GOOD OLD RELIABLE NATHAN

With the impeachment over and Kenneth Starr supposedly fading, Landow, like other scandal fixtures, might have hoped his life would settle down. But a new development in an old scandal threatens to envelop him. At January’s end, ABC News and the Washington Post reported that Nate Landow’s personal attorney had hired a private investigator to investigate Kathleen Willey — during the period when Willey was a witness in the Paula Jones case.

ABC reported that the investigator, Jared Stern, hired in March 1998, was asked to secure Willey’s phone records and to find out what medications she was taking (sources close to Stern say he was asked to do more than this, but they won’t specify what). While Stern confirms his hiring and demurs on the particulars of the investigation, his lawyer says Stern was so uncomfortable about his assigned task that he called Willey using an alias and left a warning on her answering machine. Stern tells me cryptically that the call had “multiple objectives.” He now has immunity from prosecution and has twice testified before the Starr grand jury. With that grand jury recently reconvened, sources say Landow’s dealings with Kathleen Willey — one of last year’s murkiest subplots — are near the top of Starr’s list of unfinished business.

A financially strapped Richmond socialite and former White House volunteer, Kathleen Willey hadn’t wanted to testify about what she alleged were unwelcome sexual advances by the president when she met him in the oval Office to ask for a job. But shortly before Newsweek surfaced Willey in August 1997, Paula Jones’s lawyers subpoenaed her, setting several events in motion. As Willey maneuvered to avoid being deposed, nervous Clinton lawyers courted her, hoping to keep her hostile to the Jones team. At one point, Willey’s attorney said, Clinton lawyer Bob Bennett attempted to secure for Willey the services of criminal defense attorney Plato Cacheris (who later represented Monica Lewinsky).

But eventually, Willey became a cooperating witness before Starr’s grand jury. As she testified in March 1998, she had been the object of an anonymous intimidation campaign the previous fall. Her tires had been punctured, her cat had gone missing, and two days before testifying in the Paula Jones case, she had been approached by a mysterious jogger who had alluded to the cat and the tires before mentioning her children by name. He had also asked whether she “got the message.” When Jones’s lawyers finally deposed Willey, they inquired whether anyone had encouraged her not to testify about her Clinton allegations. She said “no.” But a few weeks later, she amended her deposition to read, “Nate Landow discussed my upcoming deposition testimony with me.”

Landow had been introduced to Willey in 1994 by his daughter, Harolyn Cardozo, who served with Willey as a White House volunteer. Sources close to Landow say his daughter had hoped to set the two up romantically. Landow was recently divorced, and Willey’s husband had killed himself — the very day of her Oval Office visit. Willey went to Landow’s Eastern Shore estate on a few occasions, and her friends say that Landow pursued her, though she didn’t reciprocate. Sources close to Landow have claimed theirs was “a normal male-female relationship,” though Landow has denied they ever dated.

Reporters first took notice of Landow in February 1998. From the start, he seemed possessed of a Clintonian inability to keep his story straight. When first contacted by ABC news, Landow called Willey a “distant acquaintance” and claimed he hadn’t even known she’d been subpoenaed by the Jones team until the reporter informed him. In mid-March, however, Newsweek revealed that Landow had chartered a plane to fly Willey to his estate the previous October. Willey’s status was immediately upgraded: A statement by Landow’s lawyers now called her “a social acquaintance and a friend of the family.”

Around the same time, Landow, who had already denied knowing of Willey’s Jones travails until four months after their October meeting, admitted to reporters that he had flown Willey out at her suggestion, because she was “distraught” and felt “harassed” by people “who were hounding her to testify.” He had simply told her to “do what was right for her.” (Willey has been publicly mum about her conversations with Landow, but sources with knowledge of her grand jury testimony say she insists that Landow initiated the contact and that he repeatedly pressed her not to testify against Clinton in the Jones case.)

Though Landow has denied that he attempted to influence Willey’s testimony and that he worked with the White House to keep her from testifying, even his daughter, a vehement defender and a vice president in his company, has long since abandoned the initial claim that he didn’t talk to Willey about her testimony. “I’d be very surprised if he didn’t take the opportunity to offer his opinions, which he’s well known for doing,” says Harolyn Cardozo.

But worse for Landow is his newly outed private investigator, Jared Stern. Landow, it should be noted, vehemently denies Stern in his investigator at all. Landow’s attorney, Joe Caldwell, says Stern’s firm, Prudential Associates, of Rockville, Md., was hired by Saul Schwartzbach, Landow’s personal attorney. Landow has insisted that Schwartzbach hired the firm without his knowledge to help put together a “chronology” of the Willey matter — never mind that Schwartzbach has been Landow’s lawyer and friend for three decades, that their offices are on the same floor of the same building, and that Landow acquaintances say his children call Schwartzbach “Uncle Saul.”

Stern was put on the case by Bob Miller, who headed Prudential Associates until his death last summer. Stern says Miller gave him the assignment during a conversation in a Rockville parking garage at night. “I remember exactly what I said,” recalls Stern. “I said, ‘Where is this coming from?’ And [Miller] said, ‘The White House.'” Stern makes clear he is not alleging that the White House hired him — simply that this is what his late boss told him. The White House denies the allegation.

Stern also makes clear he has never met or talked to Landow, who in turn denies knowledge of Stern’s hiring. This, however, is a major point of contention. While Stern declines to say whether anyone told him Landow knew of his hiring, sources with Knowledge of his grand jury testimony say Stern has asserted that both his boss and Schwartzbach told him Landow knew about it. Likewise, a source with intimate knowledge of the case says that last spring both Miller and Schwartzbach “vigorously” instructed Stern to destroy any records linking Prudential Associates to Landow and Schwartzbach. In addition, says the source, Stern has told investigators that his late boss specified that Landow wanted the records destroyed. If proven, this could be problematic for Landow, who at the time was under subpoena to produce any evidence regarding Kathleen Willey.

While both Landow and Schwartzbach decline interviews on the subject, Joe Caldwell, the attorney representing them, says, “I can assure you that neither Saul Schwartzbach nor Nathan Landow ever asked anyone connected to any detective agency to destroy records in connection with Kathleen Willey.” Still, there is the matter of the investigation itself, and whether it was connected to a campaign of intimidation. Stern says that, although he personally was not the thuggish jogger (whose encounter with Willey took place two months before Stern was hired), he believes Willey’s story on the basis of what he was asked to do.

Furthermore, a close inspection of the timeline reveals that even after Willey had testified and gone public on 60 Minutes, Landow had an motive for reaching out to her. After Willey amended her Jones deposition to admit that Landow had conversed with her about her upcoming testimony, the Jones lawyers sought a second deposition to probe that very subject, and they secured the deposition date of April 4, 1998. That second appointment was not kept. As luck would have it, the Jones case was dismissed on April 1 — one week after Stern’s warning call to Willey.

What further bodes ill for Landow is his own reaction to the matter. While he’s maintained his absolute innocence to journalists, he’s taken a different tack under oath. In front of both Starr’s grand jury and House Judiciary Committee investigators, Landow pled his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination.

The White House has taken care to distance itself from Landow, with aides anonymously portraying him as an Al Gore lapdog more than a Clinton fixer. A longtime Gore loyalist, Landow was finance chairman of Gore’s 1988 presidential run. When Gore hit Landow up for a $ 25,000 contribution during his infamous White House telemarketing campaign, Landow sent the money over in less than an hour. “Thanks!” Gore graciously declared in a note. “One hour is a record!” But Landow, once again straining credulity, told the New York Post he had no memory of the vice president’s phone call.

Despite his Gorephilia, Landow is no friend of the administration, Clintonites claim. A New York Times account of a 1992 post-election celebration of Clinton aides had Rahm Emanuel driving a steak knife into the table as he declared Landow and other political enemies “dead” (Landow had backed Paul Tsongas before throwing his support to Clinton). But Landow’s administration ties are not as distant as aides would have reporters believe. Landow carted around the back-nine with the president during Clinton’s 1995 vacation in Jackson Hole. He has been business partners with Vernon Jordan. Vince Foster tried to decompress at Landow’s estate over the final weekend of his life. And Landow’s son-in-law, Michael Cardozo, headed Clinton’s first legal-defense fund.

While no evidence has emerged (other than the private investigator’s representations) that Landow served as an agent of the White House in the attempt to silence Kathleen Willey, a source with intimate knowledge of the case notes the convergence of interests between Landow, himself under Starr’s magnifying glass for his contacts with Willey, and the White House. Asks the source, “Wouldn’t it be perfect to use someone who had his own motives?”

Not helping to deflect suspicion is Landow’s own modus operandi: No one will accuse him of having a light touch. During an interview last year with the Washington Post’s Peter Carlson — whose very purpose was to profile a man suspected of improperly influencing a witness — Landow twice offered the reporter the free use of his Aspen vacation home. During a 1980s dispute with National Institutes of Health tenants who rented a floor of a D.C. building that he owned, Landow was enjoined by the U.S. District Court from “harassing, verbally abusing, intimidating or threatening” the federal workers during the remaining years of their lease.

Landow has been known to counter inquiring reporters with blue-streak epithets. And as Maryland Democratic party chairman in 1992, Landow nearly began a wrestling match with then-governor William Donald Schaefer as they battled for the microphone to announce their state’s tally at the Democratic National Convention.

Schaefer had tried to have Landow ousted as party chairman, for, among other things, his Pol Pot management style. During his three-year tenure in the post, newspapers quoted fellow Democrats charging Landow was a “bully,” had “an ego problem,” and wanted “to run the world.” A veteran of the party’s central committee said, “One day he called me, screaming and hollering, telling me I couldn’t be trusted and saying he was gonna get me. ‘What did I do?’ I asked him. He would never even tell me. I was just stunned.” Landow denied it, and by the time he moved on, he claimed he’d left the party much better than he’d found it, though his successor, on taking over, declared, “The first thing to do is an audit. . . . We don’t know how much is fact and how much is fiction of Nate’s.”

Maybe Landow should be dismissed as just another mercurial mogul. But he has also been linked to more sinister storylines. In 1978, Landow, a big Carter booster, saw his expected ambassadorial nomination torpedoed after the Washington Post ran a lengthy expose of his business association with three suspected organized-crime figures. A St. Maarten’s hotel/casino deal Landow was contemplating had connections to Edward Cellini, an international gambling figure banned from Britain and the Bahamas because he’d operated Meyer Lansky’s Cuban casinos. Landow later told the Miami Herald he knew Cellini only as “some hotel owner in the islands.”

On the same project, Landow enlisted ski buddy Lester Matz, the Maryland construction engineer who admitted paying kickbacks to Spiro Agnew. In the early ’70s, Florida law enforcement authorities reported that Anthony Plate, the Gambinos’ man in Miami, was believed to have a 25 percent investment in a masonry firm of which Landow was listed as vice president and director.

But the Post article centered on Landow’s connection to Joe Nesline, a “consultant” to Landow on an Atlantic City hotel/casino project that never came about. Nesline was an international gambling figure with Genovese family connections and an arrest record spanning 40 years. His association with Landow came to light in 1978 after an FBI raid on his apartment — which he rented from Landow. Landow claimed not to know of Nesline’s reputation. In 1980 he told the Miami Herald that theirs was “nothing more than a normal landlord-tenant relationship.” He appeared, however, to have forgotten he had told the Post two years earlier that Nesline paid his rent in cash, that Nesline had arranged for Landow’s parents to take a free trip to Las Vegas and Yugoslavia (where Nesline owned a casino), and that the IRS had quizzed Landow about Nesline six or seven years prior to the raid. Though several agencies investigated, Landow was never charged with a crime. He represented the whole business association with the suspected mobster as a mistake — a mistake for which his lawyer, Saul Schwartzbach, assumed blame.

While that saga is ancient history, an episode from the recent past has commanded the attention of Starr’s investigators. Fred Thompson’s Senate report on fund-raising abuses in the 1996 campaign called it one of “the most sordid” of the DNC’s shakedowns. During the campaign, Oklahoma’s Cheyenne and Arapaho tribe forked over $ 107,000 to the DNC in hopes of getting back 7,500 acres of land the government seized from them in the nineteenth century. Though the contribution depleted the welfare fund of a tribe with an average annual income of $ 6,000, it earned tribal representatives a lunch date with Clinton and not much else. So the Cheyenne and Arapaho enlisted Democratic operative Mike Copperthite, who took them to Landow in hopes of trading on the latter’s administration access.

Landow touted his White House connections and those of his friend Peter Knight, a Washington lobbyist and Clinton/Gore ’96 campaign manager. Landow negotiated with the tribe for an upfront $ 100,000 payment to Knight’s firm, to be followed by a $ 10,000 monthly retained. Landow’s cut was a hefty 10 percent of any settlement price for development of the land, plus 10 percent of the land’s revenue from oil and gas extraction.

While the tribe thought that a bit steep, its representatives kept negotiating with Landow, assured that the man who bragged of smoking Cuban cigars at the White House could win their claim. But when they met with him in 1997, they left their tribal chairman at home, and Landow became incensed. According to the Thompson report, both Copperthite and the tribe’s attorney, Rick Grellnar, recounted “an abusive, profanity-strewn tirade from Landow, one Copperthite described as ‘Teamsteresque.'” Grellnar says Landow went so far as to ridicule the way he was dressed. Grellnar summed up the experience as being “like Bugsy Siegel [putting] your head in a vice. Had there not been a table between us, we felt like we were gonna get hit or something.”

Landow denied under oath threatening his potential clients. But Copperthite, also under oath, said Landow made clear if they failed to agree to his terms, he’d make sure they never secured their land, promising, “If you don’t do this deal, I will f — you.” Grellnar corroborates this account. Further, Copperthite testified that when the Washington Post was about to break this story, Landow called him and “dictated to me what I was to say” to the paper, wanting to “make sure that we were both on the same page” if the FBI came investigating. Landow has denied this, and in fact, after the story broke, he seemed almost contrite. He felt “kind of sorry” for the Cheyenne and Arapaho, he said, and other Democrats who solicited money “are the ones who ought to really be taken to task. . . . [The tribe] was snookered.” By last fall, however, Landow again lost track of his own narrative when he told PBS’s Frontline, “They want the land given back to them on a platter. They brought in innocent people like me. They’re a bunch of goddamn uneducated Indians.”

Though sources interviewed by Starr’s office say such contradictions have kept the independent counsel interested, Landow has yet to be indicated. His lawyer, like all good lawyers, predicts he never will be, and he himself remains cocksure. As he reminded Newsweek, in response to sources’ claims that he had told Willey it would be “better” if her story never came out, “You’ve got no goddamn proof of anything, other than what I’ve told you.”

Matt Labash is a staff writer at THE WEEKLY STANDARD.