Just A Sex Cover-Up?: High Crimes? Or Just A Sex Cover-Up?

Starr shows all the ways Clinton tried to keep Monica quiet. It's not Watergate

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The prosecutor labels this obstruction of justice by Clinton--concealing the truth by concealing the gifts. But Currie's testimony disputes Lewinsky on the key question of who initiated the call. Currie said Monica called her first and asked her to take the gifts. Currie testified that she didn't remember talking to the President about the gifts before or after she fetched them from Lewinsky, which raises the question, What would have motivated Currie to act on her own initiative? Still, the White House notes that Starr's report relies on Lewinsky's version of events as accurate and dismisses Currie's contradictory testimony, even though Lewinsky is an admitted perjurer and Currie is not.

Three days after Currie collected the gifts, Jordan allegedly caused the destruction of other evidence linking Lewinsky to Clinton. According to the report, at a Dec. 31 breakfast meeting between Jordan and Lewinsky, she told him that Linda Tripp might have seen drafts of highly charged notes she had written the President. "Go home and make sure they're not there," Jordan allegedly told her. When Lewinsky returned home that day, she says, she threw out some 50 draft notes to Clinton.

The report suggests an active role by Clinton in creating Lewinsky's affidavit denying a sexual relationship. He had suggested the affidavit in the first place, and though Lewinsky says he never explicitly asked her to lie, they had often discussed keeping their relationship secret. As Lewinsky told Linda Tripp in a recorded conversation, "I don't think he thinks of [it as] lying under oath... He thinks of it as...'We're being smart; we're being safe; it's good for everybody.'" Jordan testified that Clinton was "concerned about the affidavit and whether it was signed or not," and he had kept up "a continuing dialogue" with Clinton on the matter. Phone records for Jan. 6, for example, show Jordan in contact with the White House twice, Lewinsky three times and her attorney Carter four times. In one flurry, Jordan called the President less than 30 minutes after speaking with Lewinsky and then called Carter immediately after that.

On Jan. 7, Lewinsky signed the affidavit and brought a copy to show Jordan. He placed three long calls to the White House that day in which he told the President, according to his testimony, that she had signed the affidavit and that he was continuing to work on getting her a job. In both cases, Jordan testified, the President said, "Good."

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