Starr and Willey: The Untold Story (Page 8)

Too many lies are being told. Too many lives are being ruined. And, I--I think it's time for the truth to come out.   --Kathleen Willey to Ed Bradley on 60 Minutes, March 15, 1998, in response to his question about why she decided to go public

Steele Trap

In the days after Willey's appearances before the grand jury and on 60 Minutes, Starr's focus on Steele intensified. In late January 1998, one of the President's lawyers had asked Steele whether she would be willing to prepare an affidavit for the Jones case. In the affidavit--which was never submitted to the court--Steele explained that she had lied to Newsweek at Willey's behest, but that she recanted her statements to the magazine before the first article about the alleged incident was published. A few weeks later, on March 9, 1998, Newsweek ran an article by Isikoff and Evan Thomas challenging Steele's credibility because she had sold a snapshot of Willey and Clinton to the National Enquirer months earlier. What the story didn't say is that Isikoff had asked her to give Newsweek the photo. The day after the Newsweek article appeared, Willey testified before the grand jury, and FBI agents interviewed Steele for the independent counsel. They talked to her about why she had changed her story about Willey, why she had signed an affidavit for the President's attorneys and why she had contacted the National Enquirer.

A week later Willey said on 60 Minutes that she thought Steele changed her story because she had been "pressured." "I think the White House wanted to try to discredit me, and they found a pawn in her." Steele says that's ridiculous--she had recanted seven months earlier, before Newsweek published its first Willey article and Steele's name became public.

Because Steele and her lawyer believed 60 Minutes and Willey falsely suggested Steele had caved in to White House pressure to change her story, Nancy Luque released Steele's full affidavit--which had never been public--to correct the record. Luque says Starr's office was furious and suggested she and Steele were tools of the White House.

In May 1998 Steele received a grand jury subpoena from Starr to testify and produce documents. The independent counsel's office assured her she was a "witness," not a "target or a subject of this grand jury investigation." On June 11 Steele told the grand jury what she had told Newsweek and the FBI: Willey asked her to lie and say she had told her about an unwelcome advance from the President. Steele also testified that she had agreed to provide an affidavit to the President's attorneys because "I had a moral responsibility to tell the truth." After her testimony, she publicly apologized to Clinton and his family, saying that although she "did not vote for Mr. Clinton," she deeply regretted that "my mistakes were used" to harm them. During the summer, Steele received two more grand jury subpoenas and a notice that Starr had changed her status from "witness" to "subject" of a grand jury investigation.

On November 1 a New York Times story focused on questions about Starr's apparent excesses concerning Steele, "a peripheral figure." Times columnist Anthony Lewis wrote on November 3 that he thought Starr wanted to "break" Steele because she stood in the way of his objective to "send the House Judiciary Committee another reason to impeach President Clinton: that he lied in denying the pass at Kathleen Willey."

The next day, Luque wrote Starr questioning the scope of his investigation, stating, "Mrs. Steele is simply not relevant to your investigation, except to the extent she sheds light on Ms. Willey's credibility." She expressed concern that associate independent counsels David Barger and Darrell Joseph had engaged in "prosecutorial misconduct." The letter was hand-delivered to Starr's office. Four hours later, Barger faxed Luque a letter saying Steele was now a "target" of the investigation. He added, "Do not assume that my failure, at this time, to address your recent personal attacks on me suggests, in any way, that I believe those attacks have merit. They do not." On November 19 Starr testified at Clinton's impeachment hearing and was angered by questions about Steele. The next day Barger gave Luque four days to provide evidence why Steele shouldn't be indicted. This past January 7, the day Clinton's impeachment trial began, Julie Hiatt Steele was indicted. The Washington Post called the indictment "mystifying" and "disturbing."

Steele said on Larry King Live that she was "stunned" by the indictment, which she learned about while watching CNN. She told King that she "will continue to believe that...if truth and justice matter," she will not be convicted. But Steele added a warning: The truth, she said, is that "if this could happen to me, it could happen to anyone."

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