BILL CLINTON'S LAP DOG

...That afternoon, Brill has Jackie Bennett and other Starr assistants approaching deputy attorney general Eric Holder for an expansion of authority to investigate the Lewinsky matter...

...Ditto for chief White House Starrbasher Sidney Blumenthal, another—to date totally unacknowledged—Brill source...

...And then what...

...Pressgate” nowhere explains this obvious point—or the equally obvious likelihood that an obstruction of justice was well underway months before Bill Clinton testified under oath in the Paula Jones trial...

...Newsweek staffers, including Isikoff, first listened to some of Linda Tripp’s private Lewinsky tapes in the early-morning hours of Saturday, January 17...

...It seems odd that Isikoff would suddenly reveal to Brill’s Content that Kenneth Starr once intended to “get” Bill Clinton in this dramatic fashion, especially since Isikoff has never reported any such episode in his own magazine...

...Clinton offered a classically Clintonesque “I don’t recall” when Jones’s attorneys asked him about this possibility...

...He concedes as much, implicitly, elsewhere in “Pressgate,” when he celebrates the blockbuster February 6 New York Times account of what Clinton secretary Betty Currie had told unspecified “investigators...

...Schmidt, “Pressgate” sneers, “does stenography for the prosecutors...

...Brill further reports that “Isikoff says” he agreed, on condition he later be given a full briefing on the results of any future sting...

...I have run into her in person once, in a Washington jewelry store, where we recognized each other and said hello...

...More important, it simply isn’t true that Clinton’s deposition included an admission that Lewinsky and the president were ever alone together...

...What was the point of this story, Brill asked Schmidt in one of his “Pressgate” interviews...

...She is a patsy for Ken Starr, he claims, one of those reporters prepared to “believe almost anything the prosecutors tell them...

...The theory is that the scandal is essentially manufactured and unreal...

...And that the Washington press corps’s willing participation in such an “abuse of power” by the independent counsel means that American journalism is “an institution . . . corrupted to its core...

...And a false one...

...And, predictably enough, a certain number of journalists are eager to win applause by pandering to this superstition...

...Brill deals with Isikoff ’s principal print-media competitor, Susan Schmidt of the Washington Post, in considerably less detail—but just as dishonestly...

...It is true that Bennett “failed to mention” any information contained in Linda Tripp’s pre-Starr tapes of Monica...

...But Isikoff ’s special report the evening of the 21st, posted on Newsweek’s computer site on America Online, was the day’s best and most complete...

...Pressgate” scores Isikoff for having irresponsibly juiced this rushed story to make it appear his evidence was more damning to the president than it actually was...

...Had Starr avoided Brill, the ensuing controversy would have been impossible...

...Brill has a theory about the Lewinsky case, buttressed by those sources...

...Consider Brill’s treatment of the Lewinsky affair’s inception: the sequence of events by which the independent counsel’s office became involved—and how Newsweek’s Isikoff reported those events...

...Isikoff quite correctly told the two women he could not publish an account of such purely private activity, and he declined to listen to Tripp’s secret, corroborating recordings of Lewinsky...

...This is a multiple falsehood...

...They might...

...White House staffers and Clinton friend Vernon Jordan were attempting to secure Lewinsky a job in New York...

...In 1997, Lucianne Goldberg and Linda Tripp alerted Isikoff to the existence of a sexual relationship between Tripp’s friend Lewinsky and President Clinton...

...And those editors back her up...

...And those are just the sources Brill acknowledges...

...A journalist at ABC...

...Brill also neglects to tell his readers about something else contained in the Newsweek special—an exchange that almost immediately follows Lewinsky’s “no” answer on the Tripp tapes: TRIPP: Jesus, well, does he think you’re going to tell the truth...

...And that is what Brill’s “Pressgate” does...

...his contract is with a different network, MSNBC—where, at the time, October of last year, no Clinton sex scandal was current and the only televised commentary concerned Democratic campaign-finance improprieties and Johnny Chung...

...He phoned Starr deputy Jackie Bennett on January 15...

...Newsweek’s source on the body-wire tape was “outside of Starr’s office,” he told a PBS interviewer last Monday...

...Also, “in the first couple of weeks” of Brill’s reporting for his “Pressgate” expos?, “I talked to two or three people in the White House...

...Enough already...

...So it is no surprise that Brill’s latest start-up monthly, Brill’s Content, would be a magazine devoted to policing the honor of mainstream news outlets...

...And put it in Michael Isikoff ’s mouth...

...Half the “leaks” occurred before the Lewinsky grand jury was ever called to session...

...Isikoff has since gone out of his way to repudiate this basic “Pressgate” fantasy...

...Except that Schmidt has now ferociously denied saying any such thing to Brill, and she has also denied that her tip came “from anyone in Starr’s office...

...Media entrepreneur Steven Brill is such a man...

...He neglects to tell his readers something important: The Newsweek special report prominently stated that the magazine could not definitively conclude, from its review of selected pre-Starr Tripp tapes, that Clinton or Jordan had attempted to suborn Lewinsky’s perjury...

...Steve Brill reports that “Isikoff says” Bennett asked him to hold off reporting the story until Starr could flip Lewinsky as a cooperating witness— and persuade the intern to wear her own body wire designed to capture “Jordan and maybe even the president on tape obstructing justice...

...He would send them notes like this: “Have you ever considered suicide...

...And there is still more to Steve Brill’s thoroughgoing revision of the events of January 15...

...someone had drafted “talking points” instructing Tripp to change her memory about alleged Clinton harrassee Kathleen Willey...

...Brill is here deliberately unfair to Isikoff...

...But Clinton also took pains to suggest that if he ever had indeed been alone with the young lady, it was only momentarily—when she delivered him some piece of paper or a pizza...

...And would you expect a man so journalistically pious as Steve Brill to have coughed up such information straightaway and voluntarily...

...But it is also true that Bennett couldn’t possibly have mentioned such information, because on January 15, no one in Starr’s office had yet listened to even a minute of Tripp’s private tapes—another fact Brill never reports...

...So ostentatious “a stickler for fairness and accuracy” was he, according to a recent, fawning profile in U.S...

...And Clinton’s aides knew Tripp was intimate with Lewinsky...

...This is a recognizable theory...

...Nor does “Pressgate” acknowledge that this entire section of the tape would shortly be published in a regular edition of Newsweek, along with a fresh report in which Isikoff revealed that the January 13, Starrauthorized Tripp body wire apparently confirmed the existence of a bald-faced deal: Lewinsky would deny in court any sexual contact with Clinton—but not until Vernon Jordan got her a job...

...Brill says, for example, that Judd’s account of a soiled Lewinsky dress was fed to ABC by Lucianne Goldberg...

...One top Times editor...

...One veteran Journal reporter...

...If there’s nothing evil or false about it,” the thinking goes, “why must they whisper it in the dark...

...Pressgate” makes this decision sound vaguely sinister...

...LEWINSKY: No . . . Oh, Jesus...

...That Starr’s office has ever since illegally leaked details of this investigation to the news media—“there is a lot more evidence of Starr and some of his deputies committing this felony than there is of the president or Vernon Jordan committing a felony,” Brill asserts at one point...

...A Justice Department official,” or “the Justice Department David Tell is opinion editor of THE WEEKLY STANDARD...

...And the federal appeals court ruling on which Brill rests his outrageous criminal allegations against the independent counsel was not released until nearly three months after the last of these “leaks” was made...

...and that by accepting on faith and re-reporting such allegations, the American news media have participated in an abuse of power and libeled Bill Clinton...

...Schmidt’s January 24 Post account of what actually happened after FBI agents finally confronted Lewinsky at the Arlington Ritz-Carlton was, according to “Pressgate,” another obvious “leak” from Starr, this time in “clear violation of Justice Department guidelines and the lawyer’s code of professional responsibility...

...This is Brill at his weirdest...

...Schmidt’s report, for the most part, was written off the press release...

...It is true that “no tapes were played” at this meeting...

...When the president’s Paula Jones deposition was eventually made public, it would turn out that “Clinton did not testify that he was never alone with Lewinsky...

...I have spoken to Lucianne Goldberg once on the phone—for 30 to 45 seconds...

...Newsweek lost its exclusive as a consequence of this decision...

...Okay...

...In fact, every Judd exclusive that “Pressgate” analyzes was derived, according to Brill himself, from sources not associated with the independent counsel’s office...

...This is peculiar, given the exacting procedures Brill claims always to employ...

...It is fundamentally dishonest journalism...

...The true scandal, instead, involves Lucianne Goldberg, Linda Tripp, Ken Starr, and a bunch of “corrupted” reporters—in particular, the three reporters Brill’s Clintonite sources most despise and fear: Newsweek’s Michael Isikoff, the Washington Post’s Susan Schmidt, and ABC’s Jackie Judd...

...This Times story, Brill gushes, is the one piece of print journalism whose facts “no one has disputed...

...Tripp had contacted the independent counsel’s office...

...Instead of “Pressgate,” we have “Brillgate...

...she had long since publicly confirmed the Kathleen Willey groping incident...

...And what was the biggest fact in the Betty Currie Times report...

...We could go on like this forever: illogic, innuendo, inventions, disputed quotations . . . “Pressgate” is a mess...

...and Ken Starr’s office had wired Tripp for a sting on Lewinsky...

...But it is also true that the independent counsel’s sting tape was definitely played at two subsequent meetings over the next 24 hours—a fact Brill never reports...

...No, “of course not,” Isikoff says...

...Which raises the only meaningful question: Has Steven Brill ever considered suicide...

...Just the day before, Starr had issued a press release responding to William Ginsburg’s broadcast complaint that Lewinsky had been detained against her will...

...And it is no surprise that Brill would brag, as he did in gossip diva Liz Smith’s column on May 28, that while working on this piece, “I did not let anyone—including Ken Starr and the editors and anchors I talked with—speak with me ‘off the record’ or ‘for background.’” And it is no surprise that when Brill’s essay finally appeared last week, a 24,000-word epic titled “Pressgate,” it proved to be pointedly and broadly critical of the world it surveyed...

...Brill says the word is in his notes—and having read this far, which of them do you believe...

...Isikoff learned much of it on January 14...

...But Starr cooperated and gave Brill the opportunity to recycle the White House party line in the guise of press criticism...

...It is the theory held and advanced by Bill Clinton’s implacable defense attorneys, White House aides, sundry other loyalists in and out of government—and no one else...

...What he is not entitled to do is level grave criminal charges he cannot possibly sustain and assault the integrity of other reporters by distorting the public record...

...Brill never mentions it...

...Isikoff has never been employed by CNBC...

...That it exists “all because a Linda Tripp and a Lucianne Goldberg got an intern to talk into a tapped phone about sex so they could put together a book deal...

...Post editors, Schmidt insists, know the identity of her source...

...On-the-Record-Only’s opus turns out . . . well, not to be...

...Needless to say, Ken Starr was foolish to grant Steven Brill an interview for “Pressgate...

...And none of what Brill purports to prove, despite the carelessness with which he floats the word “felony,” even remotely constitutes an “illegal” violation of grandjury secrecy...

...After which “I quickly decided that the most important aspect of this story wasn’t from the White House...

...Judd cautions THE WEEKLY STANDARD that she is “uncomfortable discussing who our sources aren’t...

...And it is true that Vernon Jordan started looking for New York employment on Lewinsky’s behalf many weeks before she got her subpoena, which might make his efforts seem harmless...

...Lewinsky had been induced to sign an affidavit denying her affair with the president...

...They had every incentive to hustle the intern out of town...

...Isikoff did not quote a section of the Tripp tapes where Lewinsky answers “no” when Tripp asks whether the president knows the young woman is going to lie in her Jones deposition...

...But nowhere in his piece’s 29 pages does Brill so much as allude to the assistance of David Kendall...

...Clinton’s aides knew Tripp was politically unreliable...

...Finally, Brill quibbles with Sue Schmidt’s February 11 treatment of retired Secret Service agent Lewis Fox, who had recently claimed to have seen Clinton and Lewinsky alone together in the Oval Office during the fall of 1995...

...Only that it must be an illegal leak from Kenneth Starr’s henchmen, whom Brill again pretends are the only people who have any notion what is on the relevant recording...

...What’s more, he continues, “I don’t believe it’s true” that Starr ever seriously considered the idea...

...But that is the least of Brill’s mistakes...

...We reported on that tape without any help from Starr’s office whatsoever...

...Internal memos from inside three news organizations...

...News & World Report, that Brill regularly and brutally upbraided staffers for even the smallest violations of his “higher” standards...

...But it is at least a little peculiar, is it not, that so much of Mr...

...So did Isikoff tell Brill about a possible Clinton/Jordan sting scheme...

...That fact was this: The president summoned Currie to the Oval Office the day after he was deposed in the Jones suit, went over his testimony with her point by point, and reminded her that “We were never alone, right...

...He reports that they described their own sting-tape of Lewinsky and Tripp—but that “no tapes were played at the meeting...

...In the first place, Schmidt denies ever calling Clinton a “liar...

...Brill never comes close to proving a single genuine “leak” by Starr...

...Brill’s highly deceptive account of January 15 is necessary to sustain his theory’s central contentions: that an independent-counsel investigation of the Monica Lewinsky scandal was instituted on nothing more than Ken Starr’s untrustworthy say-so...

...Okay...

...One source at Newsweek in a position to know...

...Brill appears to have made the whole thing up...

...At the legal-affairs monthly he founded in the 1970s, the American Lawyer, editor Brill made himself famous for abjuring what he took to be journalism’s sloppiness about sources and Truth...

...You would...

...Brill introduces Isikoff as a “whiny,” “awkward,” “nervous” man, a relentless and obsessive news-industry “version of Columbo...

...Last week, in a comprehensive 19-page response to “Pressgate,” the Office of Independent Counsel categorically asserted that “we had no such plans...

...Well, he says she responded, Clinton testified under oath that he’d never been alone with the intern, so Lewis Fox’s account “makes him a liar...

...Steven Brill is entitled to adopt any lonely opinion he wishes, with help from anyone willing to persuade him...

...One Times reporter...

...Brill dismisses ABC’s Jackie Judd, the most consistently aggressive and enterprising of network-television Lewinsky investigators, as someone whose “every utterance is infected with the clear assumption that the president is guilty...

...Another illegal leak, in other words...

...Another Times reporter...

...But it is also true that Jordan’s Lewinsky rescue mission began at almost exactly the same time Linda Tripp received her subpoena, the first week of October 1997...

...Might Brill’s “Pressgate” readers benefit from knowing that he talked to and was influenced by folks like David Kendall...

...Steve Brill knows his gotcha of Sue Schmidt on this deposition is bogus...

...source,” or “a Justice Department participant,” all of whom—who can tell?—may be the same person...

...Watch what Brill does to Isikoff ’s initial published dispatches on Monica Lewinsky...

...Wrong, Brill immediately announces triumphantly...

...How did Steve Brill come to join this isolated party line...

...At that point, the White House already had good reason to worry over Tripp’s testimony...

...the story broke elsewhere on January 21...

...And it is no surprise that Brill’s much-anticipated cover story for the publication’s inaugural issue would be an analysis of anonymous sources in media coverage of the sensational Monica Lewinsky scandal...

...He was never really alone with her, in other words...

...But it is only peculiar, nothing more...

...A disgusted NBC reporter...

...Some leak...

...That these two women then fed the resulting surveillance to Kenneth Starr for a criminal investigation that would otherwise have been impossible...

...I talked to [Clinton lawyer] David Kendall once or twice,” Brill has now told CBS’s Bob Schieffer, “really just to get materials about the [law covering disclosure of information from current federal investigations...

...But she will say this much: “The people we use as sources are people we have some relationship with...

...All of which conveys the clear impression that the independent counsel’s office deliberately withheld exculpatory evidence from Justice officials and thus hoodwinked the department into green-lighting a Lewinsky investigation based on sketchy, verbal assurances alone...

...What does Steve Brill make of this devastating disclosure...

...Isikoff refused to hear the Lewinsky tapes that initial evening, according to Brill, in part because “he was in a hurry to get to CNBC, where he was a paid Clinton sex scandal pundit...

...This certainly qualified as news...

...Brill also alleges that Bennett “failed to mention” to his Justice Department audience “what he knew from the earlier Tripp tapes”—that Jordan had begun offering Lewinsky jobsearch assistance “at least a month before” the intern received her Paula Jones subpoena...

...So based on conversations with Clinton intimates, Brill concluded that the true Lewinsky scandal does not involve perjury, subornation of perjury, witness tampering, obstruction of justice, or the manipulation of the entire executive branch of government for the personal legal protection of a president who has refused for five months to explain his questioned behavior...

...By January 13, 1998, Tripp and Lewinsky had been subpoenaed in the Paula Jones case...

...Reporters or editors at six different news organizations...

...that damaging allegations about the president in the follow-up reporting of journalists like Michael Isikoff must therefore all be the products of illegal “leaks” by the independent counsel’s office...

...Brill quotes her telling him that the Post’s first Lewinsky story, on January 21, was prompted by something she’d heard “from sources in Starr’s office” the previous Friday “about Vernon Jordan and coaching a witness...

...Two reporters working on the story that day at rival news organizations...

...A nasty gibe, this last part...

...Wrong yourself, buddy...

...The magazine did not run a story on these tapes and associated developments in its next print edition—in part because the recordings Isikoff and his colleagues heard were ambiguous about whether Clinton and/or Jordan had encouraged Lewinsky to lie, and in part because Starr’s deputies were still begging Newsweek to hold off, pending negotiations with Lewinsky’s new attorney, William Ginsburg...

...It’s sourced like this, over and over: “One member of the Jones team...