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Tuesday, March 19, 2024
March 19, 2024

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Report: Lewinsky mistreated during Clinton investigation

2000 document questions actions of prosecutors

The Columbian
Published:
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Monica Lewinsky pauses during her speech at the Forbes Under 30 Summit on Monday in Philadelphia.
Monica Lewinsky pauses during her speech at the Forbes Under 30 Summit on Monday in Philadelphia. Photo Gallery

WASHINGTON — When onetime White House intern Monica Lewinsky broke her silence with a major speech this week, one subject brought her nearly to tears.

Lewinsky’s voice cracked as she recalled the moment in January 1998 when she was first confronted by FBI agents and lawyers working for Kenneth W. Starr’s Office of Independent Counsel, who threatened her and her mother with criminal prosecution if she did not agree to wear a wire against President Bill Clinton.

Lewinsky, now 41, has long felt that she was mistreated by authorities in the 12-hour marathon session, which began as an ambush at the food court at the mall at Pentagon City in Virginia and then moved to a hotel room at the mall’s adjoining Ritz-Carlton hotel.

As it turns out, so did government lawyers who conducted a comprehensive review of the incident in 2000, two years after the encounter. Their findings are contained in a report — recently obtained by The Washington Post — that key players had long believed was under court-ordered seal.

According to the report, a prosecutor who confronted Lewinsky “exercised poor judgment and made mistakes in his analysis, planning and execution of the approach.” The report, written by two lawyers appointed to investigate the matter by Robert Ray, Starr’s successor as independent counsel, concluded the “matter could have been handled better.”

The report also lays out the encounter in detail, suggesting that it quickly spun out of control as a shocked and hysterical Lewinsky asked to consult a lawyer or a parent — even as prosecutors grew increasingly determined to persuade her to agree on the spot to cooperate against the president.

The existence of the report, as well as its general conclusions, were first revealed in the 2010 book “The Death of American Virtue: Clinton vs. Starr,” an exhaustive study of the Lewinsky investigation by Ken Gormley, dean of Duquesne University’s law school.

However, the report has not before been in wide circulation. Gormley quoted Ray and the report’s chief author, Jo Ann Harris, who had served as assistant attorney general, as indicating that the report was sealed from public view by a three-judge panel that oversaw Ray’s work.

The Washington Post obtained a copy of the report by filing a request under the Freedom of Information Act to the National Archives.

The report could also help Lewinsky’s effort to force a re-evaluation of her role in the scandal, as an unwitting and maltreated victim of events outside her control. She announced this week that she will use her experiences to launch a campaign against cyberbullying, and she wrote a first-person piece, published by Vanity Fair in June, declaring that it is time for her to take on a more public role as a way to move forward with her life.

Lewinsky declined to comment for this article.

Gormley said the report is one of the few key documents from the Lewinsky episode that had not been made public and that it is “an important piece of history” that “finally vindicates that (Lewinsky’s) version of events checks out.”

Here’s how Lewinsky recounted the encounter this week at a forum sponsored by Forbes, her first public speech on the matter in a decade:

“It was just like you see in the movies,” she said. “Imagine, one minute I was waiting to meet a friend in the food court and the next I realized she had set me up, as two FBI agents flashed their badges at me.”

“Immediately following, in a nearby hotel room, I was threatened with up to 27 years in jail for denying the affair in an affidavit and other alleged crimes. Twenty-seven years. When you’re only 24 yourself, that’s a long time. Chillingly, told that my mother too might face prosecution if I didn’t cooperate and wear a wire. And, in case you didn’t know, I did not wear the wire.”

More than 100 pages long, the “Report of the Special Counsel Concerning Allegations of Professional Misconduct By the Office of Independent Counsel in Connection with the Encounter with Monica Lewinsky” provides a highly detailed account of Lewinsky’s first encounter with Starr’s lawyers, based on documents and interviews with those involved.

When first approached at the food court and told she that was the subject of a criminal investigation, Lewinsky immediately told an FBI agent to “go f— yourself” and then told him to speak to her attorney, according to the report.

She agreed to go with the agents to a room at the adjoining Ritz-Carlton only after she was told she would learn more about the situation without a lawyer present.

For hours, according to the report, Lewinsky tried “in various ways” to consult with, speak to or visit Frank Carter, a lawyer she had hired to assist her when she was deposed in the Paula Jones sexual harassment case against Clinton.

The report says Lewinsky spent those hours “crying, sobbing, regaining her composure, screaming.” One prosecutor told investigators that Lewinsky’s demeanor had an “unsettling effect on his own state of mind.”

Lewinsky was repeatedly told that she could speak with whomever she wished, but was then warned that her cooperation would become less valuable if she consulted with anyone, including Carter, before agreeing to assist prosecutors, the report says.

In exchange for her cooperation against Clinton, prosecutors offered her immunity from charges that she had lied in a sworn affidavit in the Jones lawsuit by falsely claiming she had not had an affair with Clinton.

The report says prosecutors’ actions did not amount to “professional misconduct” but were more serious than mere mistakes.

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