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Clinton Denied Initiating Job Help For Lewinsky
(Page 3 of 3)

Many people send things to him through Currie, Clinton said, because there is a better chance they will actually reach him and not be lost in the piles of unsolicited mail that swamp the White House.

Clinton said he did not recall receiving any videotape from Lewinsky or seeing her at the White House late at night.

Under questioning, he acknowledged he once mentioned the Jones case to Lewinsky, telling her that many women who knew him were being summoned to testify and that she might be among them, but he testified that was the extent of the conversation. Clinton said he was not sure whether he knew at that time that Lewinsky had been subpoenaed. The president said his top aide and close confidant, Bruce R. Lindsey, told him Lewinsky was on the Jones witness list, but it was unclear when.

Clinton said he was aware that Currie had arranged for Lewinsky to be interviewed for a job by United Nations Ambassador Bill Richardson, a meeting that took place in October, and that Currie later contacted Jordan for help with private-sector job prospects. While that was not done at his suggestion, he said, he believed it was proper.

Although the president offered few specifics, he said that Jordan told him that he had been talking with Lewinsky about jobs and Clinton said he indicated his support.

Jones's lawyers did not get to the particulars about their client until after lunch and elicited little new from Clinton about the events of May 8, 1991, when, Jones has said, trooper Ferguson escorted her to meet with the then-governor in a private suite at the Excelsior Hotel.

As he has stated in the past, Clinton said he did not remember meeting Jones or much else about the state conference that brought him to the Excelsior that day, although he did not rule out that they may have met. He said he often used a suite to make telephone calls or conduct other business while attending conferences at the hotel. Clinton said he did not remember ever asking a trooper to arrange for any women to meet him in a room at the Excelsior during any visit there.

But he did not dispute telling Ferguson that he thought Jones had a "come-hither look," saying he may have said it because he has used the term to describe sexually provocative women.

Jones has testified that Ferguson invited her to come up to the governor's suite and that once there Clinton tried to kiss and fondle her before dropping his pants and asking her for oral sex. While not disputing that he may have met her, Clinton said he could categorically deny any such actions because he would never do that.

In his own deposition, Ferguson has testified that Jones seemed happy, not upset, after the encounter, and sought Ferguson out with an offer to be "the governor's girlfriend." While not directly asked about this version, Clinton testified that he had no reason to challenge Ferguson's truthfulness.

As Jones looked on from across the table, Clinton testified that his first memory of his accuser was seeing her on television in 1994 when she publicly aired her allegations for the first time, and he asked Lindsey whether they knew her.

Jones's lawyers did not ask Clinton whether he ever ordered anyone working for him to retaliate against her in the workplace, as she maintained in her lawsuit. Much of their questioning concerning Jones actually focused on Clinton's later conversations with Ferguson about the trooper's dealings with reporters and lawyers who were trying to persuade Clinton's former bodyguards to go public with stories of womanizing. Clinton took handwritten notes of his two telephone conversations with Ferguson, recording allegations that the troopers were offered hundreds of thousands of dollars even if the stories they told were not true.

Under the rules of discovery, Jones's lawyers were granted latitude to ask about other women and they walked Clinton through a list of rumored paramours from throughout the years.

Clinton said he remembered meeting with White House volunteer Kathleen E. Willey on Nov. 29, 1993, when she came to him seeking a full-time job because of family financial problems. Willey was so emotional that the encounter stood out, Clinton said, but he denied her account of an unsolicited sexual advance.

In her own deposition, according to sources, Willey testified that Clinton took her in the hallway between the Oval Office and his private pantry, kissed her, put his hand on her breast, put her hand on his own crotch and said, "I wanted to do that for a long time."

While disputing that account, Clinton suggested he embraced her and may have kissed her on the forehead in an attempt to comfort her because of her obvious anguish. Unknown to Clinton, Willey's husband, Edward Willey Jr., a prominent Richmond lawyer and son of a former powerful Virginia lawmaker, had been accused of misappropriating nearly $275,000. That evening, just two hours after his wife met Clinton in the Oval Office, Ed Willey committed suicide, unaware of the outcome of his wife's meeting with the president.

Kathleen Willey later was given a paying job in the White House counsel's office, was made a delegate to two international summits and was appointed by Clinton to the board of the United Service Organization (USO).

Clinton was also asked about a prominent friend, Shelia Davis Lawrence, the widow of M. Larry Lawrence, whom Clinton had made ambassador to Switzerland. Larry Lawrence, owner of the luxurious Hotel del Coronado near San Diego, was a major contributor to the Democratic Party and generated national controversy last December when it was discovered that he fabricated a hero's service record in World War II. Lawrence's body was exhumed from Arlington National Cemetery and moved to California.

Both publicly and in her own deposition in the Jones case, Shelia Lawrence denied any sexual involvement with Clinton, calling the claim in one statement an "outrageous, scurrilous accusation that is completely untrue." Clinton likewise denied it in his deposition, although he acknowledged staying overnight in her house on two occasions while president, once with his family and on another occasion with Lindsey.

Going further into the past, the Jones lawyers asked about Beth Coulson, a lawyer appointed by then-Gov. Clinton to serve on the Arkansas Court of Appeals in 1987. Coulson was a little-known municipal judge in Perryville when Clinton tapped her to fill out a term on the higher court, sparking complaints about her quick rise to such a coveted post.

In his deposition, Clinton said he chose her because she was intelligent and a supporter, but denied any sexual relationship. Clinton said he visited her at her house about five times while her husband was not there, calling them personal visits with a friend.

Coulson has left the bench and now works with her husband at a family-owned business in North Little Rock. She and her husband were overnight guests in the Lincoln Bedroom at the White House during Clinton's first term, and she served as a Clinton fund-raiser for the 1996 presidential election. More recently, in December, Clinton named her to a committee of Arkansas friends to come up with name recommendations for his new dog. The next month, Coulson denied any sexual relationship in a deposition with Jones's lawyers.

Clinton acknowledged a friendship with another Arkansas woman, Marilyn Jo Jenkins, but was not forced to answer whether they ever had sex because Judge Wright ruled it was not relevant since Jenkins did not work for the state.

Jenkins works at Entergy Corp., a power company in Little Rock, and was escorted by Ferguson past the Secret Service to meet with Clinton at the governor's mansion after he won the 1992 presidential election. In his deposition, according to a source, Ferguson said he escorted her to see Clinton at least four times during the transition, including once at 5:15 a.m. on the day the president-elect was leaving Little Rock to head to Washington.

Clinton, though, recalled just two visits, once before Christmas 1992 when he gave her presents for herself and her children and the second time just before departing Little Rock to say goodbye. During the latter meeting, they met in the basement of the mansion, which Clinton said had been set up as an office. Clinton also said he met with her several times at her apartment while governor. In her own deposition, sources said, Jenkins said their meetings were innocent.

Her firm, Entergy, has had ties to the Clinton administration, most notably its work in 1994 with then-Commerce Secretary Ronald H. Brown and the Lippo Group on a deal to build a power plant in Datong, China, that ultimately failed to come to fruition. Entergy was a major contributor of unregulated "soft money" donations during the 1996 election cycle.

The only woman Clinton acknowledged any sexual contact with was Flowers, whose allegations of a long-running affair nearly crippled his first presidential campaign. Clinton said they met in 1977 when he was attorney general of Arkansas and she was a television reporter.

While Flowers described a 12-year affair, Clinton testified they had just one sexual encounter, although he added that she later made an advance on him that did not lead to sex. In 1991, long after she had left Arkansas and then returned, Flowers asked for help finding state employment and Clinton said he asked an aide to try to find her a government job.

After Clinton's deposition statement about Flowers was first reported by The Post in January, the president and his spokesman insisted it did not contradict Clinton's denials of an affair during the 1992 campaign. They apparently base that on the notion that Clinton's denial six years ago applied strictly to Flowers's version, not to any sexual encounter whatsoever.

But in an interview with "60 Minutes" on Jan. 26, 1992, that helped salvage his campaign, correspondent Steve Kroft asked Clinton, "I'm assuming from your answer that you're categorically denying that you ever had an affair with Gennifer Flowers."

Clinton responded: "I said that before, and so has she. When these stories came out, she and the other people involved denied them and denied them repeatedly, and she changed her story when she was paid."

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