The Oval Office: Lewinsky Was Familiar to Secret Service Agents and Others Outside Clinton's Door

September 13, 1998

THE OVAL OFFICE

Lewinsky Was Familiar to Secret Service Agents and Others Outside Clinton's Door

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By DAVID E. SANGER

ASHINGTON -- The Secret Service, it turns out, had seen a lot of Monica S. Lewinsky.
When Kenneth W. Starr's report was released on Friday, it became clear that members of the President's protective detail had repeatedly allowed Ms. Lewinsky into the Oval Office after being told that she was delivering papers and were not surprised that the young aide often stayed for an hour or more.
In at least one case, the Secret Service agents were under specific instructions from a watch commander to forget an incident in which they had witnessed an enraged Ms. Lewinsky stalk off when she learned that President Clinton was meeting in the Oval Office with another woman, although there is no evidence that the meeting was anything other than an innocent visit.
For months, one of the central legal battles of the independent counsel's investigation of the President was over whether Clinton's bodyguards should have to testify about what they saw, heard and suspected.
The Treasury Secretary, Robert E. Rubin, who oversees the Secret Service, and Justice Department lawyers argued unsuccessfully that the agents guarding any President must enjoy a "protective privilege" under which they could not be called to testify, so that a President would not feel compelled to keep them at a distance.
Rubin emphasized in an interview last spring that he was interested only in maximizing the protection afforded the President and had deliberately avoided finding out what the Secret Service knew or suspected.
"I don't know the facts," he said, "and I don't have any interest in the facts.
"I wouldn't sit in the same room if they wanted to tell me. If they saw anything, I have no idea."
Rubin said that the effort to block the testimony originated with the Secret Service and that the White House was not consulted.
The Secret Service agents were not the only employees around the Oval Office who, based on the details in the Starr report, could have had good reason to suspect a continuing relationship between Ms. Lewinsky and the President.
The report offers many details about how Betty Currie, the President's secretary, set up meetings with Ms. Lewinsky and sometimes escorted her into the Oval Office through back doors.
Though the report never explicitly says that Mrs. Currie knowingly facilitated the affair, it notes that "Ms. Currie testified that she suspected impropriety in the President's relationship with Miss Lewinsky," and that she tried to avoid learning the details.
At one point, Mrs. Currie came into the White House on her day off for the sole purpose of giving Ms. Lewinsky access to the Oval Office, the report states. She did not note calls from Ms. Lewinsky to Clinton in her telephone log, even though a notation for all calls is standard procedure.
Other members of the President's staff, the report hints, may have suspected what was happening. But in some cases it is unclear what they saw. For example, Harold M. Ickes, the deputy chief of staff and Clinton's main re-election operative inside the White House, came to the partly closed door of the study off the Oval Office when Clinton was meeting with Ms. Lewinsky and called out, " President," when he needed to see him urgently, Ms. Lewinsky recalled, as quoted by the report.
But the most telling incidents that provided corroboration for Ms. Lewinsky's account to the grand jury involved the Secret Service.
Ms. Lewinsky, the report states, arranged with the President in January 1996 to "pass by the office with some papers" so that she could be invited in. For several minutes, she recalled, she spoke with Lewis C. Fox, a uniformed Secret Service agent posted outside the Oval Office. She was invited in, and after 10 minutes of talking in the Oval Office, the President and Ms. Lewinsky moved toward the back study, where they were out of view.
Officer Fox, who is retired, testified that the President told him one weekend afternoon that he was "expecting" the arrival of a young staff member. Officer Fox appeared to know to whom the President was referring, the report said, and he testified that "it was pretty commonly known that she did frequent the West Wing on the weekends."
When Officer Fox admitted Ms. Lewinsky to the Oval Office, the President said to him, "You can close the door. She'll be here for a while," according to the report's account of Fox's testimony.
One former member of the Presidential protective detail, William C. Bordely, testified that in late 1995 or early 1996 he stopped Ms. Lewinsky near the Oval Office because she was not wearing the plastic pass that permits staff members access to the West Wing. Clinton, the report says, opened the door to the Oval Office and let her in. The agent reported that she left 30 minutes later.
But perhaps the most revealing incident took place on Dec. 6, 1997. Ms. Lewinsky, the report recounts, arrived unannounced at the northwest gate of the White House, the Pennsylvania Avenue entrance closest to the West Wing, to drop off gifts.
From the gate, Ms. Lewinsky and the uniformed officers inside tried to find Mrs. Currie to escort Ms. Lewinsky, who was told that the President had guests in the Oval Office.
While she was waiting, an officer said that Eleanor Mondale, the entertainer and daughter of Walter F. Mondale, the former Vice President, was inside the White House.
Ms. Lewinsky concluded, apparently correctly, that Ms. Mondale was visiting the President. "She stormed away," the report said, and she later called Mrs. Currie and argued with her.
Both Mrs. Currie and the President, the report says, expressed their displeasure about what Ms. Lewinsky had learned.
"The President told Captain Jeffrey Purdie, the Secret Service watch commander for the uniformed division at the time, 'I hope you use your discretion,' " the report says.
The captain, in turn, told his colleagues to remain silent. He later recommended that "no paperwork be generated" regarding the incident, the report said.
Clinton, in his testimony in August, recalled that Ms. Lewinsky had become upset when she learned that Ms. Mondale had come "to see us that day." But he did not recall telling Captain Purdie to remain discreet about the incident.

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