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Summary
Summary
Ten years after one of the most polarizing political scandals in American history, author Ken Gormley offers an insightful, balanced, and revealing analysis of the events leading up to the impeachment trial of President William Jefferson Clinton. From Ken Starr's initial Whitewater investigation through the Paula Jones sexual harassment suit to the Monica Lewinsky affair, The Death of American Virtue is a gripping chronicle of an ever-escalating political feeding frenzy.
In exclusive interviews, Bill Clinton, Ken Starr, Monica Lewinsky, Paula Jones, Susan McDougal, and many more key players offer candid reflections on that period. Drawing on never-before-released records and documents--including the Justice Department's internal investigation into Starr, new details concerning the death of Vince Foster, and evidence from lawyers on both sides--Gormley sheds new light on a dark and divisive chapter, the aftereffects of which are still being felt in today's political climate.
Author Notes
Ken Gormley is a law professor at Duquesne University, specializing in constitutional law, as well as a nationally renowned expert on Watergate and special prosecutors. He is the author of the critically acclaimed Archibald Cox: Conscience of a Nation .
Reviews (5)
Publisher's Weekly Review
This book's readers will quickly think of water. Facts overwhelm you like Niagara. And when you've finished reading about President Clinton and special prosecutor Ken Starr, you may want to take a long shower. Gormley, a professor of law at Duquesne (Archibald Cox), reviews the entire sordid business of Clinton's foolishness and his enemies' efforts to bring down his presidency. It's not an edifying tale. Very few of the book's cast come off well, except for Secret Service officials and a judge or two. If there's a sympathetic character, it's Susan McDougal, who refused to rat on her friends. Starr makes error after error and confuses vindictiveness with duty. While not altering the basic story in any way, Gormley gains much from effective interviews 10 years after with participants and his use of newly available documents. While his book is too long, Gormley remains in control of the details, and this riveting first look at events that only future history will put into full relief shows how affairs of sex and enmity can become affairs of state. 24 pages of b&w photos. (Feb.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Booklist Review
*Starred Review* In 1999, the shocking revelation of President Clinton's affair with a White House intern captivated the nation and nearly sank his career as well as that of prosecutor Ken Starr. Legal scholar Gormley offers new revelations: Starr drafted an impeachment referral long before the Monica Lewinsky scandal emerged, and investigators considered indicting First Lady Hillary Clinton for Whitewater irregularities. Gormley draws on newly released documents, including transcripts of depositions and grand jury testimony, and interviews with major figures, including Clinton and Starr, to offer a deliciously detailed account of the investigation that nearly led to the impeachment of the president and continues to reverberate in American politics. Starr's initial charge to investigate the Clintons' involvement in Arkansas real-estate deals morphed into an investigation of the suicide of Vince Foster and Paula Jones' allegations of sexual harassment and the ostensible connection of an affair with Lewinsky. Gormley chronicles the behind-the-scenes political machinations of Republican elves out to get the Clintons and White House efforts to save his presidency, playing out in a titanic political clash as Americans were repulsed by Clinton's actions and Starr's excessive zeal. Gormley recalls the missteps and irregularities on both sides as partisan politics poisoned efforts to get at the truth. Gormley is masterful at building the high drama of stranger-than-fiction political skulduggery and nuttiness with a cast of fascinating characters.--Bush, Vanessa Copyright 2010 Booklist
New York Review of Books Review
IS anyone still fixated on the escapades of Linda Tripp and her motives for ratting out Monica Lewinsky? Or on what Lewinsky's high-powered lawyers advised her to do with the semen-stained blue dress? (Don't give it to Goodwill.) Or on whether Vincent Foster, the deputy White House counsel, actually committed suicide? (Yes, he did.) Even amid the blazing intensity of President Bill Clinton's impeachment trial, the political controversy and sexual scandal it grew out of felt at once momentous and trivial - unbearably so, at times. It was only the second impeachment of a president in American history (Andrew Johnson was the first). Newspapers published keepsake reprints of the report by Kenneth W. Starr, the independent counsel, as though it had the historical import of the Pentagon Papers. More than one million copies of the report were printed in book form. Yet the entire episode stemmed not from matters of war and peace, but from the question of whether Clinton, when he was governor of Arkansas, had bared himself to a young woman, Paula Corbin Jones, in a Little Rock hotel room in 1991. In today's world of suicide bombers and a ravaged economy, it all seems not merely frivolous, but ludicrous. And it's especially disconcerting to think that while so many were preoccupied by Clinton's "distinguishing characteristic," Osama bin Laden was most likely preoccupied with attacking the United States. "The Death of American Virtue: Clinton vs. Starr," by Ken Gormley, recreates it all, from the Clintons' investment in the Whitewater development in rural Arkansas to the Paula Jones sexual harassment lawsuit and Clinton's affair with Lewinsky, culminating in the impeachment trial. This hefty volume, going beyond the sordid details, provides helpful context for the larger story, the fractionalization of American politics that defined the Clinton years. Gormley, a professor at the Duquesne University School of Law, approaches his subject with scholarly detachment. If anything, he is too detached. He refrains from exploring the motivations of the two central figures, Clinton and Starr, even when their conduct invites scrutiny. He also could have concentrated even more on the broader political theater, much of it driven by the media and particularly by cable television and Web sites like the Drudge Report that gleefully covered the misbehavior of the "celebrity in chief" down to every salacious footnote in the Starr report. Yet the sobriety of "The Death of American Virtue" also offers a relief from the familiar overheated chronicles. Unlike some other commentators, Gormley allows for the possibility that even the most rabid-seeming players might have acted out of honorable considerations. Starr, for one, comes across not as a zealous partisan but as the wrong choice to prosecute the case. Despite his impressive résumé - he had been a judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit and then solicitor general under George H. W. Bush - he had never run a major criminal investigation. His missteps handed both sides in the case ample cause to distrust him. Yes, he gave running room to a clique of lawyers driven by a deep antipathy toward Bill Clinton. But he also initially opposed subpoenaing the president, invoking the duty "to be respectful of the presidency." Gormley's account gains credibility and freshness for another reason: He interviewed all the crucial participants, some of whom disclosed valuable nuggets. Most surprising, perhaps, is that Susan Webber Wright, the federal judge who oversaw the Jones case, considered finding Clinton in criminal contempt during the Senate trial following his impeachment by the House. Had she done so, it might have "ended his political career in a nanosecond," Gormley writes, giving the Senate all it needed to convict. This was a rare instance of restraint. Although the author never explicitly makes the point, he has in effect written a case study in excess, as outrage at Clinton's actions prompted people to overreact. Gormley turns up suggestions of possible misconduct on both sides. These include the assertion by Lewis Merletti, the former director of the Secret Service, that the F.B.I, improperly grilled him in an effort to prove that Merletti's agents had tried to cover up Clinton's flings and had even helped facilitate them. And Monica Lewinsky is quoted as saying she believed Clinton lied under oath to a grand jury. Did the Clinton-Starr entanglement change how we look at politicians or morality? Probably not. Have the subsequent presidents gone out of their way to show off their happy personal lives? Perhaps, but then politicians have long pushed their blissful families front and center. Nor does it seem that the Clinton scandal has made the public either more or less forgiving of John Edwards's trespasses, this season's most titillating political news. "The Death of American Virtue" dispenses important lessons. One is that the investigation was a colossal diversion - not only for the president but also for his aides (despite their insistence then that it was not a distraction). It also eclipsed the administration's genuine accomplishments. No wonder that years later, Clinton's "eyes flashed with anger" at the very mention of the independent counsel. It's not surprising that both Clinton and Starr agreed to be interviewed multiple times for this book. They come off the better for it, especially when admitting to their miscalculations. You don't have to be sympathetic to Clinton to understand how he felt under siege at every turn. You don't have to be a Starr loyalist to see how the Clinton drama blotted his own reputation and his dream of landing on the Supreme Court. Reflecting on his mistake in acquiescing to the appointment of an independent counsel, Clinton told Gormley, "I was so naïve." This is a refrain echoed by others. Wesley Holmes, one of Paula Jones's lawyers, remembering his assumption that her litigation could be handled with dispatch, ruefully told Gormley, "How naïve we were." IN retrospect, it is tempting to see the Clinton impeachment as having ushered in the feral reality of politics today: the birthers, the Tea Party movement, a Congress where old-fashioned legislative victory has given way to the insatiable appetite for annihilation. But in reality, the case belongs on the continuum that began with the toppling of Robert Bork's nomination to the Supreme Court, continued through the Clarence Thomas-Anita Hill fracas and was followed by the contested 2000 election. Indeed, the most consequential result of both Clinton's behavior and the Starr investigation was the election of George W. Bush. Clinton's would-be successor, Vice President Al Gore, was embarrassed to campaign alongside Clinton, especially in the Bible Belt, and ended up losing states where Clinton was still popular. Shortly before his death in 2007, Henry Hyde, the Illinois congressman who led the impeachment, defended the Republicans' actions as honorable and added, "I take consolation in comments that George W. Bush would not have been elected if we had not impeached President Clinton." There has been no equivalent satisfaction for Monica Lewinsky or for many other participants who still view the events with despair. Even Kenneth Starr, now dean at the Pepperdine University School of Law, regrets that his office wound up as the authority investigating the Lewinsky matter. Recalling his emotions as he watched the impeachment proceedings on television, Starr told Gormley that he asked himself: "Why did all of this have to happen? Why did we get to where we are? This is all so unnecessary." More than a decade later, very few will disagree. It's not surprising that Clinton and Starr agreed to be interviewed for this book. They come off the better for it. Richard L. Berke, an assistant managing editor at The Times, was the newspaper's national political correspondent from 1993 to 2002.
Kirkus Review
A law professor revisits the scandals, investigations and trials that crippled and nearly killed a presidency. Three locomotives barreling down separate tracksindependent counsel Ken Starr's investigation of shady Arkansas real-estate and banking transactions, a private lawsuit filed by Paula Jones alleging sexual harassment against President Bill Clinton and the president's dalliance with a White House internsmashed horribly together Clinton's impeachment hearings in 1998. Gormley (Law/Duquesne Univ; Archibald Cox: Conscience of a Nation, 1997) appears in remarkable possession of every detail pertinent to this complex story, beginning with Jim McDougal's ill-fated 1978 Whitewater land development and ending with a still-secret Department of Justice investigation of the Starr deputies' initial interview of Monica Lewinsky. An acknowledged expert on special prosecutors, Gormley handles the many legal aspects of this story especially wellthe inner workings of Starr's office, the strategies of the many defense lawyers representing multiple defendants and the controversial Supreme Court decision that exposed a sitting president to civil suit. He explains the unholy political warfare and the special role played by the mainstream, partisan and emerging Internet press, and he offers sharp snapshots of the many players that marched across TV screens for too many years. For most Americans, an intervening decade is perhaps insufficiently long for reintroduction to the likes of the vapid Lewinsky, her turncoat confidante Linda Tripp, her "avuncular" attorney William Ginsburg, the smarmy Webb Hubbell and the egregious Susan Carpenter-McMillan; too soon to be reminded of the stained dress, the Vince Foster suicide, "the vast right-wing conspiracy" or the details of the Starr Report. But for those wishing to understand exactly what happened during this confusing, dismal time, Gormley's informed reporting and evenhanded analysis is the place to start. The entire nightmare vividly recalled. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Library Journal Review
The Whitewater investigation, led by independent counsel Kenneth Starr, investigated the scandals that tarnished the Clinton administration-scandals that, says Gormley (law, Duquesne Univ.; Archibald Cox: Conscience of a Nation), diminished respect for the office of the President. The author interviewed many major players, including Bill Clinton himself, who would not discuss the Lewinsky affair. The result is an illuminating account that could overwhelm the general reader with oceans of detail. Starr is presented as a highly respected attorney and not a religious fanatic determined to destroy Clinton. His weakness was his lack of experience as a prosecutor; he later acknowledged that he should not have expanded the Whitewater investigation to include the Lewinsky affair. Starr resigned in 1999, and the Office of Independent Counsel's final report, issued by his successor, Robert Ray, concluded that there was insufficient evidence to prosecute Clinton. VERDICT This is the most complete and likely the most impartial account available of the Clinton scandals. It will appeal to readers of such recent serious works as Richard Sale's Clinton's Secret Wars: The Evolution of a Commander in Chief and Taylor Branch's The Clinton Tapes: Wrestling History with the President.-Karl Helicher, Upper Merion Twp. Lib., King of Prussia, PA (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
