The American Spectator

TAS Live

Slick Billy

By Byron York on 11.15.98 @ 10:25AM

(Page 3 of 14)

Bienert -- knowing what Watkins had told investigators -- asked, "If Ms. Watkins told us that she recalls that you asked about it once, and then asked to keep an eye out for it roughly, and then a few days later asked her if she had gotten it and when she said no, asked her to call Podesta's office about the matter, do you believe that that is inaccurate?"

"No, I think that may be possible," Richardson said. "Yeah."

"I guess that does lead me to the question that I would have, which is, it was a busy time for you, correct?" Bienert asked.

"Very busy," Richardson said.

"And at the time when you were in the U.S. for this, it looks like, maybe a three-day period before you left for the Congo, you had a heck of a lot of things to deal with, correct?"

"Right."

"If it is, in fact, true that you did ask Ms. Watkins a second time to check in on the résumé and to actually call Podesta's office about it, why do you think you would have done that?"

"Okay," Richardson said. "Let me, let me talk to my -- can I take a break?" Richardson left the room for a brief conference with his lawyer. When he returned, he explained that the time period in question was "busy, but it was not the most intensive period." The Iraqi crisis was building, he said, but "it wasn't until I got back from the Congo that it really exploded."

Whatever happened, Watkins, at Richardson's instruction, arranged for the résumé to be faxed -- it was sent by Betty Currie herself -- to the United Nations office. Records obtained by Starr show it was faxed a little after three o'clock in the afternoon on Tuesday, October 21. After it arrived, Richardson started moving even faster.

"Hold for Ambassador Richardson"
Richardson examined Lewinsky's résumé the same afternoon it appeared on the fax machine. "I must say that the résumé impressed me," he told prosecutors. "She worked in the Department of Defense.…She had worked in the White House in legislative affairs.…As a former congressman, I thought that was impressive." He testified that he told Watkins to set up an interview with Lewinsky.

Phone records obtained by Starr's investigators show that someone using Richardson's office telephone extension called Lewinsky at home that very night, October 21, at seven o'clock. But there is conflicting testimony over who spoke to whom. Lewinsky testified that she spoke to Richardson himself; the ambassador denied it.

Lewinsky told Starr's prosecutors that she specifically remembered the phone ringing and a secretary telling her, "Hold for Ambassador Richardson." She was surprised that Richardson was calling. According to notes of a Lewinsky interview with prosecutors, she "was upset because [she] did not want to work at the United Nations, no one had called her to tell her Richardson would be calling, and she did not want to get stuck working there with no other opportunities."

According to Lewinsky, Richardson told her he understood from John Podesta that she was interested in working at the U.N. In August, when prosecutors questioned Lewinsky under oath, they asked, "How do you know that you actually spoke with him?"

"Well," Lewinsky answered, "I remember because I was shocked and I was, I was very nervous. And -- "

"Because the Ambassador was on the phone?"

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