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Republicans didn't accept Morris any more than Democrats had. He got plenty of work--Trent Lott, now the Senate majority leader, talked him up in the Republican cloakroom, and Jesse Helms became his most right-wing client ever in 1990--but he was always valued, never trusted. Helms media man Alex Castellanos accused him of grabbing credit for a TV spot Castellanos had made, the infamous ad showing a pair of white hands crumpling a job-rejection notice while a voice said, "You needed that job...but they had to give it to a minority." A number of G.O.P. operatives, led by Paul Curcio, then the political director of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, warned candidates that Morris was a closet Democrat. Morris promised he wouldn't work for Democrats, but Curcio learned he was handling one in Mississippi. "He always had an excuse," says Curcio. "'Oh, that guy's going to change parties.' Then I found out he was working for the Connecticut Democrats. He had an excuse for that too. He thought he could talk his way out of anything."
BASHING BILL FOR FUN & PROFIT
Wherever Morris went in the '90s, Republicans wanted to talk about Clinton. They wanted to hear about the robocampaigner. They wanted to hear about the rumors. And either because he believed it or because he was proving his G.O.P. bona fides by telling Republicans what they wanted to hear, Morris seems to have served up a good deal of gossip about his old friend.
During the 1992 primaries, Castellanos called Morris to talk about Clinton, whom Castellanos felt would be tough to beat. "Dick said not to worry," Castellanos remembers. "He said, 'Bill Clinton is a fatally flawed candidate who's running around the track with a time bomb strapped to his back. And I have the detonator.'" Castellanos asked him what he meant, and he says Morris talked about the Clinton peccadilloes that would become infamous during the Gennifer Flowers eruption. Morris denies the story. But operatives in four other campaigns told Time they heard Morris make similar remarks. Consultant Goodman says he was sitting with Morris in Lott's Washington office in 1994. "It was during health care, the lowest time for Clinton," Goodman recalls. "Dick said, 'It's not going to be health care that brings down Clinton. It's going to be corruption.' I'll never forget that. If I thought a guy was corrupt, I wouldn't re-elect him President. But it's not personal with Dick. He needs clients so he can play the game. He doesn't care who they are."
Morris denies most of the specifics but admits to being a rogue. "If I knew I was going to live so long, I would have taken better care of myself," he says. "Had I known I was going to end up in the public eye, I might have rounded off some rough edges."
Those edges include talking secretly to Clinton in the fall of 1994 while working for a roster of prominent Republicans--including Lott, William Weld of Massachusetts and Tom Ridge of Pennsylvania. Morris told Clinton to prepare for a Republican rout and "get out of the way." In December 1994, when the Wall Street Journal reported that Clinton had turned to Morris for help, Morris called the story "totally fabricated" and claimed fealty to the G.O.P.