DECLARATION OF THE INDEPENDENT COUNSEL

Letters

Searching for the hidden subtext of our “Referral” to Congress, Renata Adler has produced one of her more compelling works of fiction. While we do not habitually correct published misinformation, the pervasive factual errors in “Decoding the Starr Report” [December] and our respect for your publication compel us to speak up here. A few examples of Ms. Adler’s misrepresentations:

1.Ms. Adler charges that the Office of the Independent Counsel persuaded Linda Tripp to begin taping conversations with Monica Lewinsky in the fall of 1997. That is wrong. No one in this office had anything to do with Ms. Tripp’s decision to start taping. Indeed, we had no contact with her at the time. Ms. Tripp’s grandjury testimony and an F.B.I. interview with Lucianne Goldberg indicate that the taping was Ms. Goldberg’s idea. In her review of the published volumes of evidence, Ms. Adler appears to have overlooked these materials.

What authority does Ms. Adler offer for the proposition that we provoked the taping? She notes ominously that “neither Ms. Tripp in her testimony nor the prosecutors before the grand jury nor the independent counsel anywhere in his report” mentions Ms. Tripp’s earlier contacts with the O.I.C. Not only is this a singularly weak reed on which to rest so grave an accusation, it is also factually wrong. In the grand jury, Ms. Tripp was questioned about her meeting with a deputy independent counsel on the evening of January 12, 1998:

Q. Did you tell him that you had been a witness before the Whitewater grand juries?

A. Yes.

(“Supplemental Materials,” Part 3, page 4349.)

2. Ms. Adler charges that we used Ms. Tripp as an intermediary to transmit information to Paula Jones’s attorneys before the president’s deposition. The allegation is false—indeed, not a shred of evidence supports it. As Ms. Tripp herself has testified, we had no inkling that she planned to meet with the Jones attorneys before the president’s deposition. (“Supplemental Materials,” Part 3, page 4356.)

3. Ms. Adler remarks that “it seems hard to justify a great reliance” on Ms. Tripp’s telephone tapes because one tape appears to be out of sequence, a fact that is noted in an appendix to our “Referral.” (“Appendices,” Part 1, pages 230-31.) Ms. Adler fails to mention that the “Referral” places no great reliance on these tapes for a different and more powerful reason: a preliminary F.B.I. examination found evidence that at least some of the tapes are not originals. (“Referral,” page 26, footnote 125 [Government Printing Office edition]; “Appendices,” Part 1, pages 226-28.) Perhaps taking note of this fact would have weakened Ms. Adler’s grandconspiracy theory.

4.Ms. Adler misstates both law and facts in depicting the events of January 16, 1998, when we sought Ms. Lewinsky’s cooperation. The writer contends that personnel from this office “were in flagrant violation of Ms. Lewinsky’s rights,” and asserts, “There is absolutely no doubt, none whatsoever, that the investigators— prosecutors and F.B.I. agents alike— were obliged by law to stop right there, without another word, until Ms. Lewinsky brought in her attorney.” In Ms. Adler’s view, further. Title 28 of the Code of Federal Regulations required us to contact Ms. Lewinsky’s civil attorney before even talking with Ms. Lewinsky in the course of our criminal investigation. Ms. Adler also faults Ms. Lewinsky’s lawyers for “not mov[ing] to have the case ... thrown out on grounds of prosecutorial abuses,” and declares that such a motion would have been granted.

In truth, a federal court considered the allegation that Ms. Lewinsky was denied access to her attorney, and summarily rejected it. As for federal regulations, Ms. Adler might want to consult Section 77.7 of Title 28, which states (with exceptions not applicable here) that “an attorney for the government may communicate ... with a represented person in the process of conducting an investigation, including, but not limited to, an undercover investigation.” We believe that Ms. Lewinsky was not “represented” for purposes of our criminal investigation when we approached her on January 16, but even if she had been represented, the regulations specifically authorize direct contact. As a factual matter, furthermore, we did not “propose to Ms. Lewinsky that she call an attorney” of our choosing. Rather, we gave her the number for a legal-aid office or public defender’s office. We also telephoned the office of her attorney in the civil case, Frank Carter, who was not immediately available. And when Ms. Lewinsky engaged William Ginsburg to represent her in the criminal investigation, we suspended contact with her.

5. As for the format of the published “Referral” and supplemental volumes, Ms. Adler’s grumbling is misdirected. The cover page of the report that we submitted to Congress listed as author “Office of the Independent Counsel”; the House added Judge Starr’s name to the published version. We submitted our materials in labeled boxes, binders, and file folders; the House chose to publish the five supplemental volumes without tabs. Ms. Adler suggests a sinister motive for the fact that Ms. Tripp’s testimony appears in the last of those volumes. In fact, the explanation lies in the witness’s surname: most of the testimony appears alphabetically in the third, fourth, and fifth volumes.

We could have rectified Ms. Adler’s many misunderstandings in advance, but she neglected to check with us. While she is of course entitled to her opinion of our investigation, her error-pocked reporting casts a good deal of doubt on her conclusions.

CHARLES BAKALY Counselor, Office of the Independent Counsel Washington, D.C.

RENATA ADLER REPLIES: If there are errors in the piece, Mr. Bakaly has not found them.

In Slickness and in Health

WHILE I ADMIRE Gail Sheehy’s valiant attempt to portray First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton as a woman in charge of her life and her destiny [“Hillary’s Choice,” February], I beg to differ. By staying with a man who has repeatedly humiliated her with adulterous affairs over the course of 30 years, she has effectively turned herself into what she once loudly and proudly proclaimed not to be: “some little woman standing by my man like Tammy Wynette.” Any woman who has been in a dysfunctional relationship knows that true courage comes from leaving the relationship and ending the pain, not from staying and enduring more of the same. As a woman, I view Hillary with contempt, not respect. A woman who stays in a bad relationship is a doormat, whether she’s a Yale graduate living in the White House or a high-school dropout living in a trailer park.

CINDY PHILLIPS Gillette, New Jersey

CONGRATULATIONS on Gail Sheehy’s magnificent “Hillary’s Choice.” It was one of the finest, most revealing profiles I have ever read. Whatever happens to Bill Clinton, he will remain one of our greatest and most intriguing presidents. I suspect it is our witch-hunting Republican Congress that will bear the blot. Most Americans, I believe, hope the marvelous Hillary will stick with him. They are a fabulous combination.

GEORGE DEMARE Saugerties, New York

IN RESEARCHING HER ARTICLE on the Clintons, Gail Sheehy called me to check out a rumor. She said that she had heard that I had sat at the same table as President Clinton at a dinner party on Martha’s Vineyard, and that she had heard from somebody at another table that the president had talked about the Old Testament definition of adultery. I told her that there was absolutely no truth to the story, that I had heard every word of the discussion at the table, that the president and I had indeed discussed several stories from the Book of Genesis, but that not a single word had been mentioned about adultery. She said, “Well, it was a good story, but I guess it isn’t true.” Although Sheehy knew that there was no truth to the story, she persisted in writing, “According to one account, Clinton was particularly interested in Old Testament definitions of adultery.” While it is literally true that there was one such account, it was an untrue hearsay account, and Sheehy knew when she published this statement that she was purveying a false rumor.

Some people may be addicted to sex, and others to power. Sheehy seems addicted to gossip, whether true or false. She just can’t resist telling a good story, even if she knows it’s not true.

ALAN M. DERSHOWITZ Felix Frankfurter Professor of Law Harvard Law School Cambridge, Massachusetts

GAIL SHEEHY REPLIES: Following my call to Professor Dershowitz, / persisted in checking the story. Another guest characterized the conversation about the Old Testament as having included an interest, expressed by the president, in stories that involved adulteiy. Definitions of sexual relations were very much on the president's mind last August, before and after his grand-jury testimony. Less than a week before the Martha’s Vineyard party, he had a similar discussion about biblical stories of adultery with the ReverendJesseJackson.

Yellow Fever

DAVID KAMP’S ARTICLE “The Tabloid Decade” [February] is an absolutely brilliant analysis of our media-saturated culture. But he is sorely wrong in writing that 60 Minutes is among the programs contributing to tabloid reporting. This program is the last on network TV to hold a high standard of journalism. It simply can’t be categorized with Dateline or 20/20. If all news programs followed the lead of 60 Minutes rather than opting for sensationalists, emotionally driven stories played out like soap operas, then the “blurring of distinctions” between entertainment and news wouldn’t be so prevalent. Otherwise, Kamp’s article is flawless and a much-needed critique on our society of media cynics.

SARAH FISHER Brooklyn, New York

EDITORS NOTE: Sarah Fisher was not a CBS employee when this letter was written, but she is now an associate producer at CBS.com.

Waiting for Yoda

I DON’T KNOW if I should love or hate you for putting out that great article on Star Wars: Episode I—The Phantom Menace [“The Force Is Back,” by David Kamp, February], I love Star Wars; it allows me to venture into a far better place than the one I am currently in. I still get goose bumps, fall in love, laugh, and rally behind the Rebels in the original trilogy, although I have the whole thing memorized. I found your article very informative and the photographs superb. Here is the bad part: reading and seeing things such as your feature just make me more impatient for Episode I to come out. Thanks for saying that Episode I is probably going to outdo Titanic at the box office. Certain parties really needed to hear that.

MATTHEW NASH Lee’s Summit. Missouri

In Love and War

SEBASTIAN JUNGER’S ARTICLE [“Addicted to Danger,” February] does a terrible injustice to the memory of my fellow freedom fighter Carlos Mavroleon. Rather than discussing the qualities that made him such an extraordinary human beingcourage and conviction, honor and integrity—the piece draws inordinate attention to things that meant nothing to Carlos.

Carlos went to Afghanistan not to look for danger but rather to fight for a cause in which he deeply believed. To raise questions over his role in the Afghan war misses the point: whether he was a foot soldier or a platoon leader, he contributed, in a significant way, to what was arguably the greatest cause for freedom in recent history. For his heroism and dedication to our cause, he won our boundless admiration and respect.

MASOOD FARIVAR Jersey City, New Jersey

Bedford Hills. 10507

AS A RESIDENT OF Bedford for nearly 25 years, I was pleased to see that Alex Shoumatoff [“And So to Bedford,” February] captured some of the beauty of this lovely town. Our home, a modest threebedroom on one acre (there are many such places in Bedford), provided us a wonderful place to raise two kids.

However, while I admit that part of the cachet of the town is the presence of people with considerable wealth and celebrity, I’ve never been to one of their homes or to their parties. And aside from occasional glimpses of them at church or around town, I knew nothing about their habits or character. From Shoumatoff’s article I now gather that many of them are shallow, self-absorbed, and imbued with an unholy need to show off. How delighted they must have been when your story provided an opportunity to form a parade.

JOHN B. LA MARE Bedford, New York

HOW MANY ODES to vanishing prep life must we be subjected to? You’ve always had a tendency to glorify the “right” kind of money, but this was way over the top. Although Shoumatoff makes obligatory noises about the town’s anti-Semitism, it’s clear he believes old Bedford is about as good as it gets. And in case anyone was confused: the descriptions of dog hair on the sofas, the unshaven people in greasy clothes, the popcorn served in pie tins— these don’t mean that the “hilltoppers” are slobs who can’t cook, but rather that only peasants are good at things like laundry and vacuuming.

SARAH GRAVES STELFOX Bragg Creek, Alberta

Drama King

IN 1982, I WAS EMPLOYED at the SOOn-tObe-opened Cineplex Odeon theaters in the Beverly Center in Los Angeles. This was Cineplex Odeon’s first U.S. venture, and Garth Drabinsky, who was chairman at the time, was on-site every day for months before the opening [“The World According to Garth,” by Suzanna Andrews, February], Each day, I watched in horrified fascination as he berated everyone from carpenters to managers to candy girls with a viciousness completely out of proportion to the perceived offenses. I have followed his erratic career ever since, and was not the least bit surprised at his latest troubles with Livent. look forward to his eventual extradition.

BRAD CARTY Indialantic, Florida

CORRECTION: On page 164 of the February issue, we stated that Liba Icah n was corporate raider Carl Icahn ’.r exwife and that she lived in Bedford, Neiv York. Mr. and Mrs. Icahn are not divorced, although they have been estranged for many years. Mrs. Icahn recently moved away from Bedford.

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