SAY IT WITH FLOWERS

On January 30, Time posted on its Internet site an account of the Clinton deposition that was more specific. Jones’s lawyers had defined sex as “any touching of the genitals, anus, groin, breasts, inner thigh or buttocks” (what is this, a cassoulet recipe?) “with the purpose to arouse or gratify.” Clinton replied that, by this definition, he had had sex with Flowers once, in 1977. Since then, he had never made a pass at her; she once made a pass at him. According to a lawyer who has worked on the Paula Jones case, deposing lawyers from the Dallas firm of Rader, Campbell, Fisher & Pyke “would have been very specific about the sex acts involved.”

Time’s piece only sharpened matters of detail. But members of the press sympathetic to the president began to present the Time version as somehow a victory for Clinton. Both Rita Braver and Margaret Carlson viewed it as evidence that, since the torridity of the Flowers affair has (by the president’s account) been exaggerated, all the charges against him were overblown. The focus shifted from Clinton the Adulterer to Flowers the Embroiderer. The Clintons have won on that terrain before. So now, with the president’s poll numbers buoyant, his defenders are happily revisiting the 1992 Flowers controversy in hopes of an easy public-relations victory.

How strong is the Clintonites’ case? There are two questions that friends of the White House, like the Clinton campaign six years ago, are trying to put in Americans’ minds. First, Were Flowers’s tapes doctored? And second, Was the voice on the tapes Clinton’s?

James Carville took the first tack on Larry King Live. He said, “One of the things is — remember, we’ll go back to the Gennifer Flowers statement. I think they found that tape was doctored and CNN even found out, like 10 or 12 different places. So you have to be careful.”

You sure do. The piece Carville was alluding to was a “Special Assignment Unit” report hosted by Brooks Jackson and aired on January 31, 1992. CNN consulted audio expert Steve Cain, who said he saw four breaks that could indicate doctoring but could have been caused by routine microphone malfunctions. Cain withheld final judgment on the matter, since Flowers would not offer up the original tapes.

Whatever Carville thinks now, he had to know back then that CNN’s report had not proved the tapes were tampered with. Because days later, the Clinton campaign aired an ad on New Hampshire’s WMUR-TV stating that (1) Cain’s examination had shown the tapes to be doctored, and (2) President Bush’s “Republican operatives were involved in promoting the untrue Gennifer Flowers story to destroy Bill Clinton.” That quotation, read by a narrator, was attributed to CNN. CNN’s “Ad Watch” (Jackson again) immediately assailed the ad, saying that (1) CNN’s segment on the tapes had said no such thing, and (2) the allegation of Republican involvement had been made not by the network but through a journalist’s question in the course of a Flowers news conference that the network had simply aired.

Clinton campaign consultant Frank Greet then made an astounding claim. The ad, he said, which the campaign had sent to several stations, had run only by accident. “We consciously decided not to run that ad,” Greet explained. “We didn’t authorize it. A low-level employee put it on 11 o’clock at night.” Oh.

Last week, former Clinton aide George Stephanopoulos, now in the role of journalist, addressed the same point on Larry King Live, citing a different authority. “The tape was damaging, but it was also doctored,” said Stephanopoulos. “KCBS in 1992 showed that the tapes were doctored, and that’s what we said in 1992.” KCBS, like CNN, did not have access to the original tapes. But its expert stated unequivocally that the tape was “selectively edited” and was “suspect at best.” Unfortunately for Stephanopoulos’s case, the audio expert involved was southern California private eye Anthony Pellicano, whose recent clients have included Michael Jackson, O. J. Simpson, and — surprise! — the president himself. According to the New York Post’s Andrea Peyser, Pellicano has a big role in the Monicagate scandals, tailing rogue book agent Lucianne Goldberg and other Clinton foes to help slap down new sex rumors as they arise.

On the second question — of whether that was Clinton’s voice on the tape — Hillary Clinton professed herself uncertain. “Who can tell?” she said. “I don’t have any idea. But he’s talked to her!” Then-New York governor Mario Cuomo — whom the voice on the tape described as a “mean son of a bitch” who ” acts like” a mafioso — had no doubt that that voice was Clinton’s. And since ethnic slurs were more likely than adultery, apparently, to cost him the presidency, Clinton called Cuomo immediately to apologize. “If the remarks on the tape left anyone with the impression that I was disrespectful to either Governor Cuomo or Italian-Americans, then I deeply regret it,” Clinton said. That vintage Clintonism wasn’t good enough for Cuomo, who responded, “What do you mean, If? If you’re not capable of understanding what was said, then don’t try apologizing.” (Cuomo later accepted the apology. )

That apology dispels any doubt that the tapes are genuine. And they leave us with only two possible conclusions. Either the affair with Gennifer Flowers was a longstanding one that lasted until very close to the 1992 presidential race. If so, and if the accounts of his deposition are accurate, the president lied under oath.

Or the nation’s leader, facing the biggest challenge of his life, spent hours on the phone confiding in a floozy he hardly knew and rambling on delusionally about a love affair that didn’t exist, even though the woman had been hounding him for sex since the 1970s.

If he did that, then we’re in worse trouble than we thought.

Christopher Caldwell is senior writer at THE WEEKLY STANDARD.