25 years ago: How Larry Flynt and I helped to save The Clinton Presidency (Part 3)
The Speaker-Designate Bob Livingston resigns
“The shock waves of the Livingston resignation spread far beyond the West Wing of the White House and had a sobering effect on members of Congress of both parties who might have been contemplating calling for Clinton to step down in the aftermath of the impeachment vote.
“Fearful of the entire Government unraveling, very few members of Congress joined a clamor for Clinton's resignation.”
—The New York Times, February 14, 1999
Twenty-five years ago today—December 19, 1998—the Republican-controlled U.S. House of Representatives impeached President Bill Clinton, setting the stage for a trial in the U.S. Senate. However, coming out of nowhere, porn king Larry Flynt and I, two admitted sinners, entered the fray and helped to derail the dreams and schemes of the GOP and the Moral Majority to remove the President from office.
This is the third in a series of columns about a little-known backstage drama in the Clinton impeachment battle, focusing on December 16-19, 1998. The series—featuring updated excerpts from my memoir, Confessions of a Guerrilla Writer—will resume during the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Senate trial, which began on January 7, 1999, and ended with the President’s acquittal a month later on February 12.
Larry and I were part of the action from beginning to end, and we made a difference.
Livingston at center stage
Exhausted after the pressure and excitement of the past two days, I stayed in bed as my telephone began ringing during the morning of Saturday, December 19, 1998. I was too tired to answer it, so I just let it ring, call after call.
Knowing that President Clinton would be unfairly impeached that day, I chose to boycott the Republicans’ unfolding spectacle.
But, after a half dozen more calls, I finally surrendered and picked up the receiver.
A good friend who knew about my work with Larry Flynt shouted. "Turn on your TV! Turn to any channel!"
I grabbed the remote control and switched on the television, as well as the record button for the VCR, realizing that something important was happening.
My friend, who was still on the phone, yelled out, "Do you see what's going on?"
After only seconds of watching the incredible scene on the thirteen‑inch Sony in my bedroom, all I could do was say to myself, "Oh my God! . . . Oh my God!"
"Thanks for getting me up for this," I told my friend as I hung up the phone.
Speaker-designate Bob Livingston had just taken the floor of the U.S. House to announce his vote to impeach President Clinton, declaring:
To the President, I would say: "Sir, you have done great damage to this nation over this past year. And while your defenders are contending that further impeachment proceedings would only protract and exacerbate the damage to this country, I would say that you have the power to terminate that damage and heal the wounds that you have created. You, sir, may resign your post."
As he was booed, jeered, and told, "You resign!" by House Democrats, Livingston raised his hand slowly and dramatically and asked for quiet. Then, he continued:
And I can only challenge you in such fashion if I am willing to heed my own words. . . . So I must set the example that I hope President Clinton will follow. I will not stand for Speaker of the House on January 6th, but rather I shall remain as a back‑bencher in this Congress that I so dearly love for approximately six months into the 106th Congress. Whereupon, I shall vacate my seat and ask my Governor to call a special election to take my place.
As total shock immediately spread throughout Washington and all over America, this moment represented the motherlode of the politics of personal destruction. . . . The Speaker-designate of the U.S. House of Representatives—second in the line of succession to the U.S. Presidency—had just announced his resignation.
My immediate reaction
Realizing that low comedy had just evolved into high tragedy and fully recognizing that I was solely responsible for what was happening, I shouted at myself, "This is not what was supposed to happen!"
After I stepped out of the shower, grabbed a towel, and threw on a robe, I walked quickly into my office where the phone was still ringing. Looking at my Caller ID screen, I saw that the call was coming from Allan MacDonell, one of Flynt’s top lieutenants.
"Allan!" I exclaimed as I answered the phone, not waiting for him to identify himself. "What have we just done?"
He replied nearly out of breath, "I have no idea how this is going to play out! What do you think?"
"The guy wasn't supposed to resign! Whether he wanted to or not, he was supposed to join our team! He was supposed to rail against the politics of personal destruction and demand that even public officials are entitled to private lives! He wasn't supposed to quit and try to take Clinton down with him!"
"I think you better jump on the next plane and get out here! Larry's going to want to see us!" He added that Flynt would arrange for a plane ticket to be waiting for me at the airport.
"I'm on my way! I'll call you when I arrive!"
Shortly after Livingston's resignation, the House of Representatives voted to impeach the President of the United States—228-206 for the perjury count and 221-212 for obstruction—setting the stage for the upcoming trial in the United States Senate.
To my surprise, Flynt had booked a first-class ticket for me at Dulles.
During my flight to Los Angeles. I tried to calculate the damage we had just done to the country. And even though the media had not yet linked me to Flynt or his investigation, I also began to worry about how quickly I would be destroyed after my role in all of this inevitably became known.
But the more I thought about Livingston's resignation and the President's preordained impeachment, the more I became convinced that we had done something extremely important, perhaps monumental—maybe even something historic.
By the time I arrived at LAX, I was convinced that Livingston's resignation might diffuse the entire post-impeachment, pre-Senate-trial process by bringing this whole situation to critical mass.
I also believed that we had just helped to derail the Woodward‑and‑Bernstein dreams of a handful of biased Washington reporters who had become shills, stalking horses, and confidential informants for Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr. They desperately needed the President's removal from office in order to justify their abuses and excesses as journalists.
Overall, it didn't turn out to be such a bad day.
Jonathan Alter—a columnist for Newsweek, the magazine that had led and super-charged the sex patrol against President Clinton—disagreed, writing: "Saturday, Dec. 19, 1998—a day that will live in inanity—felt like the set of a bad Peter Sellers movie. In the morning, Speaker‑to‑be Bob Livingston quit, a de facto admission that pornographer Larry Flynt was running the country."[1]
The early public reaction
On Sunday, December 20, Maureen Dowd of the New York Times wrote:
Ordinarily one would feel sorry for Mr. Livingston. But the Republicans have brought this sexual doomsday machine [of Larry Flynt] on themselves by focusing so single‑mindedly on Mr. Clinton's sex life.
Later, the New York Times revealed a remarkable but terrifying reality:
The shock waves of the Livingston resignation spread far beyond the West Wing of the White House, and had a sobering effect on members of Congress of both parties who might have been contemplating calling for Clinton to step down in the aftermath of the impeachment vote.
Fearful of the entire Government unraveling, very few members of Congress joined a clamor for Clinton's resignation.[2]
Meantime, the public‑opinion polls told the tale. The CNN/Gallup/USA Today polling group discovered that on December 21, two days after impeachment and Livingston's resignation, the President's approval rating had skyrocketed to 73 percent—while the Republicans' favorability rating had dropped to 31 percent.[3]
The President’s approval ratings had never been higher.
On December 22, while I was meeting with Flynt at his corporate office in Los Angeles, he received a telephone call from Bonnie Livingston who pleaded with him not to go further with his investigation of her husband. Mrs. Livingston had been widely identified in press reports as the person who convinced him to resign from Congress.
Moved by her call, Flynt—struck by the human cost of his project, which, many believed, had started out as a whimsical gimmick but had now become a lethal weapon—instructed me to halt my continuing probe of Livingston.
Because Livingston had threatened Flynt in that day's New York Times—saying that Flynt "would eventually get his 'just rewards'"[4]—I protested and wanted to continue. But, seeing that Flynt was showing genuine compassion for Mrs. Livingston and her family, I relented and agreed to end my investigation of Livingston.
In a December 27 article by reporter Steve Profitt of the Los Angeles Times who had interviewed Flynt, the journalist wrote:
Would it be at all ironic, then, if it turns out the white knight in this current round of sexual McCarthyism is the pornographer Larry Flynt, the publisher of Hustler magazine, the anti‑Christ of family values . . . .
Flynt, a Democrat, says he has evidence of sexual misconduct by a number of other Republicans, and he threatens to publish the details sometime after the new year.
Yet, if you believe him, Flynt would rather not publish the dirt he bought with his million‑dollar reward. In fact, he says, his intent is to stop the prying and probing into private sex lives altogether by applying his own brand of mutually assured destruction. . . .
[Flynt concluded,] “Pundits and politicians can talk until they're blue in the face about perjury and obstruction of justice by Bill Clinton, but it all comes down to sex. The man had an affair, and he lied about it.”[5]
“Who got Bob Livingston”
In the aftermath of Speaker‑designate Bob Livingston's startling admission to the Republican caucus on December 17, 1998, and his announced resignation two days later—two events which took the Congress, the White House, and the media completely by surprise—the search intensified for Larry Flynt's still‑anonymous investigator.[6]
Underscoring the mystery, reporter Mary Leonard of the Boston Globe asked: "Who got Bob Livingston? It has become a hot question since the speaker‑designate shocked the House on Saturday with his decision to decline the leadership post and resign from Congress."[7]
I remained silent during all of this speculation and quietly continued my work.
The only person to call and ask me the big question was Karen Foerstel, a reporter for Congressional Quarterly. While I was in Los Angeles on December 20, she had left a message on my answering machine in Washington, giving me her home and work numbers. I assumed that she had heard my name from someone close to Livingston, who could have known as early as December 12 that I had been interviewing sources in New Orleans.
I telephoned Foerstel two days later at her home during work hours, trying to avoid speaking to her but still wanting to return the call so as not to raise more suspicion. Without specifically denying my role with Flynt, I left a non‑denial denial—something like, "Where could you have possibly heard something like that?"—on her answering machine and invited her to call me after the holidays. Mercifully, she did not.
I still had high hopes for the successful completion of my work for Flynt and then a quick ride out of Dodge without ever being identified. Even though I was proud of what I had done and why I had done it, the intense warfare between President Clinton's enemies and his supporters threatened to annihilate anyone who entered—or got dragged into—the fray.
This was America’s political jihad.
I already had a taste of that through the chain of events that began with the publication of my book about Vincent Foster's suicide in April 1998, which led to my affidavit on the alleged leaks from Kenneth Starr’s office, which I submitted to U.S. District Judge Norma Holloway Johnson in August 1998.
In his effort to provide cover for me, Flynt was intentionally coy about the identity of his secret investigator. Rumors persisted that Flynt had hired a team of ex-FBI and ex-CIA agents as the members of his investigative team.
Other Washington insiders reflexively pointed to Terry Lenzner, the president of the Washington‑based Investigative Group International. Lenzner was also a friend of President Clinton.
On the MSNBC program, News Chat, host John Gibson asked Flynt, "Can you tell me it is not Terry Lenzner, the P.I. firm that has done the investigation for the White House and the President's defense team?"
"I'm not answering that question," Flynt replied curtly.
Another guest, GOP consultant Craig Shirley, snapped back, "You can put that down as a yes, John."
Flynt responded, "You can't put that down as a yes or a no, either one. I'm not going to answer it."
"Larry," Gibson continued, "do you understand how this looks? It now appears that the President has given a wink and a nudge to Larry Flynt and said, 'Go get him,' and that Larry Flynt is."
"No. That's not true at all," Flynt insisted.
That same day, Mark Levin, the head of the Landmark Legal Foundation—another right‑wing, Richard Scaife‑funded operation—issued a statement, claiming:
Last Friday, Hustler magazine publisher Larry Flynt, who is paying $1 million for embarrassing information on Republican officials—and helped end the political career of would‑be House Speaker Bob Livingston . . . would not deny that Terry Lenzner, the private detective hired by the president to trash his adversaries, is working for him. Flynt promises more disclosures.
On December 28, Lenzner released his own formal denial to MSNBC, saying in a written statement:
The Investigative Group categorically denies ever having been retained by Hustler magazine to conduct any investigation or inquiry at any time. We have never spoken to Larry Flynt or any agent or representative of Mr. Flynt. Furthermore, Investigative Group has never conducted an investigation of Speaker Livingston nor were we asked to do so.
Flynt and I felt horribly about placing Lenzner, whom we both respected, in such an awkward position.[8]
Enter Bob Barr
One of the callers on Flynt's original list of tipsters was an anonymous person who claimed but could not prove that the second of the three wives of Representative Bob Barr (R-Georgia)—the congressman who had filed the original articles of impeachment against the President long before Monica Lewinsky became public property—had an abortion while married to Barr who also had an alleged history of philandering.
Significantly, Barr had actively portrayed himself as an anti-abortion, pro‑family advocate, widely supported by the religious right. In fact, Barr, a member of the Pro‑Life Caucus, had stated in a speech on August 4, 1992, "I would do absolutely everything in my power to stop" a family member from having an abortion.
I interviewed Mrs. Barr at length. She gave me the details of her abortion—allegedly with the knowledge, consent, and assistance of her husband, Representative Barr. And she was prepared to document her claims.
On December 28, Representative Bob Barr sent Flynt a letter, stating:
I have been informed you are publishing an article in your magazine, Hustler, suggesting that I have lied under oath. Such an allegation is outrageous and absolutely untrue. As a lawyer and officer of the court for over 20 years, and a former United States Attorney sworn to uphold the laws of the United States, I have never lied under sworn oath.
Consider yourself on notice this entirely unfounded and salacious accusation is false, and uttering it through your magazine would demonstrate an utter and malicious disregard for the truth.
In response, Flynt drafted a letter on January 5, 1999, saying:
I do want to advise you that we are investigating various allegations involving your moral and ethical conduct in relation to subjects upon which you have taken a public position.
If you would like to comment on these allegations, please call my investigator, Dan Moldea. [Emphasis added]
Flynt then gave Barr my telephone number in Washington.
Before sending this letter, Flynt's executive assistant telephoned and read it to me, asking for my thoughts. I told her that I still had a great deal to do and did not want to be recognized or hassled while doing it, adding that there was no way that Barr would keep the name of Flynt's mystery investigator a secret. She responded that she understood my concerns and said she would have Flynt call me.
A few minutes later, Larry, who sounded very ill, called and said that he had given this matter a great deal of thought and decided that we had to give Barr an opportunity to respond. Yielding to Flynt's sense of fairness, I consented to the letter, as written.
However, I predicted that when I was publicly identified as his investigator, the news would be a total anticlimax—inasmuch as the President's enemies were hoping that someone close to the White House had been doing all these investigations.
Regardless, Flynt and I agreed that the time had come for us to take the White House—as well as Terry Lenzner and even James Carville—off the hook. They never had anything to do with us or what we were doing.[9]
Knowing that it would be just a matter of days before my role in Flynt's investigation became public—and that the right‑wing media was going to try to tear my head off—I asked a trusted friend, who owned a successful tech company in Washington, to design a website for me, www.moldea.com. It would allow me to respond to what I knew would be an immediate onslaught of false and misleading accusations and malicious disinformation.
Among other things, I posted my August 24 affidavit on the OIC leaks, which I believed would clarify much of what I had done since the publication of my book about Foster's suicide.
With that task completed and uploaded, I waited to be destroyed as the Senate trial opened on January 7, 1999.
Years later, the Washington Post published an article in which my role in The Flynt Project was discussed. When the Post reporter asked me to comment about my motive for working with Flynt during the impeachment drama, I replied: “There was a right-wing attempt to overthrow the executive branch of government. . . . This was important enough for me to risk being destroyed.”[10]
Coming in January 2024: The 25th anniversary of the Senate trial of President Bill Clinton
ENDNOTES
[1] Jonathan Alter, Newsweek, “The Era of Bad Feeling,” December 28 to January 4, 1999.
[2] Alvarez, Lizette, John M. Broder, and Katharine Q. Seelye, New York Times, “Drawn-Out Impeachment Battle Dealt Its Meager Spoils to All Sides,” February 14, 1999.
[3] CNN, Inside Politics, “President Buoyed by Highest-Ever Approval Numbers; Livingston’s Resignation Sends Scarlet Letter to Congress,” December 21, 1998.
[4] Katharine Q. Seelye, New York Times, “Resignation Was Prompted by Desire to Make a Point,” December 22, 1998.
[5] Steve Proffitt, Los Angeles Times, “Los Angeles Times Interview: Larry Flynt,” December 27, 1998.
[6] Speaking of Livingston's resignation on CNN's Capital Gang on December 19, reporter Margaret Carlson of Time summed up the moment earlier that morning for her colleagues in the Washington press corps, saying, "Well, in the chaotic world we're now living in, it would be foolish to predict that A is going to have any effect on B. That morning at the office, [the news of Livingston's resignation] hit like a thunderclap, so much so that no one even pretended to be in the know. We admitted we were completely surprised."
During a CNN special on the impeachment the following day, correspondent Jeff Greenfield stated, "The most surprising, the most dramatic news of the day wasn't impeachment; it was the resignation of Livingston, because nobody expected it. . . . Livingston did something that, in a way, hadn't been done since Lyndon Johnson renounced the presidency in March of '68. He did something nobody expected."
[7] Mary Leonard, Boston Globe, “Livingston exit deepens partisan rancor,” December 24, 1998.
[8] Flynt told me that he had never met Terry Lenzner. I had only met Lenzner once—at a book party in Washington for agent/author David Obst, nearly two months before I accepted the assignment with Flynt. During the party, Lenzner and I shook hands and spoke to each other—with mutual friends present. We never had a private conversation. . . . Lenzner died in 2020.
[9] Although Flynt had never met President Clinton, to whom he had contributed money and voted for in 1992 and 1996, James Carville, the President's most loyal defender, had played the role as Flynt's prosecutor in Milos Foreman's highly praised 1996 motion picture, The People vs. Larry Flynt.
However, according to the public statements of both parties, Carville had no connection to The Flynt Project. Certainly, I had no contact with Carville.
[10] Howard Kurtz, Washington Post, “Morals of a Muckraker,” August 8, 2007.
You've lived such a remarkable life, and played such a pivotal role in the history of our times.
25 years later, and Republicans remain obsessed with sex and misogyny.
I'm interested in your assessment of the rot of access journalism...from your vantage point, is it worse now?