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_Wednesday May 12, 6:27 AM 

Kathleen Willey Links White House to Witness Intimidation_ 

Breaking a 14-month media silence about the events surrounding her alleged
sexual assault by President Clinton, on Tuesday Kathleen Willey linked two
friends of the president's to separate episodes of witness intimidation. 
Appearing on CNBC's "Hardball" with Chris Matthews, Willey alleged that former
Commerce Secretary and longtime Clinton operative Mickey Kantor had threatened
her friend Julie Hiatt Steele to get her to change her story. 

Willey said that she was persuaded to go public with her own account in March
1998 only when producers for CBS's "60 Minutes" unearthed Kantor's involvement
and shared the information with her: 

"They told me that my friend Julie Steele had been approached by a very
high-ranking member of the Clinton administration questioning her about the
conditions of the adoption of her child. ... I decided that no woman, no
person, no mother should be threatened with her child. And that was the reason
I did '60 Minutes.'" 

Willey said that "60 Minutes" producers specifically identified the
administration official to her as Kantor. She told Matthews that "60 Minutes"
had promised to expose the cover-up as part of the same episode where she
described her assault by Clinton but instead decided to withhold the Kantor
bombshell. 

For the last year, Steele has publicly claimed that it was the Office of
Independent Counsel that had investigated her son's adoption to pressure her
to lie. But in sworn testimony during the April trial of Susan McDougal on
contempt and obstruction charges, Steele admitted that the OIC had done no
such thing. 

In August 1997, Steele told Newsweek reporter Michael Isikoff that Willey
informed her of the Clinton assault right after it happened. But later Steele
claimed Willey asked her to lie. The discrepancy played a role in keeping
Willey's assault charge out of the impeachment case against President Clinton. 
In another shocking exchange, Willey established a separate White House link
to the encounter she had with a jogger who threatened her two days before her
January 1998 deposition in the Paula Jones case. 

Willey told CNBC's Matthews that she was approached at dawn as she walked
through her Virginia neighborhood by a total stranger who seemed to know a lot
about her personal life: 

"He asked me, 'Did you ever find your cat?' And I said, 'No, I haven't, and we
really miss him.' Then he said, 'Did you ever get those tires fixed on your
car?' And I said, 'No,' and that's when the hair started standing up on the
back of my neck." 

Willey said the stranger identified her pet by name, saying, "That cat, he was
a nice cat. Bull's-eye was his name, wasn't it?" Willey added, "He asked me
about my children by name. He said, 'How are your children, Shannon and
Patrick?' It was a very insidious thing, and it was meant to scare me." 

The former White House volunteer said she was able to identify the stranger as
someone "associated with" Clinton after being shown photos by investigators.
She would not publicly reveal her tormentor's name, but Matthews' questions
narrowed the field down to three people: 

MATTHEWS: Would I recognize the picture? 

WILLEY: Yes. 

MATTHEWS: Is it someone in the president's family of friends? Is it somebody
related to Strobe Talbott? Is it a Shearer? 

WILLEY: I can't say. I've been asked not to by the Office of Independent
Counsel, because they are investigating this. 

Derek, Cody and Brooke Shearer are longtime friends of the Clintons who have
been linked in published reports to IGI, the White House's regular private
detective agency run by Terry Lenzner. Brooke Shearer is married to Deputy
Secretary of State Strobe Talbott. 

At the conclusion of the hourlong interview, Matthews asked the Virginia
woman, "Would you like an apology from [Clinton]? 

Willey answered in one word, "Yes." 



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