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(Page 13 of 14)

Monica Says No
Richardson went on vacation for the holidays. And Sutphen did not immediately get in touch with Lewinsky. Rather, on Monday January 5, at about 11:30 in the morning, phone records show that Lewinsky called Sutphen. Monica said she wouldn't be taking the job. In a memo to Richardson, Sutphen wrote that Lewinsky "has declined the position in the hopes of going private sector (e.g., Burson-Marsteller or the like). She thanked you again for giving her the option to come to USUN. She'd like to call sometime this week to thank you in person. Do you want her to call or should I tell her to send you a note?"

Richardson scrawled his response: "Have her send note."

Meanwhile, back at the personnel department, confusion reigned. Rebecca Cooper still wanted the Monica slot changed to a Foreign Service position -- even though Richardson had nixed that in favor of keeping the job open for Lewinsky. "We look bad waffling on these issues," Wayne Logsdon wrote in an e-mail on Monday morning. "So now, who's on first?" personnel chief Lynn Martindale replied. "You know what I know," Logsdon responded. After Lewinsky's call, the change was finally made, and the Monica job was reclassified.

The next day, Richardson started off the morning with a breakfast with Vernon Jordan at Richardson's home in the Waldorf Astoria Towers. "It was mainly to talk about, you know, career moves," Richardson told prosecutors. "I remember I was starting to hit 50 and I wanted to ask him some advice about what he thought I might do in the future. And, and that was the purpose of the meeting."

"Was there any aspect of this meeting at any point that had anything to do with Monica Lewinsky," Bienert asked, "or anything even remotely attendant to Monica Lewinsky, Paula Jones, or the president?"

"No, not at all," Richardson said. Richardson testified that he never knew Jordan was helping Lewinsky find work. He said he only learned that in late January, when the story appeared in the press.

Smooth Sailing
Richardson easily weathered the initial period of public interest in his role in the Lewinsky affair. After press attention turned to other aspects of the scandal, he was able to go about his U.N. work free from continuing questions about the job offer. And now he has moved on; in June the president nominated him to become Secretary of Energy. At Senate confirmation hearings in July, Richardson again faced inquiries about his actions on behalf of Lewinsky, but Republican senators, with no knowledge of the evidence Starr was gathering, asked mostly general and unenlightening questions. Richardson was unanimously confirmed.

In response to written questions from TAS, a spokesman for Richardson said the secretary testified "truthfully and responded to all questions" from both Starr and the Senate. The spokesman reiterated Richardson's position that he did not speak to Lewinsky on the phone on either October 21 or the day Lewinsky was offered a job. The spokesman also said Richardson never discussed Lewinsky with Vernon Jordan and "is not aware of what else Mr. Jordan was doing on the days Mr. Jordan supposedly called his office in December." Finally, the spokesman characterized the Wayne Logsdon e-mails as "routine communication among [Richardson's] staff."

Now the investigation is over. But it illustrates the frustrations prosecutors encountered as they tried to determine the facts of the president's effort to find Lewinsky a job. Each time Richardson's memory failed him, each time it was contradicted by other evidence, made it more difficult for Starr's investigators to learn precisely what was going on. And whatever his intentions may have been, the fuzzy parts of Richardson's story all had the practical effect of distancing himself from Monica Lewinsky.

Indeed, a close look at Richardson's story leads to an unavoidable question: If Starr's prosecutors couldn't find out what happened in a single episode of the Lewinsky scandal, how could they ever learn the whole story of what Bill Clinton and his top aides did in their effort to keep Monica happy and quiet? The simple answer is, they couldn't.

Take, for one last example, the testimony of Betty Currie when prosecutors wanted to know what she had done to help Lewinsky get the interview with Richardson.

"Didn't the president ask you to help Monica get a job?" prosecutor Robert Bittman asked.

"Yes," Currie said.

"In New York?"

"I don't remember. I don't remember."