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Our strategy is very simple. We have a client who has told the truth, the complete truth, to the authorities. She has cooperated fully--in difficult circumstances. She and her mother Marcia Lewis spent nine hours on the Friday before Martin Luther King Jr. Day with four or five lawyers from Kenneth Starr's Office of the Independent Counsel and four or five FBI agents. It was clearly a show of force. When she asked if she could call her lawyer, they told her, "You cannot call your lawyer. If you call your lawyer, we cannot grant you immunity." She and her mother--and her father--said they would cooperate fully and tell everything they knew. They had nothing to hide. So Starr's office offered her immunity that Friday night, and Monica accepted it. She didn't call her attorney. She called her parents, and her mother came down on the train. Starr's people told her father on the phone, "Your daughter has nothing to worry about."
But her father was worried, and called me. This was 7 p.m. in California on a Friday. Starr's lawyers told me, "We've got a deal, and we want to wire her and record some phone calls." Monica was clearly scared, but her voice was steady. She said she knew she could leave--but she believed she would be arrested, handcuffed, dragged off to jail if she left. At that point, I didn't know anything about the subpoena, that she was a target of a federal criminal investigation. They told me if I called her lawyer in Washington, Frank Carter, who was helping her with the Paula Jones subpoena, then the whole deal was off.
They wanted to start debriefing Monica immediately, but I wanted something in writing. Starr was there, but I didn't talk to him. They kept saying they didn't have computers or typewriters. I said, "You're at the Ritz-Carlton. Go to the desk, get a pen and write, 'We promise not to prosecute Monica Lewinsky and her mother, according to the usual terms and conditions', and fax it to me." I told them I would stand by the fax, for security reasons. They said they couldn't. I said I'd charter a plane and get there overnight. Then they said the deal was good only for two hours. It was 11:30 p.m. on a Friday in Washington. They had us boxed in and hog-tied. Basically, they just reneged when we asked for the promise in writing.
I flew to Washington on Saturday and called Nate Speights, a friend through family connections and a former federal prosecutor. On Sunday the Office of the Independent Counsel called to say again they wanted to grant Monica full immunity. So I met with them again--four lawyers, two FBI agents. They were cordial, but they weren't going to put it in writing. They said, "Someday we will tell you why." They said, "You can rely on our word." They wanted me to waive my right to have a judge review the proceedings, and they kept saying "queen for a day" rules were normal. That's where you tell everything, and then the government decides whether to grant you immunity.