SUING MICHAEL ISIKOFF

Does Steele’s name ring a bell? She is an ex-confidante of Kathleen Willey, the woman who claims that the president accosted her in a room off the Oval Office. At first, Steele supported her friend’s story, telling Isikoff that Willey had come to her in distress only hours after the alleged incident occurred. Later, though, Steele changed her tune, explaining to Isikoff that Willey, out of desperation and connivance, had asked her to lie.

Steele maintains that she and Isikoff agreed that their conversations would be off the record. She further insists that Isikoff’s violation of this alleged agreement has cost her money, honor, and peace of mind. So she has socked him — and Newsweek — with a lawsuit charging nine counts of (among other offenses) breach of contract, unjust enrichment, and fraud.

Newsweek states emphatically that Isikoff has done nothing wrong. Ann McDaniel, the magazine’s Washington bureau chief, says that Steele has lodged “a ridiculous complaint” and that “we have the utmost confidence” in Isikoff, who “knows the difference between off the record and on the record.”

Still, no reporter likes to be sued. Isikoff will almost certainly find himself distracted as he fends off a legal attack — which will presumably be fine with the White House. Steele and her lawyers deny that they are part of a Democratic cabal, but skeptics — many of whom are in the Washington press corps — smell a rat. They suspect that Steele is being used to harass and silence a journalist who vexes the president. Willey has described her former friend, Steele, as a “pawn,” deployed by the Clintonites “to discredit me.” And while Steele’s lawyers declare their independence from the Clinton operation, they are hardly political innocents.

On the day she filed her law-suit, Steele testified before Kenneth Starr’s grand jury. She also took the occasion to read a statement to the press — the opening shot in a public-relations offensive. “Over a year ago,” she said, “I made two mistakes: I did a favor for a person I thought was my friend, and I trusted a reporter.” She then addressed herself to the president: “Although I did not vote for Mr. Clinton, I want to apologize to the president and his family. I deeply regret that my mistakes were used to cause them harm, and I assure you — these are my words — I have not been asked to say this. Or anything else on this matter.”

Steele uttered this last part apparently to quiet speculation about her motives. Her lawyers insist that she is a relatively apolitical person, a Republican if anything, who cast votes for Ronald Reagan and George Bush. One of those lawyers, John Coale — who is among the bar’s most colorful figures — says that Steele filed her suit for a simple reason: “Her life has not been very nice” since Isikoff printed her name almost a year ago. She has lost her job. she has lost her earning potential. She has lost her standing in the community. She has, in short, been made “notorious.”

Speaking of notorious, Steele’s lawyers are worth a look. Her first was John West, from Richmond, Va., where Steele was living at the time of her encounters with Isikoff. She soon switched, however, to a Washington superlawyer, Nancy Luque. West declines to say how he came to be hired by Steele and why he ceased to represent her. Luque, too, is hesitant to discuss the circumstances of her engagement, but she does say that “my representation of Julie has nothing to do with the White House or the president’s other counsel or anything else concerning politics.”

Luque (pronounced “Lukey”) is a fixture in the capital’s legal establishment. Her clients have included the spy Jonathan Pollard and the employees of Dan Rostenkowski, the Chicago Democrat recently released from jail. Lately, Luque has represented the Clinton-Gore campaign in the fund-raising investigation, as well as Asiagate defendants Melinda Yee and Maria Hsia (who, Luque cautioned the press, should not be viewed as “a sort of Mata Hari” of A1 Gore’s Buddhist temple). Is she a Democratic lawyer? Luque protests, “I do not choose clients by looking at their voter-registration cards, and the notion that I would be carrying anyone’s water is insulting. I really am not a political animal — though I know no one will believe that.”

Michael Madigan is one who is not quite willing to believe it. The former majority counsel to Sen. Fred Thompson’s special committee, Madigan says that Luque “is an outstanding lawyer — so I’m surprised to see her in such an obviously b.s. case.” Luque, for her part, states flatly that she has had no contact with the White House or its allies about either Steele’s grand-jury testimony or the suit against Isikoff.

While Luque is handling the grand-jury matter, John Coale has charge of the lawsuit. How did that happen? Luque, a criminal lawyer, drew up a list of plaintiff’s attorneys, from which her client selected Coale. Asked to explain Steele’s choice, Luque notes that “Julie is a fan of Mr. Coale’s wife.”

That would be Greta van Susteren, the CNN legal analyst who rose to fame during the O. J. Simpson trial. Her husband is known as the “Master of Disaster,” an attorney quick to the scene of a catastrophe. In 1987, the Washington Post’s Style section asked, “Is John Coale really the sleaziest lawyer in America?” Coale himself has admitted to being “an ambulance chaser,” a “bad boy,” a “known sleazebag.” He was the first American lawyer to arrive at Bhopal, India, after the Union Carbide accident. Similarly, he was present in San Juan following the horrible hotel fire of 1986. Later, he represented Lisa Marie Presley in her divorce from Michael Jackson.

In 1997, Coale had his biggest strike ever, leading the trial lawyers in their $ 368 billion suit against the tobacco companies. He is eager to point out that Ken Starr has toiled for the other side, presenting the independent counsel with “a raving conflict of interest.” Coale is also willing to comment on certain small-fry claims: When President Clinton twisted his ankle at the golfer Greg Norman’s estate, Coale suggested that the injury was “worth $ 850,000 minimum — add another $ 200,000 if the county it happened in went Democrat.” Just last month, Coale and his wife were guests at a White House state dinner.

Finally — to burnish the lore — Coale received the American Lawyer’s Most Frivolous Suit Award for 1986. Apparently, he had filed a counterclaim against an Indian tailor who helped him line up Union Carbide clients and then demanded fees. Coale alleged that the man had done a shoddy job on nine custom-made shirts and that the ungainly fit had subjected him to “public humiliation,” “severe emotional distress,” and “embarrassment” — much the language that appears in Steele’s complaint. (Coale later asserted that his “counter-claim” had been an elaborate ruse.)

Coale says that he investigated Steele’s contentions for two months before agreeing to take her case. It will not be, he vows, a matter of “he said, she said.” He says that he will demonstrate that Isikoff unlawfully deceived his client. Coale even dangles the possibility that Steele, a la Tripp, has a tape or two up her sleeve. He further boasts that he will prove that the alleged incident involving Clinton and Kathleen Willey never took place: “We’re going to show that it did not happen.” Coale, like Nancy Luque, states that he has never discussed Julie Steele with anyone at the White House or with any Clinton associates.

Legally, Coale intends to rely on a 1991 Supreme Court case, Cohen v. Cowles Media, which holds that the First Amendment does not protect a journalist from burning a source — that is, breaking a “contract” with someone to whom he has pledged anonymity. But Bruce Sanford, a prominent Washington media attorney, calls Cohen an “idiosyncratic case,” whose “facts are somewhat aberrational.” While Cohen may have “legal relevance” to the Steele-Isikoff fight, says Sanford, it has little “factual relevance,” as “the difference between the two cases is enormous.”

Steele v. Isikoff may well provide a measure of excitement. Coale told CNN’s Larry King that Isikoff is “a guy, I think, who had it in for the president. He had troubles with the Washington Post over this very issue. That will come out in our lawsuit.” Coale was evidently referring to Isikoff’s two-week suspension from the Washington Post in 1994 for insubordination, following a stormy confrontation with his editors over their spiking of his work on Paula Jones. Shortly after that episode, Isikoff moved to Newsweek (also owned by the Washington Post Company).

Coale further charges that Isikoff slandered Steele by telling a television audience that she had attempted to peddle her story to a tabloid (though Coale concedes that Steele sold a photo of Willey with Clinton to the National Enquirer). Willey, too, is expected to appear as a witness in the case — and the blood between her and her onetime friend remains bad.

The various Clinton “-gates” may lack a Wood-ward and Bernstein, but Mike Isikoff comes close. He is straight out of the president’s nightmares. Bob Woodward, who once hired Isikoff, says that the Newsweek reporter does “superb” work, in accordance with “the strictest standards.” The “Nixonites,” Woodward notes, “tried to make the reporters, rather than themselves, the issue — as had administrations before them — and obviously the same sort of thing is going on now with Mike.”

Isikoff may be able to slough off this lawsuit against him, pursuing his quarry as usual. But the president and his men would no doubt enjoy seeing him knocked off his game.

Jay Nordlinger is associate editor of THE WEEKLY STANDARD.