Word: legalism
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...Hampshire in 1992 and in the Executive Residence in 1994, when the Democratic Party died. By Thursday, Hillary was putting together a new, combative team. She wondered if her old, ousted alter ego Harold Ickes could come back, and she added Mickey Kantor to the legal team, more for his political skills than his legal ones. Adviser Sid Blumenthal created a gigantic diagram inside his office outlining with circles and arrows the byzantine Republican conspiracy surrounding the tapes. A fierce argument raged over whether the First Couple, singly or together, should sit down for some big, cathartic confessional...
Lewinsky also brought at least three microcassettes from her home message machine and played them for Tripp at the Pentagon. The President can be heard saying hello, but leaving no lengthy messages and certainly nothing incriminating. But in her conversations with Tripp, Lewinsky referred to the President's legal coaching: when she expressed fears about records of her comings and goings and what Currie might say one day in a sworn deposition, Clinton supposedly replied, "There's no proof. Look them in the eye and deny...
...never be the same. A joke? Not at all. A legitimate possibility. For there is growing evidence to suggest that the issue of whether oral sex is actually sex, though it sounds like a question from a cheesy adult party game, may eventually form the basis of Clinton's legal defense...
What all this adds up to is a legal loophole narrower than the eye of a needle but considerably easier to pass through than a prison wall. To perjure oneself, according to the law, you have to make a statement that is contrary to what you believe to be true. So if Clinton believes that the sex he has denied having, and allegedly encouraged Lewinsky to deny having, isn't really sex at all but merely an advanced massage technique, then it's distinctly possible that he might be guilty of a bizarre religious quirk rather than a series...
...power: knowledge. And Tripp has had a good taste of that, having held secretarial jobs all over the White House, including a stint in one of the most sensitive, secret-rich corners of the West Wing, the counsel's office. It is Scandal Central, the final stop for all legal matters. A busy place in the Clinton years...