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As compelling and seamless as Willey's 60 Minutes performance may have been, her tale is by no means free of contradiction or conundrum. Starr's investigators have heard conflicting testimony about her state of mind after the Clinton encounter. According to Linda Tripp, who claims to have encountered Willey after she left the Oval Office that day, she seemed "flustered" but "happy." When Newsweek's Michael Isikoff was pursuing her story last year, Willey put him in touch with a friend, Julie Steele, who first said Willey had confided in her the night of the encounter, then recanted and said Willey had asked her to lie to support Willey's account. Through her lawyer, Steele told TIME that she didn't learn of Willey's meeting with Clinton until weeks after the fact and that Willey didn't describe it as sexual or upsetting. Willey resisted being deposed in the Jones case for almost six months, and then was so halting and reluctant in her testimony that lawyers had to coax the story from her. So what made her decide to open up for the CBS cameras?
The answer isn't yet clear, but people who know Willey have told TIME that her calm demeanor masks a surprising volatility. She can be a difficult friend, they say, because one never knows when she may decide to end the friendship over some perceived slight. She is described as smart, funny and attractive, but also unpredictable. In an amended deposition, she testified that longtime Democratic activist Nathan Landow had discussed her story with her. Landow, who has raised some $600,000 for Clinton and Al Gore over the years, told TIME that "in no way did I ever attempt to persuade or influence Ms. Willey to lie in her testimony or to avoid testifying. She was distraught and in pain. She told me she did not want to testify. My only comment to her about that was that she should do what she felt was best for her."
As Lewinsky's reliability as a witness became more suspect with every different account of her story, Starr apparently became increasingly interested in Willey. Last Tuesday, the day Willey appeared before Starr's grand jury in Washington, two FBI agents appeared at Steele's front door in woodsy Midlothian, Va., a suburb of Richmond. Starr's agents didn't appear to be interested in quizzing Steele about Willey's credibility. Instead, sources familiar with the interview tell TIME, they spent much of three hours putting Steele on the defensive. Though they did inquire whether Willey had ever asked her to lie for her before, they showed little interest when Steele described two instances in which Willey asked her to do just that in connection with Willey's romantic liaisons. Willey's lawyer refused to comment.