3rd Woman in Clinton Saga Maintains Her Silence

Not far from Washington’s Beltway lies a connection between Monica S. Lewinsky and Paula Corbin Jones.

Kathleen E. Willey, a former flight attendant and White House assistant, sits in silence inside her lakeside home at the end of a single lane outside Richmond.

Like Lewinsky and Jones, Willey, who is 51 and widowed, also allegedly had an intimate encounter with President Clinton. And as with the others, accounts of what happened to her are fraught with contradiction:

Willey was not accosted by the president; she was. She enjoyed the experience; it made her sick. She recruited a friend to lie about what happened; she has always told the truth. So the stories go.

Those variations compare with the other two women. Jones, in her lawsuit against Clinton, maintains that she was repulsed by his alleged sexual advances in a Little Rock, Ark., hotel room. Yet, according to another account, she told friends that he was “sweet, very sweet.”

Lewinsky allegedly bragged about sexual liaisons with the president in an anteroom outside the Oval Office. But she also frequently derided him as “the big creep.”

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These twists help explain the continuing dispute over whether crimes, consensual acts or fabrications account for the allegations that plague Clinton and his presidency.

In the end, a judgment on Willey’s encounter could help tip the balance. Under subpoena from Jones’ lawyers, Willey has provided a deposition about her episode with Clinton. The lawyers are expected to use it to help show a pattern of predatory behavior by the president against women.

In his investigation of the Lewinsky matter, independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr has obtained the Willey deposition. Starr is trying to determine whether Clinton lied under oath in his sworn statements about his dealings with Lewinsky, the former White House intern, and other women.

Willey has yet to publicly tell her tale and likely will not do so until Jones’ lawsuit against Clinton goes to trial this spring.

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Even Daniel Gecker, her Richmond lawyer, says little, except for a terse affirmation that she “had and continues to have an excellent relationship with the president.”

She was once married to Ed Willey Jr., a politically prominent Richmond attorney and son of the late state Sen. Edward E. Willey. After their wedding in 1971, the couple became visible in the Richmond social scene. She is dark and pretty, seen in photos with long, flowing hair. He was a handsome Southern gentleman who dressed well, drove pricey cars and was known around town for his gift of oratory.

He found his niche handling real estate zoning matters. Suburban Richmond was growing in the 1980s, and he made his mark in appearances before the Planning Commission and the Board of Supervisors, representing disgruntled property owners.

The Willeys also were Democratic Party players. She was energetic and served as a senior campaign volunteer in the late 1980s for L. Douglas Wilder’s gubernatorial campaign in Virginia.

They contributed $10,000 to Clinton for his White House bid in 1992. On election night, the Willeys flew to Little Rock to help celebrate his victory over President Bush.

Kathleen Willey visited the new president in the White House in November 1993. At the time, she and her husband were experiencing severe financial problems. He was under investigation in Richmond for embezzling about $250,000 from a client, and the couple faced mounting debt because of other legal problems.

Kathleen Willey had worked earlier as a volunteer for Clinton in the White House social office, but this time she came to see the president about a paying job. What happened in that meeting in the Oval Office on Nov. 29, 1993, is now the subject of intense interest.

According to the deposition she has filed in the Jones case, sources say, Willey said Clinton kissed, fondled and groped her but stopped when she resisted. Linda Tripp, a White House employee at the time and now a witness in the Lewinsky matter, has said she saw Willey leave the office disheveled but seemingly delighted. Clinton has denied that any inappropriate behavior occurred.

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Whatever happened, Willey’s life suddenly changed--though not, at the time, because of the meeting. She returned to Richmond and buried her husband.

He was found dead on Nov. 30, 1993. He had been shot once in the head, apparently by his own hand, his body discovered in a forest a short walk from his car. He was 60.

She then moved to Washington and went to work for Clinton.

For 10 months, beginning in December 1993, she had a paying job in the White House counsel’s office. Two years later, she served with U.S. delegations to international conferences on social development in Copenhagen and on biodiversity in Jakarta, Indonesia.

She also was keeping an eye on the continuing legal disputes over her late husband’s affairs. Anthony Lanasa, a Richmond produce salesman, sued her for $250,000, money he said he should have received from her husband in a land case. But Lanasa lost when she managed to shift much of that money, along with life insurance proceeds, to her two children.

Lanasa said he is owed about $400,000--the original amount, plus interest and attorney fees.

“She’s done everything in the world to find a slick way to beat me,” he complained.

The Willey-Clinton Oval Office episode remained unknown until Joseph Cammarata, one of Jones’ former lawyers, received a phone tip in January 1997 from an unidentified woman who said, simply: “I had a similar thing happen to me.”

The Jones lawyers have not cleared up who exactly made the phone call. But with some investigation they learned about Willey and found her in Richmond.

Her attorney, Gecker, tried to block a subpoena from Jones’ lawyers. In legal papers filed here, he termed the subpoena “a gross invasion of privacy.”

Willey, he added, “never asked for public scrutiny of her private life, and she does not want to be drawn into . . . Jones’ legal battle with the president.”

Around that same time, Newsweek began investigating the Willey story, encouraged by the recollections of Tripp, who is an increasingly embittered critic of the Clintons.

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Tripp told the magazine that Willey gave her a vivid account of her Oval Office encounter and added that Willey was in no way “appalled.”

Willey has given her own account now of the episode in her deposition. But there is yet another twist.

Last year, when her name first surfaced, Newsweek also talked to Julie Steele, Willey’s longtime friend in Richmond. Steele told the magazine that Willey had once graphically described being fondled by Clinton and that she had been “upset, very upset by the incident.”

But in a subsequent interview, Steele told the magazine that she had made that story up after Willey asked her to lie to corroborate her account.

Like Willey, Steele now refuses to discuss the matter. But her lawyer, John West of Richmond, said Steele’s about-face has ruined her friendship with Willey.

“Ms. Steele does not know what happened in the White House,” West said. “Her only involvement was that she lied initially to corroborate what Mrs. Willey told her to say. She wishes in hindsight she had told the truth.”

West added that Willey wanted Steele to lie for her so it did not appear that she had enjoyed an encounter with Clinton.

Willey’s account is expected to be made public after the Jones’ suit goes to trial in May. She is expected to testify under subpoena before the federal grand jury in Washington investigating the Lewinsky matter.