Search Salon

- - - - - - - - - - - -

Recently in Salon News

The bloody truth about Kosovo
No amount of whitewashing can cover up the mess the Clinton administration has on its hands in Yugoslavia.
By Arianna Huffington
[12/14/99]

Murder in Colombia
American Indians seek to avenge the murder of one of their leaders by leftist rebels.
By Ana Arana
[12/14/99]

Online panel to rate debate on SpeakOut.com
The 700 GOP primary voters watching the Des Moines debate on MSNBC will closely mirror Republican voters nationwide.
By Speakout.com
[12/14/99]

Goodbye, cruel world
Video footage made by Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold leaves unanswered questions about whether their parents could have stopped the massacre at Columbine.
By Dave Cullen
[12/14/99]

Bush gets religion
The GOP front-runner extols Jesus and criticizes McCain in his third debate.
By Jake Tapper
[12/14/99]

Complete archives for News

- - - - - - - - - - - -

- - - - - - - - - - - -

But now, another bit of truth appears to be catching up with Starr himself.

Starr and his office have long denied playing any role in leaking the notorious tapes Linda Tripp made of her conversations with Monica Lewinsky to Newsweek reporter Michael Isikoff, thereby triggering one of the largest political scandals in American history.

But documents and testimony surfacing in Maryland's illegal taping case against Tripp now cast new doubt on Starr's claims.

According to a deposition filed by former Starr aide Stephen Bates, on Jan. 16, 1998, Tripp attorney James A. Moody delivered 17 of the tapes to Starr's office.

Later that evening, at the Ritz Carlton Hotel in Pentagon City, Va., Bates turned over 16 of the same 17 tapes to an FBI agent working for the Office of the Independent Counsel. The other tape, or a copy of it, was handed back to Moody by deputy independent counsels Jackie Bennett Jr. and Bruce Udolf, at a midnight meeting with Moody and another lawyer, George Conway, that was held at a Howard Johnson's near the Watergate hotel.

Bates' deposition makes no explicit mention of the Howard Johnson's meeting. But the meeting is noted in a separate letter that Starr's successor, Robert Ray, wrote to Udolf, authorizing him to testify about "the delivery of an audio tape to James Moody at a Howard Johnson's in Washington D.C. on the evening of January 16-17, 1998."

The question here is why Bennett and Udolf, two of the most senior officials in Starr's office, would have arranged a midnight meeting with Tripp's attorney, Moody and Conway, another attorney who had already been working as a conduit between the OIC and the Paula Jones legal team. The answer can be found in Bates' deposition. Moody had asked to get back "copies of the tape transcripts once the OIC prepared" them, because "he had received many messages from Michael Isikoff of Newsweek, who said that Mr. Moody ought to call him because he was preparing an article highly damaging to Ms. Tripp."

In other words, Moody needed the key tape back that night because he had to get it to Isikoff before his deadline so that Isikoff would either moderate or change the tone of the "highly damaging" story which he was then allegedly writing.

Immediately after he got the tape back, Moody took it to Newsweek's offices and allowed Isikoff and three of his colleagues from the magazine to listen to it.

Next page | Why then did Isikoff change his book galleys?