From a Name on a Page to a Page in U.S. History

WASHINGTON — Almost five years ago, when she saw her first name in a magazine article about Bill Clinton’s adventurous past and decided to sue for damages, Paula Corbin Jones could not have imagined the tumult she was unleashing.

Hers was the case that launched a thousand ships.

Had there been no Paula Jones, or had President Clinton seized earlier opportunities to settle the case, he would not be facing impeachment hearings in the House of Representatives today.

Indeed, when historians contemplate this chapter of America’s end-of-century political history, they cannot help being struck by the roles that personality and happenstance still play in the course of great events.

“This is a classic ‘what if’ case, and it happens a lot,” John Alexander, an American history specialist at the University of Cincinnati, said Friday. “Chance plays a much larger role in politics and history than we might imagine.”

“If the janitor had not seen the tape on the door and decided to investigate, we may never have known about Watergate,” Alexander said, referring to the now-forgotten custodian whose suspicion about a piece of tape covering the lock on an office door led to the discovery of the Watergate burglary and, ultimately, to the resignation of President Nixon.

“That was one small person making a fundamental difference in history--a person whose name we don’t even remember,” Alexander said. “In time, Paula Jones’s name may fade too, but the memory of what came of her action will be strong.”

Over its serpentine course, the complaint by the then-Arkansas government clerk against the former governor ran through two sets of lawyers, countless courtroom skirmishes and at least two abortive settlement deals.

Her cause was taken up by a conservative legal foundation, fueling Clinton loyalists’ belief in what First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton called “this vast right-wing conspiracy that has been conspiring against my husband since the day he announced for president.”

And it was the dozens of subpoenas fired off by Jones’ lawyers to women suspected of having intimate relations with Clinton that precipitated the Monica S. Lewinsky scandal and independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr’s report to the House Judiciary Committee that Clinton could be charged with high crimes and misdemeanors.

“It’s an astonishing story from several points of view,” said Herbert S. Parmet, a historian of the presidency and biographer of John F. Kennedy who recently retired from Queens College in New York.

A Reflection of Modern Society

For one thing, while Jones is not the first obscure individual to take action that turns out to have momentous consequences, both her lawsuit and what flowed from it may be a unique reflection of contemporary American society.

“All our presidents, we are learning, are human beings. The Jefferson stuff confirms that,” Parmet said, referring to new evidence indicating that the third president fathered at least one child with Sally Hemings, one of his slaves. “But we now know much more than we ever knew before. Everybody’s a lot more conversant with their private lives.

“And once one thing comes out, a lot more comes out,” he added. “That didn’t used to be the case. JFK [President John F. Kennedy] took chances, but relationships were different at that point. . . . Clinton was not discreet. He was totally uninhibited, totally stupid about it.”

Indeed, with the advantage of hindsight, future historians may be struck as much by Clinton’s lack of savvy in handling the Jones suit as they are by his blinkered judgment about the Lewinsky affair.

Time after time, as the Jones case moved along, Clinton and his advisors failed to appreciate how much more dangerous and damaging the next phase might turn out to be.

Time after time, they ruled out concessions that could have ended the matter.

Characteristically, the whole thing began with a sensational magazine article that appeared to pose far different and potentially far more scandalous problems for Clinton than a mere civil lawsuit. The article, in the conservative American Spectator magazine, along with an investigative story published soon afterward by The Times, contained graphic accounts by a group of Arkansas state troopers who said that they had repeatedly acted as go-betweens and otherwise helped the governor carry on sexual liaisons with women.

In passing, the Spectator referred to one such woman as “Paula.”

That was enough.

On May 6, 1994, Jones filed a civil lawsuit against Clinton in U.S. District Court in Little Rock, Ark. She alleged that during a 1991 encounter in the governor’s room at the Excelsior Hotel in Little Rock, Clinton tried to get her to engage in oral sex, thereby “sexually harassing and assaulting” her. Jones demanded $700,000 in damages.

At the time, the public focus was on Whitewater, the tangled Arkansas real estate case, and allegations that the Clintons had committed financial improprieties.

While the White House sought to stiff-arm Jones, Clinton’s lawyers moved to have the case delayed on grounds of presidential immunity. And for a while, they succeeded.

At year’s end, U.S. District Judge Susan Webber Wright ruled that Clinton could not be taken to trial while in office. But she also held that Jones’ lawyers could begin gathering testimony--a momentous point, as it turned out.

With the plaintiff on uncertain legal ground and seeking only $700,000 and an apology, any ordinary civil suit would have been open to settlement. But 1994 was the year House Speaker Newt Gingrich and the Republicans scored a smashing victory in off-year elections, seizing control of Congress and casting Clinton’s hopes for a second term into doubt.

The president and his advisors decided to hang tough. Their goal: to tie the case up in the courts at least until after the 1996 presidential election.

Once again, they appeared to succeed. A series of appeals held the case in abeyance until Clinton, ever the Comeback Kid, had won his second term.

Moreover, the once-threatening Whitewater investigation seemed to be going nowhere. The White House apparently saw little reason to make concessions in return for an out-of-court settlement.

But their presidential immunity argument eventually played out. In May 1997, the Supreme Court ruled, 9-0, that the Jones case could go forward. Judge Wright set a May 27, 1998, trial date.

Last December, meanwhile, Jones cut her damage claim to $525,000.

Clinton Team Unwilling to Settle

Once again, an opportunity to settle seemed to present itself, and once again, the Clinton team was unwilling to go quite far enough to clinch a deal.

But when Wright threw out the Jones lawsuit on April 1, it was a Pyrrhic victory for Clinton.

Some three months earlier, former White House intern Lewinsky had signed an affidavit for Jones’ attorneys swearing that she never had a sexual relationship with Clinton.

Just 11 days later, Starr had won permission from a three-judge federal panel to expand his investigation of Clinton’s business dealings to include whether an effort was made to suborn a false statement from Lewinsky.

The rest, as they say, was history.