiting pregnant girls who have been abandoned by the fathers, of the stories these young lied-to women told her about their men-"with a straight face," she says cuttingly. If only boys and men would think about what they are doing before they had sex, Hillary says, then goes on to denounce the preoccupation with "sexual prowess" in the media and among sports figures. The speech seems somewhat castrating.

The 2,000 people in the audience, mostly women, absorb the depth of her feeling. The applause is subdued. No one calls out for her to run for Senate.

2. Z-z-z-z-z-z-z. Later, as I enter the Senate periodical gallery, the guard at the door takes my elbow. "Do me a favor, wake that guy up." He points at a tall reporter in the second row. Not relishing the assignment, I say, "Is he asleep?" A second guard comes over to confer. "I don't think he's sleeping, I just saw his jaw move."

I sit next to the reporter, who is in fact sound asleep, and pretend not to notice him as I watch the President's private lawyer, David Kendall, speak, soporifically, on the floor. The guard must come down and, squeezing in front of a row of people to get to us, rouse the man. The reporter denies that he was asleep. They argue and the guard retreats. The reporter spends the next half-hour trying to win the argument retroactively by maintaining his sleepy posture even as he mocks attentiveness.

3. Oedipus at the Senate. Rumpled, cerebral, white-haired Senator Carl Levin of Michigan reminds me of my father, and I get into an argument with him during a little press conference he gives outside the Senate floor.

He says that the House managers have misrepresented Vernon Jordan's motives for finding a job for Monica Lewinsky. He has uncovered a fact that contradicts one of their points.

I break in. "Let's say you're right. They got this point wrong. Still, what is a reasonable person supposed to conclude, that this was routine? How often have you called the chairman of General Motors?"

My Oedipal outburst frightens old Senator Levin. He raises his hand and becomes flustered, then goes on, ignoring me. Under his arm are stacks of photocopies of the critical documents. Pathetically, he hands them out to the reporters.

It is simply obvious that Vernon Jordan was putting out supreme effort for Monica Lewinsky. Ronald Perelman testified that in Mr. Jordan's 12 years on Revlon Inc.'s board, he only called him once on behalf of a job candidate: a "terrific young girl," Monica Lewinsky. Mr. Jordan's call to Mr. Perelman came immediately after a five-minute conversation with Ms. Lewinsky, who called him from the residence of her mother's then-fiancé in New York, at about the time that she was filing her false affidavit in the Paula Jones case.

After talking to Ron Perelman, Vernon Jordan called Monica Lewinsky back to tell her he had made the call. The next day, when she got the job, she called him and spent seven minutes on the phone with him, celebrating her success, then an hour later he called her and they had a three-minute conversation in which he says he urged her to accept that $40,000 was good pay.

It is one of the great wastes of this process: critical minds like Charles Schumer's and Carl Levin's turned by the Clinton defense into bales of hay.

4. Going Mad With Lindsey Graham. I walk out of the Capitol with Lindsey Graham, the Republican House manager. A small man from a rural district of South Carolina who wears Brooks Brothers ties, he is the Frank Capra figure in the drama, soulful, emotional, sincere. People swarm around him, even Democrats, to urge him on or to fence with him. Representative Graham has a pastoral air. He talks about "the sins you carry and the sins I carry." He offers moral instruction.

"Listen up now. Listen to what I'm trying to say," he says, putting his foot up on a marble sill. "Our President engaged in serious criminal wrongdoing. And to doubt that that occurred is devastating to the people of the country."

I walk to the Longworth Building with Mr. Graham. I say, "I told a friend how disturbed I am about the fact that Clinton called Monica Lewinsky a 'stalker,' and he said, 'Yeah, that's the right wing's ace in the hole.' And I was shocked by that. I don't understand why it isn't a liberal's ace in the hole."

"Yeah, he turned on a consensual lover," Mr. Graham says, shaking his head. "It was the meanest thing he did."

Lindsay Graham and I have become maddened.

5. Girl Talk With My Mother-in-Law. My in-laws have tickets to see the impeachment, and that night I meet them back at the hotel. My father-in-law is lying on the bed, my mother-in-law is watching the news. My in-laws are unimpressed by the Senate décor. My mother-in-law says it reminds her of just another men's club.

I tell her my sense that Hillary is depressed. "Did you notice at the State of the Union that Hillary didn't have her hair done?" she says. "It was odd to me that for a big night like that, she wouldn't have put herself together. I agree with you."

We go out to dinner and get back to the hotel at 10. On C-Span 2, Hillary is giving her speech again, and I call down to my in-laws' room. The camera picks up stuff I hadn't seen in the hall. When Hillary is finished, she turns from the microphone and gives a big short sigh before embracing Kate Michelman, president of the National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League. "Kate, I put your glasses there," Hillary says, motioning at a shelf on the lectern, and saying that, she opens her mouth with joy. It is her only gesture of pure pleasure.

I wonder whether maybe Hillary has hit bottom. That she is doing a spiritual inventory of all the lies, not so different from Lindsey Graham's spiritual inventory.

6. I Wake Up in Anger. In the morning, I compose a mental list of the issues that have maddened me, thinking to reel them off to my mother-in-law, a liberal:

· Why, in the Nixon era, it was a glory to be on his "enemies list." While to be against Bill Clinton is to be classed a "hater" and vilified in polite society;

· Why it was a heroic thing that the law firm Williams & Connolly and The Washington Post teamed up on Watergate, but that when conservative newspaperman Richard Mellon Scaife underwrites investigations of a President he doesn't like, it's a conspiracy;

· Why right-wing reporter Christopher Ruddy can be harassed by the Internal Revenue Service under Mr. Clinton and no one but The Wall Street Journal even notices;

· Why the passive media treat the 900 F.B.I. files as a joke-accepting Mr. Clinton's "bureaucratic snafu" explanation-even as Linda Tripp testifies that some of the files were apparently used against the fired Travel Office employees in 1993, and Dick Morris testifies that they are evidence of a paranoid style in the White House, statements that go wholly unexamined in the press;

· How it is that a House committee report accused Cheryl Mills, the White House deputy counsel, of perjury for false statements to the committee about the White House database of contributors, and in questioning Ms. Mills last summer, Mr. Starr's deputies all but suggested she had lied to them about when she first learned about the Lewinsky situation, from her close friend Vernon Jordan, yet these issues are only raised by The Washington Times , while Newsweek celebrates Ms. Mills as a "rising star."

· How it came to pass that, following signs of discomfort on the Upper West Side over its harsh stance on the President, the New York Times editorial page takes a sudden, Pravda -ish turn to the conventional liberal position at the end of 1998, which Sam Donaldson finds a source of amusement on This Week , but which goes wholly unexamined in intellectual circles;

· Why The Times devotes such investigative resources to the continuing examination of how the Paula Jones suit flourished, secretly, in a cabal of conservative lawyers, while failing to describe to its readers evidence contained in the Starr files of potential criminal matters, for instance, White House deputy assistant Marsha Scott's patent lies to the grand jury about the Administration's treatment of Webster Hubbell; the numerous discrepancies between Vernon Jordan's sworn testimony and Monica Lewinsky's (we breakfasted at the Park Hyatt, she says; we never breakfasted, said he; the breakfast turns up on his American Express bill); or the release to the media of Linda Tripp's Pentagon file, matters that are only taken up in The American Spectator and other journals.

I go down to breakfast at the hotel and decide not to go into it. We talk about Hillary's speech. My mother-in-law says, "Did you notice the sigh that Hillary gave when she turned away from the microphone? It was as if she was saying, 'Ahhh, that's over with.'"

7. I Discover Lindsay Graham's a Lefty. On Saturday, Jan. 23, the House managers fly Ms. Lewinsky in from Los Angeles, and no one is sleeping in the periodical gallery. No, it is all but empty as Henry Hyde rises to warn the Democrats, "There are issues of transcendent importance that you have to be willing to lose your office over."

One of Henry Hyde's principles is equal justice under the law, but another is abortion. This is the problem with the radical Republicans' martyrology, it seems so off the rails. Yes, they have taken a moral stand, but they are a group of white men associated with a moral cause, abortion, that seems to the great majority of Americans so morally ambiguous that it must be resolved in favor of a woman's right to privacy, sexual and medical. Have the privacy issues of the Clinton case escaped them?

I lean over the sill to look down at the black, Nike-swoosh-shaped managers' table and notice Lindsey Graham's curious way of taking notes. He is a left-hander, and turns his cheap legal pad so that the long side is parallel to his chest, then writes in a vertical line going toward his chest, like Chinese characters. What an iconoclast.

Mr. Graham rises to make the wisest statement the House managers have made: that if he were a Senator, he would have to get down on his knees before deciding that these crimes are high crimes.

8. Pity the House Managers . For days after, poor Mr. Graham is defensive about his comments. The House managers now occupy a free-floating zone of acrid political death. They know it but are still in denial. Few reporters come to stake them out. The marble halls feel like a sarcophagus in which they are slowly dying, becoming martyr statues. In the midst of interviews, they suddenly look at you and say, blankly, "How did we do today?" with the drained foxhole look of death about them. I try to give them chipper answers, because their arguments on the facts of the case are wholly convincing to me, and reasonable-also because I pity them, remembering that their task appeared more innocent and adventurous when they took it on, like joining Shackleton's trip to Antarctica.

9. I Become Bill Buckley. Watching 96-year-old Strom Thurmond creak into the Senate one morning, I find him, for the first time in my life, a source of inspiration rather than hatred, and when I get back to New York I realize that I am no longer young, I am now aging. So far, I have been climbing the hill of life; now, I am going down the hill. My wife comes home for dinner and I tell her this. She agrees.

We drink a lot of wine over dinner, then I stand on several volumes of the Starr documents like a soapbox, telling her some of the intellectual dishonesties that madden me. Have I lost my mind? I say. My wife says not. But she wonders whether I am more like Norman Podhoretz than William Buckley, in this sense: that when Norman Podhoretz underwent his middle-aged break over political-intellectual matters, she says, he was no longer able to take meals with his old friends, the feelings were simply too strong, the loss of respect. Whereas merry WASPy Mr. Buckley breaks bread happily with his enemies, so separated is he from his emotional life. Are you a Buckley or a Podhoretz?

10. Betting Against Clinton Is a Sucker's Game. I meet my friend John, who thinks I'm a nut, at a party and in a demonstration of honor say I owe him $50. Why, he says. He has forgotten that a year ago, in a hut in the Adirondacks, he gave me 3-to-1 odds that Mr. Clinton would still be in office a year hence. My wife's boss is nowhere so genteel. On her return following New Year's holiday, he came to her, palm out, demanding his $200 on a similar bet for 1998. Then he says he will take her side of the bet: Mr. Clinton will be gone before 1999 is through. But you have to stake $1,000. My wife loses her nerve.

11. Dick Morris' Amazing Advice. I feel desperation at the idea that it is going to be over and stay up till 1 A.M. reading the Starr papers, the Dick Morris section, where he describes his belief that "secret police" at the White House leaked confidential information to the National Enquirer about matters he had confessed about his sex life to an Administration official when he was hired at the White House years before.

A year ago, at the President's urging, Mr. Morris did his famous poll about America's attitudes, using a Melbourne, Fla., research firm. To keep it secret, he asked the firm not even to print out the findings, and he swallowed the $2,000 cost. In the poll, Mr. Morris, who had told Mr. Clinton that they were both sex addicts, composed a speech the President could give to save himself. Here it is:

"For many, many years I have been personally flawed and have had sexual relations outside of my marriage. This has caused Hillary great pain and I have tried and tried to curb my behavior as I saw the pain it caused her. After I became President, I was determined to mend my ways. For the most part, I did, but sometimes I fell short and gave into temptation. I did, in fact, have sexual relations with a 23-year-old woman named Monica Lewinsky while I've been President. I regret my behavior more than I can say. I apologize for it. I take responsibility for it. I wish I were a better man and better able to cope with the pressures of life and work, and I am going to redouble my efforts to walk a straight line. When the allegations first surfaced, I did, indeed, lie about them and urge Monica to lie. I was wrong and I am sorry for it. I am especially sorry for the pain I have caused my wife and daughter. If the American people want me to step down as President, I will do so. With a heavy heart, but I will do so. If they can forgive me and want me to continue to lead our great nation, I'll do that, too. I've tried to be a good President and I think I've succeeded. I've tried to be a good husband, and I'm afraid I've sometimes failed. As President, as a repentant sinner and as a Christian, I ask your forgiveness, God's forgiveness and my wife and daughter's forgiveness. My future is in your hands, my fellow Americans."

Dick Morris' notes indicate that 47 percent of respondents said that if the President gave that speech, they would want him out of office, while 43 percent said they would want him to stay. Mr. Morris called Bill Clinton with the results, then read the President his imagined speech. "I was sort of waiting for him to interrupt me and say, 'But that isn't true,' or 'That goes too far,' or something like that, and he was silent throughout the whole thing," Mr. Morris said.

12. The Shape of Things to Come. Eve MacSweeney, an editor at Harper's Bazaar , sends me an e-mail that says, "couldn't e you back from england as friend in hospital and everything went pear-shaped." I call to ask about the phrase. She tells me that "pear-shaped" is the reigning metaphor in England now. Things are going pear-shaped. They say it in the financial district when a stock goes bad. They say it in W11 about a marriage. Ms. MacSweeney says the term resonates because English women are frequently referred to as being pear-shaped, the men in England being buttless, but she and I agree that when the phrase gets here-the land of the aging, big-butted male-it will have wider resonance.

I think of when that other Anglicism, "at the end of the day," came here a few years ago, landing in New York. The House managers use the phrase "at the end of the day" over and over again, summing up their case on the Senate floor. Now we know what the end of the day looks like.

President Bill Clinton, the weakest is their objection to calling witnesses

before the Senate. Having denounced the Republicans on the House Judiciary

Committee for failing to take direct factual testimony before they approved

the articles of impeachment, how could the Democrats seriously suggest that

the Senate commit the same error? (This fallacious proposition wasn't

strengthened by the mirror-image hypocrisy of the Republicans, who saw no

need for witnesses in the House but now insist that they are essential in

the Senate.)

The Democrats' desire to avoid unpredictable testimony and complete

the proceedings with dispatch was understandable, even if logically

insupportable. And now that a full trial appears inevitable, the

President's defenders should turn their deserved defeat into a

forensic opportunity. Relying wholly upon well-worn allegations in the

Starr report, the Republican case is unlikely to provide any new or

startling revelations. But with skillful questioning and a bit of boldness,

the Democratic defense may well make the prosecutors regret the fulfillment

of their demands.

Despite the sometimes painful windiness of their speeches, the

emissaries from the House–and in particular Representative Asa

Hutchinson, the former prosecutor from Arkansas–presented a reasonably

coherent case that Mr. Clinton perjured himself and obstructed justice.

Like independent counsel Kenneth Starr, however, they also omitted

important testimony from Monica Lewinsky, Betty Currie and Vernon Jordan

that tends to exculpate the President. And still more significant and

dramatic evidence against impeachment may arrive with the testimony of

Linda Tripp.

No doubt the Republicans would prefer to avoid an appearance by the

unpopular Ms. Tripp. But if they call Ms. Lewinsky, they will have

difficulty insisting that the notorious taper should not testify about her

role in the events in question. For example, the notion that Mr. Jordan was

enlisted by the President in an obstruction conspiracy is directly

contradicted by Ms. Lewinsky's grand jury testimony.

After all, it was Ms. Tripp, and not the President, who first suggested

that Ms. Lewinsky should seek the assistance of Mr. Jordan in obtaining

employment in New York. It was Ms. Tripp who demanded that Ms. Lewinsky

refuse to sign the false affidavit about her relationship with Mr. Clinton

unless and until Mr. Jordan secured a cushy private-sector job for the

former White House intern. And it was Ms. Tripp–under the direction of

agent-provocateur Lucianne Goldberg–who compiled evidence of the

Clinton-Lewinsky relationship, urging Ms. Lewinsky to send letters to the

President through a courier firm owned by Ms. Goldberg's brother and

to keep the semen-stained dress.

All these circumstances suggest that Ms. Tripp and her covert allies

were setting up evidence for an obstruction case. Remember that by the time

Ms. Tripp urged Ms. Lewinsky to seek help from Mr. Jordan, she already was

taping their conversations, anticipating that she would eventually reveal

the Clinton-Lewinsky relationship in the media. When she urged Ms. Lewinsky

to demand a job in exchange for her affidavit in the Jones case, Ms. Tripp

was even more determined to expose the affair. So her insistence that Ms.

Lewinsky withhold the affidavit until Mr. Jordan produced a job had nothing

to do with Ms. Lewinsky's future welfare, and everything to do with

framing evidence of obstruction. Even more suggestive is Ms. Tripp's

remark, on one of her taped chats with Ms. Lewinsky, about Mr.

Jordan's previous assistance to Webster Hubbell. It was that

connection, of course, which permitted Mr. Starr to win approval from

Attorney General Janet Reno for his investigation of the Lewinsky

matter.

So the President's defenders can use testimony from Ms. Tripp to

outline an alternative scenario, in which she and Ms. Goldberg (and perhaps

others) used Ms. Lewinsky to create an obstruction conspiracy, with the

express purpose of ending the Clinton Presidency. Ms. Tripp is not the only

witness whose testimony might prove embarrassing to the House Republicans.

The President's attorneys also could call Mr. Starr to the witness

stand, to discuss exactly how and why he embarked on the Lewinsky

investigation. Evidence that he has refused to produce so

far–including his communications about the case with the Attorney

General a year ago–could be useful in exploring pertinent questions of

prosecutorial misconduct. Did Ms. Tripp and others conspire to set up the

President? If so, was Mr. Starr aware of their machinations, and did he

participate in them? Did he know that his law partner, Richard Porter, had

been contacted by Ms. Goldberg, and that Mr. Porter had been working with

the attorneys for Ms. Jones?

Perhaps Ms. Jones and her associates should be questioned publicly, too,

now that her case against Mr. Clinton is settled. For the first time, they

might be required to reveal under oath exactly who was paying for the

politically inspired lawsuit that led to this crisis. Such information

wouldn't diminish the President's liability for his deplorable

behavior. But it would reveal the sinister context within which he fell

prey to his own weaknesses.

Revenge came quickly. On Jan. 21, The Washington Post became the first mainstream media outlet to follow the Drudge Report in breaking news of the Monica Lewinsky-Bill Clinton tangle, followed quickly by the Los Angeles Times and ABC radio. The Times was nowhere to be found.

"I'm sorry to say that we were flatfooted Wednesday morning," said Times executive editor Joe Lelyveld. The Times did not pick up on the "hint," as Mr. Lelyveld put it, in either the original Drudge Report item on Jan. 17 about Newsweek holding its story, or the mention of it the next morning on ABC's This Week. "We should have, and we didn't," he said. "The people who missed these signals know who they are and aren't going to do it again," he added. Mr. Lelyveld declined to name names.

Although one Times reporter claimed the sexual details of the story made the paper "a little queasy," Mr. Lelyveld disputed that take. "We made a deliberate choice back when the Troopergate thing happened not to be aggressive on Clinton's Arkansas philandering … partly because the country had voted on it," he said. "We have a distaste for investigating consensual sex. But it was always clear that given his alleged history, reckless philandering in the White House would be a story."

Mr. Lelyveld said he thought that by Jan. 23 The Times was up to speed. Since then, he said, it has broken several stories, including the Jan. 27 article about Ms. Lewinsky's late December meeting with President Clinton.

Nonetheless, The Washington Post has owned this story more than any other newspaper in the country, and the feeding frenzy that has accompanied the scoops has resulted in some celebration. Ben Bradlee, the executive editor during Watergate who passed on his mantle to Leonard Downie seven years ago, dropped by the newsroom on Jan. 21. He headed over to Mr. Downie's office on the fifth floor, where the executive editor was meeting with managing editor Robert G. Kaiser. Outside the glass partition separating the office from the newsroom, Mr. Bradlee held up a sheet of paper, upon which he had written one word: "Sizzle!"

"He gave us a big thumbs up, and we felt good," said Mr. Kaiser.

The Times article on his paper was "no big deal," insisted Mr. Kaiser, who still couldn't resist a friendly jab. "I confess, it was great fun to read in the Sunday Times all the stories we had run in our Friday and Saturday papers."

Of all the players to appear in the first act of the latest Presidential tragicomedy, Vernon Jordan-Clinton confidant, grade-A schmoozer and media executive buddy-has received the most gentle handling by his friends in the Beltway press corps. Indeed, some have gone out of their way to practically absolve him of any alleged misdeeds.

Roger Cossack, of CNN's Burden of Proof , spent part of the Jan. 22 show offering up puffball questions that were more like encomiums. "Vernon Jordan is a man, like Caesar's wife, above and beyond reproach," Mr. Cossack said while posing a question to Martin Pollner, a former deputy associate attorney general. "And when he gets up and says, 'Look, I spoke to her and this is what she said,' it's almost like, you know, hearing the absolute truth."

The Wall Street Journal 's Al Hunt quickly rushed to his longtime friend's defense, popping up on Nightline and other TV venues, and writing in his regular Thursday column on Jan. 22 that "even some Washingtonians who felt the story could be the end of this President didn't believe the published charge against Mr. Jordan, an exceedingly careful and cautious lawyer." During his TV appearances, Mr. Hunt neglected to mention that Mr. Jordan is also a director of Dow Jones & Company, which just happens to own the paper; the connection was made in the newspaper.

Similar sentiments were echoed the same day by Tim Russert and Tom Brokaw, also friends of Mr. Jordan, when NBC broke into regular programming. That afternoon, Chip Reid, a White House correspondent for NBC's weekend newscasts, showed up on MSNBC to tell viewers that he had just gotten off the phone with a Washington power broker who'd been on the phone with other Washington power brokers all day. Their verdict: Mr. Jordan could never do such a terrible thing as coaching someone to lie.

Even the second- and third-day backgrounders in many papers and on TV failed to mention easily accessible information, the sorts of tidbits the media displayed no reluctance to run when they were writing about Ms. Lewinsky or the President. For example, The New York Times made no mention, on Jan. 22, of Mr. Jordan's 11 directorships, or the conflicts they've raised when those companies benefit from decisions he helps the President make, or his affinity with Mr. Clinton for lewd and sometimes crude bantering with and about women.

There have been some half-baked attempts at balance: The Washington Post and ABC did cite one black leader, Randall Robinson of the Trans-Africa Forum lobbying organization, complaining that Mr. Jordan had forgotten his roots. But there have been no references to an anecdote recounted in a 1993 Vanity Fair article by Marjorie Williams, in which Mr. Jordan leaned over to his hostess at a dinner party in the mid-1980's and said, "You look like a woman who likes to fuck." Or to a scene in Michelle Cottle's June 1997 Washington Monthly story, in which President Clinton, seated next to an attractive blonde at a state dinner, told Mr. Jordan to keep his hands off her because "I saw her first."

Mr. Jordan's relatively easy treatment is testament to his standing in the Washington Establishment. He's enormously well liked, and offers connections to A-list parties and the White House that Beltway inhabitants-especially journalists-find irresistible. He's also been known to dispense gossip, what he calls "dead men's talk."

"Jordan has this great value in Washington, which has a very lily-white Establishment," said Ms. Williams. "People in Washington talked to me very un-self-consciously about what a relief it was to have a friend who was black who understood all the same cultural signifiers they had." Added Ms. Williams: "He's really benefited from being a mystery. People are covering up the lacunae of their own reporting in the coverage of Vernon Jordan."

"Vernon Jordan's role in Washington society is one that would only be exalted in a culture that is somewhat debased," said Michael Kelly, the recently deposed editor of The New Republic who is now a senior writer at National Journal . "He is not a traditional Washington wise man, offering sage counsel to the President on grave matters of statecraft. He is a very high-level fixer.… It is, on the face of it, neither illegal nor improper. But it is not a great, noble calling. To hear of Saint Vernon the Generous, dispensing acts of kindness to all classes, to all races who walk the streets of Washington, is pretty funny stuff."

But the decision-makers Off the Record spoke to dispute the charge of playing favorites. "I don't think anyone has been getting an easy ride," said Frank Sesno, CNN's Washington bureau chief.

"I think what happened is the charge [against Mr. Jordan] didn't seem to stick," said Tom Bettag, executive producer of Nightline . Mr. Jordan is viewed as too slick for tactics as crude as telling someone to lie, Mr. Bettag added, and with so many allegations aimed at the President, "Jordan was a sideshow."

However, Mr. Jordan's role was key to Kenneth Starr getting authorization to expand his independent counsel investigation into the Lewinsky affair. Mr. Starr had been investigating Mr. Jordan's role in funneling a $100,000 consulting contract to Webster Hubbell, an Arkansas crony of President Clinton's who was forced from the Justice Department and ended up in jail for fraud. The goal: to prove a pattern of buying the silence of potential witnesses against the President.

A more nuanced view of Mr. Jordan's role in the crisis, however, is starting to emerge. The Feb. 2 editions of Time and Newsweek provide more rounded pictures of the President's chief fixer. And given the X-rated tenor of the scandale , both magazines reported the two men's fondness for the ladies. Asked what they talked about on the golf course, Mr. Jordan is said to have replied, "We talk pussy." Newsweek ran the word sans the two s's. Time did away with all the letters, expect p.

ABC's Nightline has the reputation of superior journalism and sober news judgment. But on the night of Jan. 22, the show allowed Stephen Enghouse, a self-proclaimed "good friend" of Ms. Lewinsky during her days at Lewis and Clark College, to trash her credibility even though he could not muster one example of her alleged penchant for embellishment and fabrication. Mr. Enghouse also hadn't talked to Ms. Lewinsky in three years.

"Why do you rank her credibility so low in this instance?" asked host Ted Koppel during Nightline 's second night of "Crisis in the White House" coverage.

"Well, just because I know her and I know that she's kind of young and seeks attention and I believe would be prone to sensationalize or overdramatize or exaggerate specific areas or instances in her life that would lead her to gain more attention," said Mr. Enghouse.

That was pretty much it in the way of specifics.

Executive producer Tom Bettag concedes that the Enghouse appearance is a legitimate area for complaint. "It was a tough call," said Mr. Bettag. "We had him and we had to decide what to do with him, so we put him on. But again, we made a point of saying that he couldn't make a single point to back it up and that he hadn't seen her in three years."

In a show filled with reports that weren't too helpful for the President, Mr. Bettag felt that a segment of 2 minutes 15 seconds would at least show some of the other side. "I think journalism is better off not killing things. You give them [the viewers] enough context to decide."

For many members of the "responsible" press, the apocalypse arrived on Jan. 25 at 10:30 A.M. on NBC. Matt Drudge was a panelist on Meet the Press .

Mr. Drudge, a one-man operation spreading political, media and celebrity gossip around the World Wide Web, was not there to be grilled for his questionable journalistic practices. No, he was there, sitting next to The New York Times ' William Safire, as an esteemed member of the press pursuing the scandal surrounding President Clinton.

"It scares the hell out of me," Nightline 's Mr. Bettag told Off the Record.

Tim Russert, the host of Meet the Press, accorded Mr. Drudge the same respect he gave his other media mouthpieces- Newsweek 's Michael Isikoff (who's done the most reporting by far on the story even though his scoop was upstaged by Mr. Drudge) and Stuart Taylor of National Journal and Newsweek .

"What's your take?" asked Mr. Russert. Mr. Drudge proceeded to attack the press corps for blowing the story and expressed dismay over the state of the Republic. He also got to throw in an as-yet-to-be-substantiated rumor that another White House staff member "is going to come out from behind the curtains this week. If this is the case-and you couple this with the headline that the New York Post has-there are hundreds, hundreds, according to Ms. Lewinsky, quoting Clinton-we're in for a huge shock that goes beyond the specific episode. It's a whole psychosis taking place in the White House."

Tom Shales, in the Jan. 26 Washington Post , was repulsed. "Drudge, as sleazy-looking a character as anyone involved in the case so far (and that is saying something), has no credentials whatever to serve on a panel with professional journalists or even professional pundits," he wrote. "His only credential is his computer. Drudge's sudden rise to fame, and now Russert's implied endorsement of him, may be but one small sign of the new electronic Tower of Babel that the Internet will become."

Mr. Drudge, a fedora-wearing gossipmonger who idolizes Walter Winchell, struck back. "He's calling me sleazy-looking?" Mr. Drudge told Off the Record. "All he does is sit in front of the TV stuffing his face. At least I can fit into my Levi's."

But Mr. Drudge, whose breathless reporting is often unreliable but just as often scoops the mainstream media, has an explanation for the grudging reception the journalism club has offered him. "It's a turf war," he said. "There's confusion because there's a new medium afoot and it sort of blindsided them." He views himself as the voice of a populist sentiment sweeping the land, "because of a press corps that got a little too close to their sources."

Of course, Mr. Drudge conveniently left out that he, too, has gotten too close to his (conservative) sources, and his insistence that he is not a journalist hasn't protected him from being hit with a libel suit. His dispatch last August smearing White House aide Sidney Blumenthal with accusations of spousal abuse resulted in a $30 million defamation suit against him and America Online, which carries the Drudge Report . The suit is continuing.