Thought You’d Heard It All on Walters? Not So

The censor had spoken: “She will not comment on the good faith of the [independent counsel’s] office.” Last October, before Monica S. Lewinsky could agree to be interviewed on ABC-TV, her lawyers were required under terms of her immunity deal to obtain Kenneth W. Starr’s permission. They accepted his insistence that there be no discussion of Starr’s violation of Lewinsky’s right to have access to a lawyer or any other aspect of her initial harrowing ordeal at the hands of Starr’s agents.

Nor would interviewer Barbara Walters be permitted to examine whether Lewinsky had been used by Starr to set a perjury trap against the president, which is currently the subject of a Justice Department investigation. The arrogance of Starr’s exercise of power knows no limits, and he asserted before presiding U.S. District Judge Norma Holloway Johnson not only his right to control Walters’ questions but also that “there be some arrangement with ABC to permit the editing of the tape to excise that inadvertent answer.”

In a startling betrayal of a free press’ historic opposition to prior censorship, ABC agreed to the sharply limited terms of the interview. The result was an egregious example of government thought control. More than 70 million people watched a sanitized interview with an ostensibly free person who was unfree to talk about threats she endured while trapped by Starr’s agents in a hotel room. Threats described in her book in chilling detail in a must-read chapter called “Terror in Room 1012.”

The as-told-to book, written by England’s Andrew Morton, slipped through the censor’s grasp because its author claims not to be a member of the journalistic media. The book’s account is a riveting tale of abuse of federal power, but its impact on the post-TV interview public, weary of Monica, has been limited.

The enforcer of Lewinsky’s isolation was Starr prosecutor Mike Emmick, of whom Morton writes, “She came to view him as a revolting specimen of humanity” whose only goal was to destroy Clinton. This is the same Emmick who Susan McDougal claims threatened her with a long prison term if she did not turn against Clinton. That threat still holds, and McDougal, who earlier served 18 months for contempt, is again, this week, on trial for resisting Starr.

Lewinsky, who may be called as a witness in the McDougal case, recounts similar bullying tactics by Starr’s agents, including threats to charge her mother with a crime and, most important, denying Lewinsky her right to call her lawyer, Frank Carter.

According to her book, Starr’s agents said they “didn’t really want her to tell anyone about this matter as it was ‘time sensitive.’ ” What made it so was that the president was being deposed by the Paula Jones attorneys the very next day. When Lewinsky asked again for Carter, Starr’s men lied and told her Carter couldn’t help because he was a civil, not criminal, attorney, although he was both. Could she call Carter to get the name of a criminal attorney? No, “because it would make Carter suspicious.” Starr’s team denies depriving her of an attorney, but why then did they remove the phone from the bathroom before permitting Lewinsky to use it, and why did a Starr agent hold his finger over the phone, poised to break off the call finally permitted between Lewinsky and her mother if she revealed her circumstances?

Lewinsky said she felt “trapped and drowning” and considered throwing herself out the plate glass window. Starr’s agents attempted to convince Lewinsky that she faced 27 years in prison because she had filed a false affidavit, but that affidavit would not have been filed if she had been able to call her lawyer before the end of that business day. And how did they know the affidavit was false? At one point, Lewinsky said Emmick indicated he had a copy of her affidavit, which suggested he got it from Jones’ attorneys, who had received a copy from Carter before it was officially filed.

Of course Starr’s agents were trying to nail the president, and they didn’t want Lewinsky talking to anyone who might get word to Clinton, limiting prospects for his committing perjury the next day. At the same time, Linda Tripp was permitted to leave the scene of Lewinsky’s ordeal, which she had partially witnessed, and to return home, where Jones’ attorneys were awaiting her.

The case for illegal collusion between Starr’s office and the Jones team to entrap Clinton is compelling. Even without the help of Barbara Walters, the truth concerning Starr’s attempted putsch to destroy a duly elected president will out.

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Robert Scheer is a Times contributing editor. E-mail: rscheer@robert-scheer.com.