Women in the Clinton era: Abuse, intimidation and smears

Previous stories on the President's women

Here is Bill Clinton's legacy of mistreatment of women.

The common threads are that, almost to a woman:

• (1) they had some vulnerability that he could exploit.
• (2) they were victims of a smear campaign, and
• (3) there is an eerie similarity to the stories they tell of intimidation, threats, and burglaries of odd items, such as photographs and tapes.

JUANITA BROADDRICK: She admired and campaigned for then Attorney-General Clinton until an episode 21 years ago when, she said, he brutally attacked, bit and raped her in her hotel room. In a sign that the act was premeditated, Clinton had telephoned her from downstairs to move a planned campaign meeting from the cafe to her room because, he said, there were reporters downstairs. When he left her room, he turned and, noting her swollen and bruised upper lip, told her, "You better put some ice on that." She told a handful of close friends, including a nurse, who saw her injuries shortly after the incident and has corroborated her story.

Clinton's Republican enemies pressured her to come out and spread rumors, yet she refused for years to come forward. After a year of prodding by NBC's Lisa Myers, she reluctantly told her story to the nation, chiefly to counter a tabloid story that she and her husband had received hush money.

Although opinion polls indicated that people who saw her interview believed her, the news media dropped the issue within a few days. Clinton did not give a direct response, thus depriving the media of an easy reaction story. Instead the president's lawyer released a terse statement denying that there had been an assault, leaving the inference that any relationship must have been consensual. That stopped the story and had the added effect of attempting to smear the victim. Others have made much of her long silence.

She told NBC,s Dateline that "I was afraid that I would be destroyed like so many of the other women."

She also felt direct pressure from Clinton, who in 1991 approached her while she was attending a meeting for nursing home business. Here's her recollection e-mailed on June 2, 1999:

"A gentleman came to the door and said that I was needed outside the meeting room. I went outside the conference room to the hallway [one of the nurses followed me] and was directed by the man to go around the corner. When I turned the corner, I saw Bill Clinton just a few steps from me. I walked over to him, too stunned to really think about what I was doing. He immediately tried to take my hand, which I would not allow, and began this profuse apology to me. He was saying things like, 'I am so sorry for what I did,' --'Can you ever forgive me?'--'How can I make this up to you?' ' I am not the same man I used to be,' etc. I finally gathered some composure and said, 'You can just go to hell.' I then turned and walked back to my nurse friend. We both were absolutely stunned by this incident." A few weeks later, she learned that Clinton had announced his candidacy for president.)

More recently, she has reported that a man in a car was obviously following her, and she said that her house was burglarized. All that was stolen was her telephone answering machine tape.

VULNERABILITY: Her nursing home business was regulated by the attorney general's office.

Speaking of lip biting...

ELIZABETH WARD GRACEN: Former Miss America said to have had a one-nighter with Clinton in 1983, although some reports say he forced himself on her. Michael Isikoff's new book, Uncovering Clinton: A Reporter's Story, page 256, relates, "According to Gracen's later account, Clinton flirted with her-then invited her to the apartment of one of his friends at the Quawpaw Towers. They had sex that night. It was rough sex. Clinton got so carried away that he bit her lip, Gracen later told friends. But it was consensual."

In 1992 when the Clinton campaign was trying to keep a lid on his womanizing, Gracen said that she got threatening calls. Then Clinton's Hollywood friend Harry Thomason plus Mickey Kantor and Gracen's agent, Miles Levy, met to arrange acting jobs for Gracen that would take her far away, to Croatia and then to Brazil.

When she was subpoenaed in the Jones case, Gracen again received threatening calls from people who knew where she was at all times. "I was physically scared," she told the New York Post. She has been quoted as saying that during a vacation, her room was ransacked by men wearing suits who were admitted by the innkeeper. And her lawyer has said she was threatened with an IRS audit if she spoke out. Gracen hired Bruce Cutler, best known as John Gotti's attorney, and gave an interview to NBC's Dateline to acknowledge having consensual sex with Clinton one night at Quapaw Tower.

VULNERABILITY: She was Miss Arkansas (later Miss America) and he was her state governor.

A third biting report...

AN ATTORNEY: "A young woman lawyer in Little Rock claimed that she was accosted by Clinton while he was attorney general and that when she recoiled he forced himself on her, biting and bruising her," writes Roger Morris on P. 238 of Partners in Power. He continues, "Deeply affected by the assault, the woman decided to keep it all quiet for the sake of her own hard-won career and that of her husband." Her husband ran into Clinton later and threatened to kill him if Clinton ever approached her, writes Morris.

If women have kept quiet, at least part of the reason can be traced to what happens when they come forward...Just one example: Last Monday, June 7, a reporter ran into famed feminist Betty Friedan at a Washington social event. Asked about the Juanita Broaddrick case, she first said, "Who?" and then, when reminded that it was a charge of rape against Clinton, she said, "They probably paid her off!"

Apparently there is a payoff-in pressure and threats-for those women who speak out or consider speaking out.

KATHLEEN WILLEY: For all of the confusion surrounding her charge that she was groped in the Oval Office on Nov. 29, 1993, one thing seems clear: She was the victim of some kind of intimidation and vilification effort.

(1) Jared Stern, a private eye for Prudential Associates, said in interviews that his late boss, Bob Miller, told him the White House had asked them to provide a chronology on Willey. Exactly who hired the firm has yet to be established. Stern has said he called Willey to warn her that he had been hired to investigate and intimidate her.

(2) Willey said she found masses of nails in three of her car tires about two months before her Jan. 11, 1997 deposition in the Jones case. The tire repair shop concurred to the Associated Press that it did not look like an accident. Shortly afterwards her cat disappeared. And on Jan. 9, said Willey, a mysterious jogger appeared in the predawn hours and asked about her cat, her tires and her children by name. "Don't you get the message?" he allegedly told her. The man she fingered has an alibi, leaving this mystery unsolved.

(3) Clinton himself undercut Willey by releasing personal letters from her and by speaking to the grand jury about her reputation in her hometown of Richmond, Va. Journalist Christopher Hitchens has stated that he learned from White House aide Sidney Blumenthal of a planned campaign to destroy Willey's credibility.

VULNERABILITY: Her husband had just told her not only that they were broke, but he had essentially embezzled some clients' money. On the day of her Oval Office meeting, her husband killed himself.

PAULA JONES: Dismissed by White House defenders as too lowly to be taken seriously, Jones showed them they would have to take her very seriously. Clinton refused to acknowledge he knew her, much less that he had once dropped his pants and asked her for oral sex in a hotel room in 1991. After her name became linked to him as a willing participant, she filed suit and stubbornly fought him to the Supreme Court and back. She became the focus of a major dirt-digging effort by private investigator Terry Lenzner. The Clinton team spread allegations that she was a loose woman, although the Jones detectives checked out the leads and found them to be bogus.

More recently, she spoke of concern about her safety. "Through this whole thing I've felt very scared," she told Larry King. "I don't drive crazy, so I won't run off the road; and I'm not suicidal. So if something happened to me, there's a reason."

VULNERABILITY: She was a powerless clerk.

LINDA TRIPP: She says that Bruce Lindsey told her she would be destroyed if she disclosed Clinton's misconduct. Lindsey, through his lawyer, denies that was a threat. Monica Lewinsky warned her it was dangerous to talk to reporters and reminded her she had two children to think about. And the Pentagon spokesman Kenneth Bacon attempted to damage her credibility by improperly authorizing the release of information from her personnel record.

Defense Secretary Cohen, who had earlier said that such conduct should be a firing offense, laid the blame during a TV interview on a career employee. In a deposition in a Judicial Watch lawsuit, Bacon said he had confessed to Cohen that he had ordered the improper disclosure, contrary to privacy laws. Cohen has not corrected the record. The career employee has since been promoted and no action was taken against Bacon, who absolved the White House of any role in the disclosure.

Tripp has become the prime target for vilification, although her chief "crime" was reporting wrongdoing in the upper reaches of government. She has testified to seeing stacks of raw FBI personnel files improperly kept in the White House, the first lady's alleged hand in the firing of the White House travel staff, as well as the Monica Lewinsky affair. She has also testified that she found on her office chair a list of dead persons connected to the Clinton administration and a hand written, anonymous note saying: "Linda, Just thought you might find this of interest!"

VULNERABILITY: Tripp was a single mother of two who depended on her job for their livelihood.

DOLLY KYLE BROWNING: After she informed Clinton in January 1992 that she planned to write a novel about their affair, she received a call from her brother, Walter Kyle, a campaign worker warning, "If you cooperate with media, we will destroy you."

She describes numerous efforts by the Clinton team, especially Bruce Lindsey, to stop her from publishing. She accuses Clinton of concocting a false report about her based on a conversation at a high school reunion during which, she says, he apologized for threats against her and suggested that she come to Washington. He said "You can live on the hill. I can help you find a job," she said in a brief for a lawsuit accusing him of leading a smear campaign against her to stop her book publication.

VULNERABILITY: She has admitted that she had the same problem as "Billy," that she was a sex addict. She has subsequently told talk show audiences that she regrets having an affair with a married man.

GENNIFER FLOWERS: She was ridiculed as trash for cash for selling her story to the tabloid Star. Although she provided audio tapes in January of 1992 that had the governor urging her, a state employee, to lie, the news media were largely dismissive because of the tabloid connection. Soon afterwards, she said later, trouble began. She told Larry King in 1998: "My home had been ransacked. I had received threats. My mother received threats. People were getting beaten. I was afraid for my life."

After a TV crew staked out Quapaw Tower in 1991, her mother (remarried and living in southern Mississippi.) received a phone call saying Gennifer would be better off dead. In December, Flowers's apartment was burglarized, and someone had rifled several boxes of old photos. She told Clinton about it and the tone of his response led her to suspect he knew who had done it. Her former Quapaw Tower neighbor, attorney Gary Johnson, who had surveillance tapes showing Clinton arriving at Flowers's apartment, was beaten and left for dead. The assailants demanded the tapes.

VULNERABILITY: Her singing career was going nowhere. She was given a state job for which she was not qualified.

LAUREN KIRK: Roommate of Flowers in Dallas who was questioned by private eye Jack Palladino, who specialized in digging dirt on Clinton's ex-lovers. (She is perhaps the friend who was asked "Is Gennifer the kind who would commit suicide?")

SALLY PERDUE: A former Miss Arkansas, she testified to a state grand jury in 1983 that she had seen Clinton use cocaine. This information culled from Ambrose Evans-Pritchard coverage in the London Telegraph: During the 1992 campaign, she was pressured to keep silent about her affair with Clinton.

Ron Tucker, said to be a Democratic Party official in Missouri, told her people in high places were anxious about her and that if she kept her mouth shut, she could have a $60,000 or so federal job. She said he told her that "if I didn't take the offer, then they knew that I went jogging by myself and he couldn't guarantee what would happen to my pretty little legs." She didn't take the offer. Afterwards, she lost her admissions office job at Lindenwood College in Missouri. She got threatening letters and calls. One letter said, Marilyn Monroe got snuffed.

She found a shotgun cartridge on the driver's seat of her Jeep and later the back window was shattered. She had a taped appearance on the Sally Jesse Raphael show, but it never aired. She now lives in Beijing.

VULNERABILITY: She said she began the affair because she "was going through a second divorce. I was vulnerable."

SHARLENE WILSON: Now serving a 31-year sentence for minor drug offense (selling a half ounce of marijuana and $100 worth of an amphetamine) at the women's prison at Tucker, Ark. She got to know then Gov. Clinton through brother Roger and attended toga parties where she said the governor used coke.

She testified in 1990 to a grand jury that she had seen Bill Clinton using drugs, and when her testimony leaked out, she fled the state for fear of her life. She later returned, it is said for a family funeral, and was arrested for the drug crime, despite having been a top informant for drug enforcement. Sharlene was my best informant, said Jean Duffey, former head of the drug task force in Saline County. "They couldn't silence her, so they locked her up in jail and threw away the key. That's Arkansas for you."

Her prosecutor, Dan Harmon, was also her ex-boyfriend. He is now in prison for drug-related crimes.

VULNERABILITY: Wilson's record of illegal activities

JEAN DUFFEY: Former head of the Saline County Drug Task Force, she worked with a federal grand jury until she dug too deep, said John Brown, former detective for the Saline County Sheriff's Department. State officials began undercutting her, and tried to frame her with trumped up allegations that were thrown out of court. She has left the state and is teaching school in Texas.

VULNERABILITY: She was outnumbered.

CHRISTY ZERCHER: Former flight attendant on the Clinton '92 campaign plane, she sold a story to the Star describing his groping her with Hillary nearby. In 1994 after the White House learned that a Washington Post reporter was calling her, Zercher's house was burglarized. Only a diary and photos were taken.

VULNERABILITY: Employee.

MONICA LEWINSKY: Clinton and associates tried multiple efforts to keep her silent. Clinton urged her to hide the truth about their relationship. His friends sought jobs for her. And when that seemed to fail, the president attempted to start a rumor that she was entirely to blame and that he had not touched her by telling aide Blumenthal that Monica was known as a stalker.

VULNERABILITY: She was a young, star-struck, low-level employee with a history of seeking sexual adventure.

REPORTS OF SEXUAL ASSAULTS

EILEEN WELLSTONE: Then 19-year-old English woman allegedly was assaulted by Clinton in 1969 after she met him at a pub near Oxford University. A retired State Department employee told the on-line publication Capitol Hill Blue that he spoke with the family of the woman and filed a report. Her parents declined to press charges and Clinton reportedly claimed it was consensual. She has a married name now and has reportedly declined to come forward.

YALE STUDENT: In 1972 a 22-year-old woman reported an assault to the campus police. Retired campus policemen confirmed the case, said Capitol Hill Blue.

UNIVERSITY OF ARKANSAS STUDENT: Groping in his professor office said to be confirmed by alums, as per Capitol Hill Blue.

SEVEN COMPLAINTS: From 1978-80 state troopers said that there were seven cases of assault or attempted assault, according to Capitol Hill Blue.

SANDRA ALLEN JAMES: former D.C. fundraiser who says Clinton groped her in his hotel room in 1991, according to Capitol Hill Blue.

SECRET SERVICE AGENT OR AGENTS: One agent is said to have been sexually assaulted by the president and two others to have been sexually involved with him.

OTHER WOMEN IN CLINTON CASES

SUSAN MCDOUGAL: In the great mystery of Whitewater, why would this woman have gone to jail rather than answer questions about Clinton? What hold did he have over her that she would do this?

VULNERABILITY: Unknown. Did she hold a candle for Clinton? Or was this a Joan of Arc complex?

JULIE HIATT STEELE: When the White House saw that she was corroborating Willey's story, officials began asking questions about the legality of her adoption of a Romanian child. That's when Steele changed her story and said Willey was lying. When Starr was told of this, he began checking to see if the Clinton team was using the adoption to pressure Steele to switch sides. The Clinton defenders and Steele turned this around to make look as though Starr was using the adoption case against Steele.

VULNERABILITY: The adoption.

BETTY CURRIE: As Clinton's secretary, she was pressed into duty as an arranger for the relationship with Monica and even collected evidence from her and hid it under her bed. Clinton twice coached Currie on how he wanted her to testify.

VULNERABILITY:She was an employee.

SUE SCHMIDT: As the Washington Post reporter who broke the news that banking regulators had referred the Whitewater inquiry for criminal prosecution, she was seen as media enemy No. 1. The first lady ordered the White House legal team to make a study, at taxpayer expense, of supposed bias in her reporting. The study found no such thing, said those who saw it, and press secretary Mike McCurry refused to make it public. Schmidt later co-wrote the piece breaking the Monica Lewinsky story. Yet at the height of the impeachment debate, she disappeared from daily news to write a book.