Sue Hartigan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
Willey Calls Clinton a Liar
By PETE YOST Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The White House today questioned
the
credibility of President Clinton's latest accuser,
saying Kathleen Willey's
account of an alleged sexual advance is
``contradicted'' by the former
White House volunteer's positive attitude toward
Clinton.
Mounting a defense of the president in appearances on
morning television
talk shows, White House spokeswoman Ann Lewis said
Mrs. Willey's
description on national TV Sunday of the 1993 Oval
Office encounter
with Clinton ``surprised'' her.
``What I saw last night was someone who talked about
being angry,
feeling that she has been taken advantage of. And yet
in 1996, when she
was no longer associated with the president or the
White House, she
came to see me and said 'I really want to work in
this campaign,''' Lewis
said on NBC's ``Today'' show. ``There was such a
contradiction
between what I saw and heard last night and the
person I met with in
1996.''
After offering nearly identical comments on ABC's
``Good Morning
America,'' Lewis denied that she was trying to spread
a White House
``message'' to rebut Mrs. Willey's account the night
before on CBS' ``60
Minutes.''
``No, this is my personal message,'' Lewis said.
``Watching last night, I
thought, gee, if I hadn't had my personal experience
(with Mrs. Willey),
how would I feel about it?''
Mrs. Willey said the story she was telling on
television was the same one
she swore to before a Whitewater grand jury last
week. Clinton,
meanwhile, has given a sworn deposition denying her
account. The
conflicts in their stories means that one of them has
committed perjury, in
the president's case an impeachable offense.
In a soft, sometimes halting voice, Mrs. Willey said
on ``60 Minutes'' that
the president embraced her, kissed her on the lips,
touched her breasts
and placed one of her hands on his genitals.
``I thought, `Well, maybe I ought to just give him a
good slap across the
face,''' she said. ``And then I thought, `Well, I
don't think you can slap
the president of the United States.'''
``I didn't feel intimidated. I just felt
overpowered,'' said Mrs. Willey, 51.
``Later on ... I was feeling angry. ... I was there,
asking a friend, who
also happened to be the president of the United
States, for help.''
Mrs. Willey's family finances were in a state of
collapse and she wanted a
paying White House job when she came to see Clinton
on Nov. 29,
1993. Unbeknownst to either Clinton or Mrs. Willey at
the time, her
husband committed suicide the same day.
Mrs. Willey received new support today from a leading
feminist and from
Gennifer Flowers, with whom Clinton has admitted a
sexual relationship.
``Perhaps we need to redefine what a good president
is, what a good
man is,'' Patricia Ireland, president of the National
Organization for
Women, said on the ``Today'' show. ``This is beyond
the idea of the
likable rogue or the womanizer and really on into
sexual assault, sexual
abuse.''
``I think she spoke from the heart,'' Flowers said of
Mrs. Willey. ``I ask
the American public why this woman would have any
motive to come
out. She wanted to take some control of it and tell
what happened,''
Flowers said on ``Good Morning America.''
Clinton ``has no idea why she said what she did or
whether she now
believes that's what happened,'' said a White House
statement Sunday
night.
Clinton's lawyer, Robert Bennett, said on ABC's
``This Week'' that
``there is substantial material of what she has said
which is under seal,
which has not been released, which seriously
undercuts'' her story.
``I think in fairness it's important ... to note that
there have been at least
five versions of this encounter,'' former White House
counsel Jack Quinn
said on CBS' ``Face the Nation.''
The president has said he may have kissed Mrs. Willey
on the forehead
to comfort her but that there was nothing sexual.
Is Clinton lying, Mrs. Willey was asked on ``60
Minutes.''
``Yes,'' she replied.
Asked why she is going public with a story she once
resisted telling, she
said ``too many lies are being told, too many lives
are being ruined. ... I
think it's time for the truth to come out.''
Two sources close to Clinton's defense, speaking on
condition of
anonymity, said that after the alleged incident, Mrs.
Willey wrote Clinton
and his personal assistant, Nancy Hernreich,
``several times'' and called
``on several occasions'' seeking to speak or meet
with the president.
The tone of her letters was ``consistently friendly
and admiring,'' said one
of the sources. In addition, she asked Hernreich in
November 1997, two
months before she gave a deposition in Paula Jones'
sexual harassment
lawsuit against Clinton, for an invitation to a White
House Christmas
party, the sources said.
In her testimony in the Jones case, Mrs. Willey said
that ``to the best of
my recollection'' she had not communicated with
Clinton since leaving the
White House.
Newsweek magazine reported that Willey told the
Whitewater grand jury
last week that she spent two days at the estate of
Democratic fund-raiser
Nathan Landow and he repeatedly pressed her not to
say anything about
her version of the encounter with Clinton.
Newsweek also said FBI agents obtained records
showing that last Oct.
6, Landow's real estate firm chartered a plane to fly
Mrs. Willey from her
home near Richmond, Va., to Landow's estate on
Maryland's Eastern
Shore.
Landow says he spoke to Mrs. Willey about her
``mental anguish'' over
the Jones case, but that any suggestions of witness
tampering are
``absolutely untrue.''
On ``60 Minutes,'' Mrs. Willey declined to talk in
detail about Landow,
an area of her story that is under criminal
investigation by Whitewater
prosecutor Kenneth Starr's office.
But she did speak about the president's lawyer,
saying ``I felt pressured
by Mr. Bennett,'' who told her at one point in the
Jones case that ``he
had just ... been at the White House, and ... the
president asked for me
and told him ... that he just thought the world of
me.'' She said she found
that sentiment ``laughable.''
A friend of Mrs. Willey, Julie Steele, has said Mrs.
Willey asked her to
lie about the encounter with Clinton. To that, Mrs.
Willey said: ``My own
personal belief is that she was pressured. I think
that the White House
wanted to try to discredit me, and they found a pawn
in her.''
Subscribe/Unsubscribe, email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
In the body of the message enter: subscribe/unsubscribe law-issues
