Morals of a Muckraker

"I've got two Republicans I've thrown back in the water because, to me, they haven't shown any hypocrisy," he says, explaining that they are current members of Congress who he believes have sexually strayed.

Moldea began his career in the 1970s as a freelance writer specializing in organized crime. Once, he says, a crooked Teamsters official rammed a gun down his throat, causing him to spit blood and parts of teeth. Another time, he says, labor goons in Chicago beat him up and "I thought they had left me for dead." A friendly Teamster told Moldea that a $1,500 contract had been put out on his life, warning in a conversation that the reporter taped: "I'm just telling you! You better watch your goddamn step, or you're going to get yourself killed!"

"I was more humiliated by the price," Moldea says. His solution: leave Ohio for Washington.

He made national news in 1990, when he sued the New York Times over a negative review of his book "Interference: How Organized Crime Influences Professional Football," which a Times sportswriter dismissed for its "sloppy journalism." Detractors said the suit could promote censorship. Moldea argued that the review was inaccurate and had torpedoed his career, but the Supreme Court declined to hear his appeal after the trial judge threw out the case.

Moldea managed to return to publishing. He wrote a book on the RFK assassination that, despite his earlier suspicions, concluded Sirhan Sirhan acted alone. He wrote a book with two Los Angeles detectives who had investigated the Simpson case. That led to an invitation from conservative publisher Alfred Regnery to write a book on Foster, the Clinton White House aide whose body was found in a Virginia park.

After securing a $100,000 contract, Moldea concluded that Foster's death was, as authorities maintained, a suicide. "Instead of the Clintons being involved in a grand conspiracy to take out Vince Foster, this was really a conspiracy by a bunch of right-wing journalists to make it look that way," Moldea says.

He says the publishing company was unenthusiastic about his findings. Regnery, however, says he just wanted "an honest book. There were some people in the office who weren't pleased. They wanted to show that Hillary had murdered him or something." He describes Moldea as "a little prickly, but that's okay."

Moldea had called the office of special prosecutor Starr -- who had investigated Foster's death -- and spoke by phone with Starr's deputy, Jackie Bennett, and another official. Moldea admits, somewhat sheepishly, that he recorded them without their knowledge.

Initially, he says, "I didn't want the tapes to come out because I knew I'm going to get my head chopped off" for taping without permission. But he says he was "disturbed" by his conclusion that Starr's prosecutors would leak to him if they thought he was a friendly reporter.

"An absolute lie, and you can quote me," Bennett says in response. "That was invented."

Moldea asked to speak to Starr, and Bennett told him, according to the transcript, that if he was looking for "substantive information . . . then there are other people who really are better to talk to." Bennett says he was just trying to accommodate a journalist's request.

Several months later -- after the Monica Lewinsky scandal broke -- Moldea went public with his tape. Moldea might have been seeking confidential information himself, but now, in light of the attacks on Clinton, he accused the Starr team of improper leaking.