He laid out in harsh terms how Hillary’s chief of staff, Maggie Williams, had broken down in tears while testifying the previous week at the hearings chaired by Sen. Alfonse D’Amato. Williams was saddled with large legal bills, virtually abandoned by her patrons in the White House. “How could the first lady allow her chief of staff to spend $140,000 on legal fees?” Klein asked. “Why hasn’t she come forward and said, ‘Stop torturing my staff. This isn’t about them. I’ll testify. I’ll make all documents available. I’ll sit here and answer your stupid, salacious questions until Inauguration Day, if need be’?”
Hillary was sobbing when she called Jane Sherburne, the White House attorney in charge of scandal management.
Had Jane read the Klein column?
Yes.
“It’s killing me to let this happen,” Hillary said. She wanted to testify, to make it better, to take care of it. “Every bone in my body tells me that’s what I should do.”
She could not stand by and let Maggie be hurt so, have others dragged in.
“How is Maggie?”
Sherburne said they both knew Maggie was both vulnerable and tough. She was willing to throw herself in front of any train and get beat up.
Hillary’s voice caught and she gasped in short breaths.
Testifying, Sherburne said, would be a mixed blessing. It would be such a sensation. The pure spectacle of the first lady appearing before Congress would overshadow anything she said. Were there words she could say that would resolve the issues and answer all the questions? They would always find more questions.
“I got to do this,” Hillary said, gaining strength, taking deeper, measured breaths. “I’m going to do it.”