Book Description
"I realized something that should have been apparent
to me much earlier: I was in the middle of a plot to get the
president."
A quarter of a century after Woodward and Bernstein's
history-making expose All the President's Men stunned
the nation by capturing the Nixon presidency in the throes of
turmoil, Newsweek reporter Michael Isikoff gives us an
equally explosive and surprisingly suspenseful
behind-the-scenes account of his investigative role in the
scandals that have rocked President Clinton's second term and
led to the historic vote for impeachment that will define his
presidency.
Isikoff, who is credited with breaking the Paula Jones,
Kathleen Willey and Monica Lewinsky stories, is universally
acknowledged as the leading reporter who brought to light the
incredible revelations about Clinton's personal and political
lives that have consumed this country and shocked the world.
As a reporter for the Washington Post and Newsweek,
Isikoff has established himself as an astute observer and
chronicler of Clinton's conduct throughout his presidency,
following a trail of presidential misconduct from Little
Rock, Arkansas, to the Oval Office. But Isikoff also
unwittingly became a primary character in the unfolding
Clinton drama. This is a story only he could tell, a gripping
narrative of how one journalist went from battling skeptical
editors and a formidable White House spin machine in his
quest for the truth about Clinton to becoming a central
participant in one of the biggest scandals in American
political history.
Featuring a cast of bizarre characters who make this book
as entertaining to read as a novel, Uncovering Clinton is
also a nuanced and scrupulously fair account with a wealth of
never-before-told information about the major players and
events in the Clinton scandals, including:
The real reasons why some Washington Post reporters
and editors believed Paula Jones's story from the start--and
why Isikoff's story nonetheless was later killed before it
ran. How George Stephanopolous covered for Clinton as Isikoff
pursued the Paula Jones story.
How Lucianne Goldberg's private notebook and tapes of her
phone calls with Linda Tripp show that while Tripp was crying
"victim" to the press, she was really plotting to
bring down the president and betray Monica Lewinsky--and
write a book about it all.
The real truth behind Hillary Clinton's oft-cited
"vast right-wing conspiracy"--a coterie of
right-wing lawyers known as "the elves" who
secretly wrote the Jones legal briefs and arranged to bring
the Lewinsky story to Ken Starr's office and to public light.
How Linda Tripp manipulated Ken Starr's prosecutors into
launching a criminal investigation into the Lewinsky matter
while withholding critical information, including her
repeated contacts with Isikoff.
Isikoff had no agenda when he started investigating
President Clinton's conduct other than to get at the truth.
Now, after accomplishing a remarkable case of journalistic
detective work, Isikoff gives us something even more
significant: a work that illuminates the psychologically
troubling behavior of a president, an Administration that has
enabled his actions, a motley crew of Clinton-haters who
would stop at nothing to topple the president, and a rapidly
changing media grappling with the ever-shifting boundaries
between public and private behavior. Uncovering Clinton will
surely be the definitive account of our nation's biggest
political scandal since Watergate.
