Condit has done all he could to keep himself out of the story. But it's precisely his increasingly obtuse behavior about the disappearance of 24-year-old Chandra Ann Levy that threatens to tie her disappearance inextricably to him.

Late last April, Levy had just completed a six-month internship at the Bureau of Prison Affairs. She packed her bags, contacted her parents by e-mail about her travel plans and promptly disappeared. When police entered her apartment several days later, they found her bags packed, her keys missing and no other sign of what might have happened to her.

Almost from the beginning, though, questions were raised about a possible romantic relationship between Levy and Condit, the 53-year-old married congressman from her home district surrounding Modesto, Calif. The evidence of such an affair is sketchy and circumstantial, and there was no evidence whatsoever that Condit played a role in Levy's disappearance. Tidbits pointing to a Condit-Levy affair kept dribbling out, but suspicions were fanned more than anything by Condit's refusal to squarely deny an affair.

Condit's office released three press releases, but none had quotations from Condit denying the affair. Instead, they quoted Mike Lynch, his press secretary, who insisted there was no substance to the charges. Only the first release included any statement from Condit characterizing his relationship with Levy -- and in that case, he simply described her as a "good friend."

Then in early June two developments quickly shifted the tide. Condit had earlier admitted that Levy had visited his Washington apartment. But on June 6, the Washington Post reported that Condit had told D.C. police investigators that Levy had actually spent the night. Two days later, the New York Post reported that Levy had called Condit's private answering service "several times" on each of the two days before her disappearance, April 29 and 30. This was the first tenuous connection between any relationship and Levy's disappearance.

In the weeks following Levy's disappearance, most in the media had treated the Condit-Levy angle less as a serious matter to be investigated than a morality tale about media excess. But as the evidence (albeit circumstantial) mounted, even Condit's hometown newspaper the Modesto Bee published an editorial calling for Condit to come clean. "Five weeks of silence is enough," wrote the Bee. Politicians have a responsibility, the paper noted with some eloquence, "not to respond to every rumor, but to provide basic answers that may relate, however peripherally, to a missing-person case that weighs heavily on the hearts of those in Levy's hometown and far beyond."

In the week since those press accounts surfaced, the Condit story not only has mushroomed into a serious scandal but has become a test case in what one might call scandal management and how the media should react. Unrebutted, the Washington Post story about Levy's overnight visit to Condit's home appeared to put to rest any idea that Condit's relationship with Levy was one of simple friendship. But rather than coming forward with a more detailed response to the charges, or even a denial, Condit went on the offensive. He retained a high-profile, politically connected California attorney, Joseph Cotchett, to send out letters threatening libel suits against virtually every news outlet that had been aggressively covering the Condit-Levy story.

It's too soon to tell whether Condit's offensive has intimidated the press into backing off the story, but looked at more closely, Cotchett's flurry of threatening letters shouldn't dampen suspicions; they should inflame them. In his letter to the Washington Post, Cotchett denied that Condit has ever told anyone about a Levy overnight -- not that it hadn't happened. "Condit never made such a statement to police," Cotchett wrote, "to 'law enforcement sources' or to anyone else."

To reporters -- and a public -- used to parsing what "the definition of 'is' is," Cotchett did little to dispel the allegation, only appearing to challenge its source. Instead, it raises an obvious question: The real issue is whether she spent the night at Condit's apartment. Why not just deny that too?

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