By: Mary Mostert, Analyst, Original Sources (www.originalsources.com)
February 25, 1999
In the past three years three very credible women have told remarkably similar stories about encounters with Bill Clinton. Paula Jones told of Clinton exposing his penis and asking her to kiss it. Kathleen Willey told of going into the Oval Office on the day her distraught husband committed suicide over financial problems in search of help from the President in finding a paying job - and being mauled and asked for sex.
And, last night we heard a weeping Juanita Broaddrick recount a forcible rape by then Attorney General Bill Clinton. Broaddrick told Lisa Myers in the Dateline NBC interview, which the network tried to avoid showing, that as she and Clinton drank coffee in the hotel room and looked out a window, "all of a sudden, he turned me around and started kissing me." It was supposed to be a business meeting. Clinton had suggesting meeting in her room "to avoid the reporters."
Broaddrick said that despite her repeated protests and a struggle to get away from him, Clinton bit her lip and forced her onto the bed for sex.
"He was such a different person at that moment; he was just a vicious awful person," Broaddrick said, sobbing.
On Friday, after an article appeared about Broddrick's charges in the Wall Street Journal, Clinton's private attorney, David Kendall, said the allegations were false.
Broaddrick had told a couple of people about the incident at the time, one of them a good woman friend who worked with her. However, when the story surfaced prior to the 1992 election, Broaddrick claimed it was "consensual sex." When asked the same questions by Kenneth Starr, Broaddrick discussed the situation with her husband and they concluded she could not lie to the grand jury. The information, which Starr concluded did not involve obstruction of justice, was in the 40 boxes of material turned over to the House Judiciary Committee by Kenneth Starr - but was not part of the perjury and obstruction of justice Articles of Impeachment.
Millions of Americans saw Juanita Broaddrick last night on Nightline. What did they think? Especially, what did the women think? The poll taken on NBC's website is not broken down by male and female - but it it is clear that the majority of the people believed Juanita Broaddrick.
Juanita Broaddrick was interviewed at her own home - which appeared to be in horse country. The president's lawyer, Bob Bennett, and his spin doctors can't trash her easily with a tag like "trailer park trash." She has no book deal and it's 14 years too late for any kind of legal response. She is motivated, as Paula Jones was motivated, by an internal concern for her children - and her neices and granddaughters. Broadderick never even considered going to the police. "No one would have believed me," she told Lisa Myers. "I felt guilty. I should never have allowed a man to come to my hotel room." Her comment comes from another time - when women who were raped were told that they "must have done something" to lead the man into thinking it was "OK." Broadderick felt guilty because she had allowed Clinton to invite himself up to her room to discuss what she believed was a business matter. The almost instantaneous rejection of Clinton showed in the poll MSNBC posted of those who have just viewed the Lisa Myers interview:
Perhaps the most chilling part of Broaddrick's story was what Clinton said after the rape. She said that he straightened himself up, and walked to the door, calmly put on his sunglasses and said, "You better put some ice on that" - her swolen, bleeding upper lip which he had bitten (Shades of Mike Tyson!) and walked out leaving her still weeping from pain and shame.
This part of the story reveals the REAL Bill Clinton. His "concern" for others is simply part of his political tactics - tactics aimed at deceiving ordinary people into supporting him politically. He will do whatever it takes to get and keep power.
I can hardly wait until we hear Patricia Ireland's feminist defense of Clinton, the brutal rapist and excuses given by Al Gore, Robert Byrd, Tom Daschle, and Daniel Patrick Moynihan and others of the 100% of the Democrat Party who voted against convicting and removing him from the Oval Office.
Then, of course, there is always the Geraldo Rivera defense of Clinton. Last night he said that Broaddrick is all part of an "anti-Clinton" right-wing conspiracy designed to bring down the President. He announced, as did Lisa Myers also, that Broaddrick could not "prove" her story - that there were no "witnesses, no tapes, no pictures, no police reports."
And that, folks, is where we have ended up. We have people, like Rivera, who can infer, with a perfectly straight face, that unless Juanita Broaddrick had the presence of mind to stop Clinton in the middle of the rape and take his picture or tape record it, it couldn't have happened.
Then he has the nerve to ask why she didn't say something about it sooner. Why? It's people like you, Geraldo, that's why. It takes more courage than most women have to contend with the cruel, cold and crude comments when the subject is rape. It took years of worry and concern about her granddaughters' and nieces' vulnerability to male predators like Bill Clinton to give Juanita the courage to finally speak up.
With a 19% job approval rate, perhaps the Senators who were voting on impeachment with one eye on the polls need an opportunity to take that vote over.
To comment: mmostert@originalsources.com