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Source for Kathleen Willey story
JULIE STEELE CLAIMS THE REPORTER VIOLATED AN EXPLICIT AGREEMENT THAT THEIR CONVERSATIONS WERE OFF THE RECORD. BY JOE CONASON
With the public furious and the media anguished about Clinton scandal coverage, something like this was probably inevitable -- especially in the nation's litigious capital. A reporter who suddenly became famous for probing the president's sex life is now being sued by one of his sources. The defendant is Newsweek's Michael Isikoff, an investigative journalist best known for his relentless, years-long pursuit of fact and rumor about President Clinton's personal affairs, which led him to break stories about the Paula Jones sexual harassment case, the alleged "groping" of Kathleen Willey in the White House and Kenneth Starr's investigation of the Monica Lewinsky matter. The plaintiff is Julie Hiatt Steele, a former friend of Willey who says she lied to Isikoff about her knowledge of the Willey incident in January 1997 at her friend's request, and then recanted the story to Isikoff when she learned that the reporter was about to publish it last summer. Isikoff's first story about the Willey incident, in which he mentioned Steele by name and fully recounted his conversations with her, ran in Newsweek's Aug. 11, 1997, edition, but only after portions of the story appeared first in the Drudge Report -- a pirated "scoop" that helped make Matt Drudge's online gossip site notorious. According to Steele, however, Isikoff had explicitly agreed that all of their conversations were off the record. And on Thursday afternoon -- the same day she was called before independent counsel Kenneth Starr's grand jury -- Steele filed a breach-of-contract and fraud complaint in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., against Isikoff, Newsweek and the Washington Post Company (which owns the magazine) for allegedly violating that arrangement. Claiming that she has suffered from subsequent publicity with the loss of her job and reputation, as well as "embarrassment, humiliation ... and severe emotional distress and anguish," Steele is demanding unspecified compensatory and punitive damages, plus attorney's fees and costs. Steele herself is not commenting on the lawsuit, but her attorney, John P. Coale of the Washington firm of Coale, Cooley, Lietz, McInerny & Broadus, charged that Isikoff "broke his off-the-record agreement to further his own career." Although he would not describe the evidence he will offer, Coale said: "We will present testimony that corroborates these assertions. It's not a 'he said, she said.'" The attorney said those who would testify that Isikoff violated a promise of confidentiality to Steele include "people who have been told this happened not by her side, but by Isikoff's side." Coale also said he had found "a couple" of prior cases in which plaintiffs had successfully sued journalists for breaching an off-the-record agreement, "although none of national notoriety." "We are confident that investigative correspondent Michael Isikoff followed all appropriate news gathering and reporting practices," said Deborah Richman, a Newsweek spokeswoman, in an Associated Press story. Richman said, "We never comment on litigation until we've seen the litigation." Isikoff is on vacation and was not immediately available for comment. Evan Thomas, Newsweek's assistant managing editor, said he did not know the lawsuit's details and could not respond. Thomas referred questions to Ann McDaniel, an editor in the magazine's Washington bureau, who could not be reached before Salon's deadline. In her complaint, Steele adds some details to a version of last year's events she has recounted previously to reporters. Her basic story is that sometime during the late winter of 1997, she received a call from Willey, who asked her to speak briefly with Isikoff, although Willey didn't say why. After giving Isikoff directions to her house in Richmond, Va., Steele was immediately called again by Willey -- who asked her to tell the reporter that Willey had come directly to her home after a November 1996 meeting with Clinton, "upset and humiliated" because the president had "groped" her. In fact, according to her complaint, Steele had never heard any such allegation from Willey, as she has stated before. But in response to what she now calls "leading questions" from Isikoff that afternoon, she lied to back up her friend's tale of sexual assault. The complaint notes acidly that "Isikoff's interview technique made it easy for Ms. Steele to hide the fact that she had no independent knowledge or awareness of Willey's alleged encounter with the president or Willey's alleged reaction to the so-called encounter." Steele says she talked with Isikoff only because the reporter "explicitly and verbally agreed that Ms. Steele's statements about Willey's accusations were 'off the record,'" meaning "confidential and anonymous." According to the complaint, months later, toward the end of July 1997, Isikoff called Steele again, trying to find Willey and saying he was under "a lot of pressure to print his story about Willey and the president." In subsequent conversations, Steele says, she retracted her previous statements to Isikoff and apologized for lying to him, again on an off-the-record basis. At that point, the complaint alleges, "Isikoff and Ms. Steele agreed that Isikoff and Newsweek no longer had a story to print" about Willey and Clinton. Without two sources, as the complaint suggests, the magazine couldn't run Willey's story. But hours later that same day, Steele alleges, Isikoff called back to say he was going with a story that included Steele's name and the statements she had made to him. When she protested, the complaint continues, Isikoff replied, "Now, Julie ..." and explained, "There's so much pressure to get this out," that it was "out of [his] hands" and he would "have to do it." Newsweek published its first story on the Willey allegations, using the Steele interviews, on Aug. 11, 1997, and repeated them in additional stories that appeared in March 1998. As a result of Isikoff's scoop, he and Newsweek "profited greatly," says the complaint, adding that "upon information and belief, Isikoff has, or is negotiating, a book contract concerning his involvement with the Willey story." (While rumors about a book deal have circulated for months, Salon was not immediately able to confirm that Isikoff has a contract with any publisher.) Steele's complaint blames Isikoff and Newsweek for the uproar that followed publication of the Willey story, which it says caused Steele's "character, reputation and credibility" to be attacked publicly by people hostile to Clinton, in order to "bolster and protect Willey's credibility ... as the president's accuser." Indeed, the complaint accuses Isikoff of joining in the assault on her, partly to "justify after the fact" his alleged breach of her confidentiality. Among other things, the reporter allegedly accused her, both in print and on television, of "attempting to sell her story to a tabloid newspaper," which she denies. Coale told Salon that he expects Newsweek to mount a free-speech defense of itself and its reporter. "I'm sure that Newsweek will come in and try to say that this is a First Amendment issue, and it is not," the lawyer said. He pointed out that many news organizations, including Newsweek and its parent company, have sought to enshrine the protection of sources in law, because confidentiality is essential in gathering news. "We have sworn statement after sworn statement, of Newsweek and Washington Post people, going before state legislatures and asking for shield laws,
because source confidentiality is so important," Coale said. "If it's so important, why waste it for a story like this? We will argue that [the principle of confidentiality] is absolutely right. This is about one guy who broke an agreement."
Joe Conason is a regular contributor to Salon. |
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