Family Ties & Lies
Condit’s common tale.

Mr. Dunphy* is an officer of the Los Angeles Police Department
July 14, 2001 12:00 p.m.

ot quite three weeks ago, my editorial masters at NRO HQ solicited my thoughts on the Chandra Levy case. I demurred, reasoning at the time that the matter invited only idle speculation, a surfeit of which was already erupting across the airwaves and the Internet. Such speculation did nothing to aid in the search for Miss Levy, but rather served only to compound the unfathomable grief being borne by her family and friends. But in the time that has since passed some things have become clear. Foremost among them, most sadly, is that Miss Levy is all but certain to have come to harm. I regret adding my voice to those who would deny the Levys their fleeting hopes that their daughter will one day be found alive, but she has been missing since April 30 and the prospects for her safe return have grown dim. Twenty years in law enforcement have taught me that evil does indeed walk the world. Chandra Levy, I fear, has become its victim.

But in whose guise has evil come to claim her? The swirling speculation has thus far focused on Rep. Gary Condit, and not without considerable justification. When police officers searched Miss Levy's apartment they found a photograph of her with Mr. Condit, who, when first asked about his relationship with Levy, characterized it as a "close friendship." He continued his denials of a sexual relationship with her until last Friday, when at last he admitted to investigators that he and Levy had been lovers. He had been steadfast in his denial of a sexual relationship "to protect his family."

In this belated admission Mr. Condit has followed a script, one authored by a much more prominent politician. Though I had hoped never again to write about Bill Clinton, doing so is unavoidable under the present circumstances, such was his mastery of the self-serving yet manifestly absurd denial. In denying his affair with Monica Lewinsky, Mr. Clinton employed — and encouraged others to employ — all manner of intellectual and etymological contortions, to the point that those who hoped to unravel the mysteries of the Oval Office had to resort to the grade-school exercise of diagramming sentences. And when finally cornered in his own web of lies he reluctantly admitted the truth, but said he had lied because he wanted to protect his family from the meanies who so relentlessly hounded him. What it boiled down to was something similar to this: "I didn't." "I wouldn't." "I couldn't have." Then, finally, "Okay, I did, but it's none of their business."

So, what of Mr. Condit? Let us put aside for the moment the speculation that he is somehow responsible for Miss Levy's disappearance. He may indeed be, as we say in the trade, as clean as a Safeway chicken. An alternative theory, just off the top of my head, is that Chandra was done in by some rival suitor, one who became enraged on learning of her affair with Condit. By denying the affair as long as he did, Condit prevented detectives from even considering this avenue of investigation. When responding to a report of a missing person, investigators must quickly immerse themselves in the quotidian details of the person's life, so as to make an informed decision on the direction the investigation may then take. In withholding the truth about his relationship with Miss Levy, Mr. Condit impeded the investigation at its most critical juncture.

Every televised update on the Levy investigation is accompanied by images of Condit briskly walking hither and thither through a phalanx of reporters, cameramen, and still photographers, presumably in attendance to his continuing congressional duties. And as he flits about he seems to be constantly and incongruously grinning, grinning, and grinning some more, like some Cheshire cat loaded up on lithium. What in creation, we may ask, has he to grin about? Granted, there is no evidence to suggest that he has harmed Miss Levy, or even that he had any role her disappearance. But, at the very least, his behavior in the matter has been dishonorable, even disgraceful. And in another echo of Mr. Clinton's White House shenanigans, other women are coming out of the woodwork to say that they, too, had affairs with Condit, some of them simultaneously with Chandra Levy. Is it possible that Mrs. Condit will prove to be as numb to insult as was Mrs. Clinton? Mr. Condit may not be headed for a criminal courtroom, but some divorce court must surely await him.

We as a country used to expect more from fathers and husbands, and even more from those who would serve as our leaders. Nearly every day of my 20 years as a cop I have dealt with the fallout from the diminution of the family in American life. This will come too late for Mr. Condit, but I offer a few words of advice to all the other intern-grabbers and skirt-chasers out there: The time to protect your family is before you have the affair. If you can't live up to your vows then get a divorce. I'm tired of cleaning up after you.

(*Jack Dunphy is the author's nom de cyber. The opinions expressed are his own and almost certainly do not reflect those of the LAPD management .)