Eyes On The Oval
Clinton secretary Currie, subpoenaed by Starr, could be the first crack in Clinton's stonewall defense
By Eric Pooley/TIME
Her eyes seemed to say, don't hit me. Her shoulders were
hunched and her forearms raised, as if to ward off a blow. When
Betty Currie became the object of a terrifying media scrum last
month, after testifying before Kenneth Starr's grand jury in
Washington, she looked for all the world like an innocent victim
caught in the teeth of scandal. But last Friday the world
learned that Currie has some teeth of her own.
The New York Times reported that Currie, Bill Clinton's personal
secretary, told Starr's investigators that the President had led
her through a sugarcoated account of his relationship with
Monica Lewinsky: We were never alone, right? But Currie's
memories of Lewinsky differed from the President's. She
reportedly told Starr's lawyers that Clinton and Lewinsky
sometimes had been alone together--and the stone wall
surrounding the President's inner sanctum finally seemed to crack.
The White House tried to patch up the damage, saying that
Clinton had merely been "checking to see if Mrs. Currie's
recollection was the same as his." Currie's lawyer strongly
denied "any implication" that Clinton had tried to influence her
version of the story. But the reports stung the White House
because Currie, 58--a bighearted, churchgoing matron--had a kind
of credibility no one else in this mess could muster. She is a
Clinton loyalist, a reluctant witness squeezed between her
devotion to her boss and her obligation to the facts. She was
Ken Starr's dream come true.
Currie has an irreproachable air, yet her name has turned up
again and again at the heart of the scandal: it was Currie who
frequently cleared Lewinsky into the White House and received
her packages; Currie who referred Lewinsky to superlawyer Vernon
Jordan for one job and, through deputy chief of staff John
Podesta, to U.N. Ambassador Bill Richardson for another. And it
was Currie who allegedly collected from Lewinsky a dress and
other gifts Clinton had given the former intern--items that were
under subpoena by lawyers for Paula Jones. It isn't known who
asked Currie to collect those gifts, which she held for weeks
before turning them over to Starr. But it's hard to imagine her
lying to protect anyone.
That's because Currie is not just another cold-eyed operative
whose job it is to clean up after a politician. Her colleagues,
cooler and more cynical than she, describe her in terms that are
saintly but at times faintly patronizing: quiet, motherly,
floating serenely above the madness of the West Wing, greeting
big and little fish with the same understated warmth. From her
perch outside the Oval Office she sees all, hands out candy from
a communal bowl and is never too busy to coo at a newborn or
look after a needy young staff member or intern. "She answers
phones, places calls for the President, does some mail and
greets people," says a senior Clinton adviser, "but she has a
fair amount of time on her hands." He means she's not a player.
Though Currie has been Clinton's secretary since 1993, she is
not his most powerful gatekeeper. That distinction goes to Nancy
Hernreich, the director of Oval Office operations, who has been
with Clinton since Arkansas. Hernreich, who recommended Currie
for the secretarial job, is the President's scheduler and, with
Currie, makes up the last line of defense against those who
clamor for Clinton's time. They have a good-cop-bad-cop routine
in which Hernreich shuts down access to Clinton while Currie
smooths ruffled feathers with a kindly "We'll get back to you,
dear." And the lower down you are on the food chain, her
colleagues say, the nicer she is to you.
No one was lower on the chain than Monica Lewinsky, and some
sources say the intern targeted Currie as a way to get to
Clinton. "She worked Betty hard," says a Clinton adviser, "to
put herself in the eye of the President. She knew the President
was in and out of [Betty's] suite." But no one seems to think
Currie--with her religious core, her sensible attire and her
hair pulled back in a no-nonsense chignon--would cover up for
untoward behavior. "She's no Rose Mary Woods," says longtime
friend Paul Costello. "Betty's very straight," says a co-worker.
"It's hard to imagine her helping [Clinton] get away with
anything. It's not her style."
That style was forged in postwar Waukegan, Ill., a Lake Michigan
shore town about 50 miles north of Chicago. A housekeeper's
daughter, Betty Williams was ambitious and nimble. When she and
her neighborhood friends moved from a mostly black elementary
school to the mostly white high school, she left behind her
black friends without embittering them. "In advancing herself,
she kind of faded away from us," says classmate Nathan Booker.
"But nobody held it against her because she was always nice and
courteous." She graduated from high school in 1957 and took a
job as a clerk typist; two years later she made the leap to
Washington because "I wanted to see more, do more, know more,"
as she once told a reporter. She married, had a daughter and
divorced while moving through a succession of federal
secretarial positions that culminated in 12 years as
confidential assistant to the director of ACTION, the agency
that ran the Peace Corps. It was at ACTION that she met the man
who is her husband of 10 years, retired civil servant Robert
Currie. And it was at ACTION that she first tasted scandal, in
1979, when Congress investigated charges that the agency had
given grants to its friends. "Everyone else was panicked," says
Anthony Podesta, the Clinton aide's brother, who was a
consultant to ACTION during the mess, "but Betty was steady."
Currie retired from government in 1984 and took a volunteer
position as office manager of Geraldine Ferraro's
vice-presidential campaign. Four years later, John Podesta
brought her into Michael Dukakis' organization. And in 1992, she
went to Little Rock, Ark., to become the unofficial den mother
to James Carville, George Stephanopoulos and the rest of
Clinton's rapid-responding, bimbo-squelching "war room" crew.
(Her war-room association alone should put to rest the notion
that Currie is a political naive.) After Clinton was elected,
Currie landed a job with Warren Christopher during the
transition. That's when Hernreich recommended that she replace
Clinton's longtime secretary, who had decided not to leave
Little Rock for Washington. Currie took the job, her husband
says, because it seemed like fun. "Betty does what's interesting
and what's right," he says.
Working for Clinton has helped seal Currie's place in the
Democratic firmament--she moves easily through the most
sophisticated worlds, and is friendly with Vernon Jordan and
donor Walter Kaye (who recommended Lewinsky for the internship).
But, as she once told the Chicago Tribune, "I didn't think the
hours would be so long." She works 12 hours a day six days a
week--and sometimes on Sundays, as she did Jan. 18, when Clinton
reportedly called her in and walked her through his version of
the Lewinsky affair. As the fallout from that day continues,
unwanted opportunities are falling into Currie's lap. Tell-all
biographer Kitty Kelley, an acquaintance of Currie's, called her
last week and offered to pay her legal bills. (Currie declined.)
But even aside from the Lewinsky mess, the past year has been
difficult for Currie. She lost a sister and a brother in quick
succession, but few who work with Currie ever glimpsed her
grief. Robert Currie has been trying to get his wife to retire.
Persuading her, he told TIME last week, "might get easier after
this."
--Reported by Margaret Carlson, James Carney, Sally B. Donnelly
and Karen Tumulty/Washington and Ron Stodghill II/Waukegan
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