Clinton's Courtier Press

...Two days later, she warned that, in Lewinsky's discussions with Tripp, "there may be a delusional quality involved...

...sidekick, Nathaniel Speights (who were afforded a most flattering photo...

...But it is the New York Observer's Joe Conason who is regarded in journalistic circles as "the new Sid" Blumenthal—the reporter most heedful of the administration's needs...

...Nancy Gibbs sighed that, at a state dinner for Britain's Tony Blair, "the capital's obsession melted away," if only for "one brief shining moment...

...He's too good a lawyer...

...But at the end of what we now know to have been a traumatizing deposition, "Clinton departed in what sources close to him say was an ecstatic mood...

...Perhaps, like Lewinsky, Foster was too close to the wrong person...

...that her husband had left certain items for her along with his suicide note...

...he sniffed along the trail of Richard Scaife's money...

...But Clinton's courtiers are a particularly adamant breed...

...Time, though, milked a source of its own, Julie Steele, who offered a wealth of derogatory information about her former friend Willey...

...Prominent in Clinton's court is Carlson's employer, Time magazine...

...No one should lie" about sexual dalliances and their consequences, she avowed, but "Big Brother [that would be Starr] shouldn't ask...

...In that same issue, the magazine opened its pages to Monica Lewinsky's attorneys, William Ginsburg and his D.C...

...There are no heroes in this," runs a typical remark...

...He states forthrightly, "I despise Starr...

...Clinton's Courtier Press By Jay Nordlinger For the first five years of Bill Clinton's presidency, his opponents grumbled that the press was too soft on him, refusing to probe one scandal after another...

...Clift remembered a happier time, when, if "people lied about sex in private matters, we called it chivalry...

...He has been particularly harsh in his assessment of Starr, labeling him a "tainted prosecutor" who employs "storm-trooper tactics...

...A few have even come to appreciate Billy Graham, for his easy "forgiveness" of Clinton (Carlson: "Billy Graham is in contact with the American people...

...he depicted Kathleen Willey as a mendacious wreck...

...That's not something Vernon Jordan would have done...

...We can't trust what they say...

...Margaret Carlson of Time, Eleanor Clift of Newsweek, Al Hunt of the Wall Street Journal, Lars-Erik Nelson of the Daily News, Joe Conason of the New York Observer—these are the ones who will stand by Clinton until (as the president himself likes to say) "the last dog dies...

...Even in a rough world, the Conason style is exceptional...

...Carlson, however, had no trouble over on page 49...

...Tripp "certainly can play the bitter secretary in the sure-to-come Lifetime movie...

...After a few more minutes of this, one of his exasperated interlocutors said, "One quick question, Joe: Does Monica Lewinsky exist...

...The magazine, though, was just warming up...

...When the Monica Lewinsky story broke on January 21, however, the press came alive, and it has been hot on the case ever since...

...But six years later, when Matt Drudge introduced Monica Lewinsky to the world on his Internet site, Conason ridiculed Drudge for a "form of premature ejaculation, causing him to emit poorly sourced stories about the President, the First Lady and various Clinton aides...

...The magazine reported in near-gleeful tones that Willey had "not been above baroque acts of deception," which included lying to a boyfriend about being pregnant and asking Steele to mislead Isikoff about what had occurred off the Oval Office...

...Starr, according to Hunt, suffers from an "obsession with Clinton" and is "out to get him at any cost...

...One of the few in Margaret Carlson's league is Eleanor Clift, famed for her impassioned defenses of the Clintons and her scorn of anything right of center...

...Over and over, they assert that "character" goes far beyond marital fidelity (Conason: "I consider feeding the poor and hungry a moral issue...

...Of Tripp and the literary agent Lucianne Goldberg, Hunt is utterly dismissive...

...Their themes tend to be alike, expressed with a remarkable uniformity: "failed Arkansas land deal," "out of control," "trial by leaks," "obsession with sex...

...The president, you see, "felt that the deposition had gone smashingly for him...

...He described one conservative lawyer as "a graduate of the Gestapo School of Interrogation" and assailed "Kenneth Starr's snoopers, otherwise known as the Night Ambush Squad," for their "police state tactics...

...Maybe so...

...The lawyers claimed to be helping "a client who has told the truth, the complete truth, to the authorities...

...Sidney Blumenthal, who was once Clinton's most reliable supporter in the press and now does his work inside the White House, "handed my name over to Starr and then was called before a grand jury to be questioned about his efforts to plant hostile stories about Starr in the press...

...If the case against the president were ever taken up by Congress, the result would be "a show so repulsive it might even shame Ken Starr...

...And that conspiracy is one thing in which Cona-son very definitely believes...

...A "person close to the President said, 'Everyone is going to sleep well tonight.'" Jay Nordlinger is associate editor of The Weekly Standard...

...He's too careful...

...At the front of Time's first post-Monica issue, senior editor Nancy Gibbs wrote, "Last week even [Clinton's] apologists didn't know where to begin...

...Nancy Gibbs seemed relieved that Clinton's poll numbers were strong, observing, "Americans are less puritanical and more forgiving than the cartoon version suggests, and this President is never better than in his worst moments...

...Steve Roberts of the New York Daily News spoke for many of his colleagues when he concluded, "This whole notion that the liberal media elite is coddling Bill Clinton and always plays to the Democrats is absurd...

...Clift, though still associated with Newsweek, has become primarily a television performer, and she plays her role to the hilt...

...But Carlson was saving herself for her peroration...

...Furthermore, Starr "wanted to use this post as a stepping stone, and that was his desire in the very beginning and I think that is why he was a bad appointment" (notwithstanding Starr's obvious longing to retreat to the relative obscurity of Pepperdine University...

...Of course, the pro-Clinton press is not entirely without legitimate purposes: Muck should be raked on all sides, and accusers should be scrutinized as closely as the accused...

...Time also saw fit to publicize the most personal details of Willey's life— that, when a teenager, she had given up a child for adoption...

...He is also, like Hunt, partial to Third Reich analogies, sprinkling them throughout his columns in the New York Daily News...

...And as he arches out of sight, they will salute him—no doubt muttering curses about conspiracy...

...Wherever the anti-Clinton side is vulnerable, Conason homes in: He mused about whether Starr had instigated Tripp's taping...

...to break the law to enforce the law...

...the only person who says it happened is the snitch, Linda Tripp...

...Answered Conason, "I don't know anything about any visits...

...Gibbs also wrote that, after Clinton delivered his State of the Union address, "the White House did a very wise thing: it went silent" (not something normally applauded by a journalist...

...I don't see any evidence of any visits...

...Lars-Erik Nelson is a slasher in the Carlson and Clift mode—even fiercer...

...Hunt, like Carlson and Clift, holds Starr responsible for "most of the leaks" and quips that "for Ken Starr to say he's going to investigate the leaks is as believable as O. J. Simpson looking for the real killer...

...A week later, Time had its cover declare that Clinton was facing "Trial by Leaks...

...She identified the villain of the piece as Kenneth Starr...

...He's too smart...

...Carlson, for her part, likened Tripp to Iago, "full of malice," and noted that, while Clinton's secretary, Betty Currie, had been "a victim of his carelessness," she had "also been the recipient of a hundred kindnesses...

...Nothing in this mess," Carlson stated, "is more inexplicable than" Tripp's behavior...

...According to Carlson, all of us, no matter what our view of Clinton, should perceive that the "convergence of Jones, Starr and the FBI is not right...

...Al Hunt is more restrained than Carlson and Clift, and he labors in his Wall Street Journal columns and television outings to project an air of detachment...

...Tripp had been secretary to Vince Foster, who, "in his last conversation with colleagues," said "he couldn't understand how so much of what he did or said found its way into the press...

...And it was Linda Tripp who "sat just outside his office—delivered him his last meal, in fact...

...and the most visible figure in America who believes any and all sex gossip is" Starr...

...Asked on TV to confront a growing body of circumstantial evidence, Conason held firm, responding, "How would you know whether [Clinton] did any of those things...

...And, really, "no one likes a snitch, especially one with so much to gain...

...On Day One of Monica-mania, she pointed out that Lewinsky was "still of age" and that, given our past presidents, "libido and leadership are linked" (one of the more memorable phrases to come out of the scandal...

...I just find that impossible to believe...

...Inside, there were additional scary photos of the prosecutor and his assistants, including one wrought in thuggish black and white, with shadows creeping about the walls...

...Its editors have apparently decided that, whereas their chief rival, Newsweek, will lead the journalistic investigation of Clinton, they will lead the counter-investigation...

...Tripp had not put her tapes "in a vault to be used defensively," but had "voluntarily played them for Ken Starr...

...Well, are Monica Lewinsky's 37 visits to the White House, after she ceased to work there, significant...

...Conason is reluctant to acknowledge that the Clintons may have committed even the slightest infraction...

...Yet he is also capable of variation, recalling at one point "a KGB that used tactics much like Starr's...

...In 1992, he chided the press for its indifference to a rumor about George Bush: "The issue that remains too hot to handle is whether Poppy has been faithful to Bar...

...And they take immense pleasure from Clinton's poll numbers, marveling at the (newly manifested) maturity of the American people (Hunt: "They think this has been a good president...

...In its next issue, it featured the independent counsel on its cover in a menacing pose, along with the legend, "Starr at War...

...they don't want to hear any more about the particulars of l'Affaire Lewinsky, and they certainly don't want him driven out of office on this...

...Appearing February 15 on Meet the Press, he said that "the country needs to know that...there has been a long-term, long-running, very costly effort by people on the right to undo the results of the last two presidential elections"—almost exactly the language that Hillary Clinton had used three weeks before...

...Conason allowed that she did, adding, "I believe she may have been caught up in a right-wing conspiracy...

...Nor does Nelson believe that Clinton is guilty of a sexual relationship with an intern: "Clinton denies it, Lewinsky denies it...

...We might say that these journalists are indistinguishable from official White House spokesmen—except that the officials seldom go so far...

...These and other morsels appear to have come from Willey's one-time confidante, Steele...

...They are, indeed, the courtier press...

...Nelson has a personal reason to loathe Starr (or "Big Brother," as he calls him...

...Yet the truly pro-Clinton press we will always have with us, a band of journalists who defend the president at practically every turn, who disparage virtually his every accuser, and who treat almost any criticism of his administration as a threat to enlightened government...

...Would he have told Monica Lewinsky to commit perjury...

...In the middle of March, Kathleen Willey gave her celebrated interview to 60 Minutes, after spending many hours in conversation with reporter Michael Isikoff of Newsweek...

...Later, in its March 9 issue, Time told its readers that Starr had gone "subpoena crazy," and two weeks after that, the magazine seemed disturbed that Kathleen Willey had been "cozily escorted by FBI agents working for Ken Starr...

...Drudge's 'reporting' is on a par with his D- average in high school...

...For them, Clinton can hardly do wrong, and if, by chance, he is forced to go, they will be with him, wiping away tears as he choppers off the White House lawn...

...The problem was that Starr (again) "seems to think it's O.K...

...In Nelson's view, "Starr's operation fits no known definition of justice," as "this man is a threat to American liberties...

...In Washington, wrote Conason, "it doesn't matter that Mr...

...Carlson's conclusion...

...he speculated that one of Starr's deputies was motivated by vengeance...

...As for Willey, her credibility had been, not called into question, but "destroyed...

...Yet the magazine issued no denunciations of betrayal, and no one was called "snitch...

...These, then, are the journalists at the heart of the courtier press...

...The next week, Carlson thundered against the independent counsel's questioning of Marcia Lewis, but what else could you expect in "Ken Starr's America...

...But his disdain for conservatives always manages to carry the day...

...Thereafter, she concentrated her fire on Starr and his "witch hunt," charging that the independent counsel has "flaunted his right-wing connections" and turned "law enforcement into snoops...

...and he propagated the canard that Starr, while representing General Motors, had conspired in a cover-up ("Is it worse to commit perjury about sex with an intern, or about the cause of automobile fuel-tank fires that have killed hundreds of men, women and children...

...Even before Lewinsky became a household name, Time was friendly to White House spin, lamenting, for example, that Clinton was forced to "set aside the noble task of searching for his place in history—part of his preparations for the State of the Union address—in order to answer questions" from Paula Jones's lawyers...

...They are "people with absolutely no credibility," he declares...

...Nelson may be the most combustible polemicist in the country at the moment...

...Elsewhere in the issue, an article dissected Monica Lewinsky, another took an earnest look at the "vast, right-wing conspiracy" alleged by Hillary Clinton, and Carlson went to work on Linda Tripp...

...Time did not say, however, that Steele, according to Isikoff, kept changing her story or that she had been paid $7,000 by a tabloid for a photo of Willey with Clinton...

...Linda Tripp, though, was no longer being permitted to work at home—"she'll just have to tape her friends at her desk...

...We can trust Vernon Jordan, however...

...On the first Nightline of the scandal, Hunt vouched for his friend of "almost 20 years": "I respect [Jordan] a great deal, and it would stun me if that allegation is true...