THE DEATH OF AMERICAN VIRTUE: Clinton vs. Starr by author and interim dean and professor of law at Duquesne University Ken Gormley, tells the complete, balanced, and revealing story of the scandals that nearly destroyed Bill Clinton’s presidency. Reflecting a decade of research and unprecedented access, it is a book that Clinton supporters and detractors will both love and be troubled by.
Ken on Fox & Friends - 2-17-10
Ken on The Today Show - 2-16-10
NY Times Review - 2-14-10
THE DEATH OF AMERICAN VIRTUE is filled with new revelations and fresh details that are sure to make headlines on both sides, including:
• Extensive first-person interviews with President Clinton, Kenneth Starr, Monica Lewinsky, Linda Tripp, Paula Jones, Susan McDougal, Henry Hyde, Supreme Court justices, and a host of other key players in the drama
• Personal correspondence to and from Ken Starr, never before made public, as he was seeking to prosecute the president and First Lady
• A shocking revelation that resolves one of the great mysteries of the Clinton wars - something that Ken Starr and his prosecutors always suspected but could never prove: confirmation that Susan McDougal did in fact have a brief, intimate affair with then-Governor Clinton
• Chilling new details concerning the death of White House lawyer Vince Foster, including a firsthand account by the only person to identify his body at the morgue
• New evidence that Bill Clinton’s lawyers would have offered at trial in order to destroy the civil lawsuit filed by Paula Jones, and extensive documents from the Jones lawyers revealing their strategy to defeat the president
• Evidence that the Starr prosecutors came to distrust Linda Tripp after FBI lab tests indicated that some of her taped conversations with Monica Lewinsky contained unexplained erasures, directly contradicting her sworn testimony. This discovery forced Starr’s office to scrub and rewrite its original version of the Starr Report to omit all references to Tripp’s suspect tapes.
• Never-before-released psychiatric records for convicted Whitewater felon Jim McDougal during his time in federal prison that reveal his desperate efforts to supply incriminating evidence against the Clintons, and the startling circumstances that led to his death in solitary confinement
• New information concerning the effort by Starr’s prosecutors to indict First Lady Hillary Clinton. Even the Clintons themselves remain unaware of the details of that proposed indictment, released in this book for the first time
• Monica Lewinsky’s previously untold account of the whereabouts of the elusive blue dress - stained with President Clinton’s semen and DNA - that Starr’s office could not locate until she turned it over
• Linda Tripp’s startling assertion that she believed President Bill Clinton was trying to “hit on her” when she worked as an assistant stationed outside the Oval Office - and how she believes that First Lady Hillary Clinton intentionally moved her to a new job, upstairs in the West Wing, as part of “a pattern of moving temptation away from the president.”
Steadfast supporters of the Clintons will point to disclosures made in the book such as:
• Damning information concerning the Justice Department’s internal investigation of Ken Starr’s prosecutors relating to their handling of the initial sting of Monica Lewinsky (the secret report has been blocked from public view and is still under seal)
• Attorney General Janet Reno’s blunt assessment of Ken Starr as independent counsel
• New evidence that Starr’s office drafted an impeachment referral to Congress, based upon weak Whitewater evidence, before the Lewinsky affair ever came to light
• Evidence showing that the decision by Ken Starr’s office to expand into the explosive Lewinsky case - perhaps the most important decision in its four-year investigation - was made with virtually no input from Starr himself
• A never-before-told account of how the FBI tried to “set up” the Secret Service by making that agency believe that President Clinton’s DNA was not on Monica Lewinsky’s blue dress
• Strong evidence that the so-called “distinguishing characteristic” on Clinton’s body (which Paula Jones insisted would prove Clinton exposed himself to her), did not exist
• Surprise film footage of Paula Jones telling her story before it gained national media attention that likely would have sunk her case if she went to trial
• Proof that Starr’s office aggressively lobbied Janet Reno and Eric Holder to take over the Lewinsky case, which contradicts statements made by Starr and his prosecutors that they reluctantly agreed to handle the case only after being pressed to do so by Reno and her team
Defenders of special prosecutor Ken Starr will point to new revelations including:
• A direct admission by Monica Lewinsky, made for the first time, that Bill Clinton lied under oath during his grand jury testimony
• New evidence that Clinton’s advisers had serious concerns, in the summer of ’99, that he would be removed from office by members of his own party
• President Gerald Ford’s surprising disclosure, before his death, of his secret effort to convince President Clinton to admit that he lied under oath in order to work out a censure deal and avoid a Senate impeachment trial - and Clinton’s adamant refusal to make that admission
• Information revealing, for the first time, that Judge Susan Webber Wright seriously considered finding Clinton in criminal contempt in the midst of the Senate impeachment trial - a move that could have ended Clinton’s presidency by providing the Senate with a distinctive finding of criminal conduct
• Surprising evidence that before the Lewinsky investigation broke open, Ken Starr - despite White House portrayals of him as a rabid political zealot out to bring down President Clinton - was generally neutral and deferential toward the president in his role as Whitewater prosecutor
• Unvarnished comments made by Monica Lewinsky and her family disclosing their true feelings about Bill Clinton today
THE DEATH OF AMERICAN VIRTUE is an epic work of nonfiction about a scandal that left bodies littered across the road. It is the final word on the Clinton/Starr struggle, a political battle that divided America like none other in modern history and forced Americans of all political stripes to reevaluate the wisdom of partisan warfare with no boundaries. In an age when public servants of both political parties and their supporters often risk destroying the institutions of government they are sworn to protect in the name of advancing their own versions of American virtue, this book is a sobering reminder that “going rogue” comes at a dangerously high price to our nation.
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