Filly Brown

heardthat there was a woman

named Monica Lewinsky and that there were tapes

what did you think?

I-I just thought, "Oh," sort of, "Oh, my.

Do we really need this?"

A little bit of, let this cut pass from me.

Did it make you angry?

I wouldn't say angry, it, I would say

our "Concern-o-meter" went off the charts

because we thought this was... dreadfully serious.

At the point the Independent Counsel

found out about Monica Lewinsky

Ken Starr's investigation was dead in the water.

Vince Foster, you know, turned out was a suicide.

Whitewater didn't pan out.

Like, nothing much is happening.

When we first learned of Monica Lewinsky

I was in Little Rock.

In terms of the status of most of the investigations

we were winding down.

Many of us were not, uh, necessarily looking for jobs

but thinking about what we were gonna do.

We were ready to move on

and looking forward to moving on.

But then, it's like, eureka!

Through this web of young conservative lawyers

who were secretly helping the Paula Jones case

the Starr team got wind

of what was going on with Monica Lewinsky.

That breathed new life into the whole thing.

It was dead until then.

Going close up this morning, the First Lady

of the United States, Hillary Rodham Clinton.

- Mrs. Clinton, good morning. - Good morning, Matt.

- James Carville, who you know. - Great human being.

I'm sure you like him, especially at this time.

He has said that this is the war

between the president and Kenneth Starr.

You have said, I understand, to some close friends

that this is the last great battle

and that one side or the other is going down here.

Well, I don't know if I've been that dramatic.

That would sound like a good line from a movie.

But I do believe that this is a battle.

I mean, look at the very people who are involved in this.

They have popped up in other settings.

This is, the great story here

for anybody willing to find it

and write about it and explain it

is this vast right-wing conspiracy

that has been conspiring against my husband

since the day he announced for president.

When Hillary came forward

and talked about the vast right-wing conspiracy

she was attacked.

It seemed like a crazy theory.

You'd have to be grassy knoll to believe that.

But, in fact that's what was going on.

I learned about this from the right-wing operative

David Brock.

I knew the inner workings

of the conservative anti-Clinton movement

that there was a machinery

that there was well-funded infrastructure.

I started to blow the whistle.

David told me about a small group of lawyers

who were, um, mostly members

of the Federalist Society

acted behind the scenes without acknowledgement

and, among other things, they were involved

with essentially writing the Paula Jones briefs.

Her case got hijacked

by very partisan Republicans

who decided to use it

to get Bill Clinton into a perjury trap

which was the line from Paula Jones to Monica Lewinsky.

The people who were behind all this

called themselves The Elves.

They were not Santa's helpers.

The Elves did help us.

They're excellent lawyers

but on a confidential basis

for fear of persecution by the law firms in which they worked.

Uh, I think that information is in the public domain

but I'm not going to disclose their names.

I just don't, don't ever betray a friend.

I'll just say this

I didn't even really know who they were at the time.

I just knew The Elves.

I'm in awe of who they were.

I kind of like the fact they're notorious.

Yeah, I don't want to mention any of them

but one of them's, I can't say his name

but his initials are Brett Kavanaugh.

I was combing through the billing records

from the Paula Jones lawyers

and in the records, there are names

of other attorneys and payments to them

and I'm like, "Who are these guys?"

Jerome Marcus was one

Richard Porter was another.

Richard Porter, one of The Elves

was a law partner of Ken Starr at Kirkland and Ellis.

Porter had gone to University of Chicago Law School

and he was good friends with Paul Rosenzweig

who worked in Starr's office.

There were others involved.

George Conway, now the husband of Kellyanne Conway

and Brett Kavanaugh, who had been in the office

of the Independent Counsel and had gone on to work

in, uh, Kirkland and Ellis, Starr's law firm.

He was very closely connected to Conway.

Both of them had gone to Yale Law School.

They also had befriended Ann Coulter

and a right-wing activist

and public relations person named Lucianne Goldberg

who knew someone named Linda Tripp.

It was me and Ann, and if you give me a minute

I'll think of who else the vast

this vast group was.

Yeah, The Elves, I mean, that was, that was just nonsense.

They were social friends of ours.

At the time, they thought that Paula Jones was the thing

that was gonna get Clinton

until fresh meat arrived in the form of Monica Lewinsky.

Are you saying that there was no one in this office

who said this is not of sufficient gravity

to investigate and report?

No one.

The question and the debate was

what should we do about it

but no one approved of what was described in the referral

or said it never should have been investigated.

One of the more serious charges made was the notion of collusion

between Paula Jones' defense team and your office.

We did it by the book and we informed

the Justice Department very promptly.

At the end of the day, The Elves

may have had their motives, but they couldn't invent the facts.

All they could do was say, "Well, we're going to try

"to help, ahem, the Paula Jones lawyers.

"Um, it's in our political interests

and desires to, to do that."

But ultimately, The Elves weren't, um

the witnesses.

This was indeed a plot

to bring down the president

but the basic relationship

that Bill Clinton initiated

with a then 22-year-old intern

was not something a vast right-wing conspiracy

made him do.

It was something he chose to do

on his own, uh, during a time

that he was being sued

for sexual harassment by another woman

and, um, you know, ultimately

he's the guy that brought it upon himself.

They set a perjury trap for Bill Clinton

and he stupidly and foolishly

fell right into it.

In his deposition last January

the president said under oath

that he didn't remember ever being alone with Monica.

Clearly, there was an issue

of alleged perjury, uh, in the Paula Jones deposition.

There were allegations of obstruction of justice.

If you are going to indict the president

for perjury or obstruction, that's a, that's a huge deal

and, um, the next step is

a grand jury investigation.

Today, President Clinton will become the first

sitting president ever to testify

before a criminal grand jury

that's investigating him.

I kept hoping that the president of the United States

would simply tell the truth.

Just say, "Yes

"in the Paula Corbin Jones civil deposition

for the following reasons, I did not tell the truth."

But even on August 17, 1998

he was resisting telling the truth.

I knew that we were going to have to give, um

an admission of conduct with Miss Lewinsky.

I didn't want him subjected

to pornographic, detailed questions.

I wanted to have a statement that would acknowledge

what the facts were, but not descend into specifics.

When I was alone with Miss Lewinsky

on certain occasions, in early 1996

and once in early 1997..

...I engaged in conduct that was wrong.

"I was alone with Miss Lewinsky

you know, I did some things that were improper."

Well, end of story.

You know, right there, you've admitted.

Uh, in one sense, we could have packed up and gone there

if that was the only thing we were interested in.

Right there you've admitted

that you perjured yourself.