LETTERS: WHY WOULD WILLEY MAKE UP A STORY?

To the editor:

If President Clinton is telling the truth about Kathleen Willey, think about how many others are lying, mostly under oath. The ubiquitous Linda Tripp spots Willey as she emerges from the Oval Office looking disheveled. Willey says the president lured her into his infamous study and assaulted her.

Why would Willey make up a lurid tale on the spot and tell Tripp? Willey was a staunch Clinton supporter. Plus, she wanted favors from the big guy, which she got: jobs, junkets. Eventually, Tripp recounts the encounter, under oath, forcing Willey to testify. Reluctantly, Willey tells her story, under oath. It's been years, she hasn't taken her story public, she's been rewarded. Why commit perjury now? If she's lying, why did Democratic supporter Nathan Landow charter a plane and fly her to his Maryland retreat where, Willey says under oath, he tried to persuade her to commit perjury and allege that Tripp was the liar. If Willey had no embarrassing tale to tell, why did the intrepid Monica Lewinsky repeatedly urge Tripp to change her account? Lewinsky is a bit player. Somebody in the White House must have felt true desperation to urge a dork like her to suborn a witness.

OK. Willey comes with baggage. Married into political power and social prestige, she couldn't get enough of the trapping. But she also had grit, unlike her husband. Accused of stealing $275,000, he kills himself. But Willey stands fast and uses her political leverage to find a paying job. Unqualified for much, a federal job sounds like the best bet. Nobody understands political patronage like the generous Democrats. Surprisingly, Clinton's aides do not find her a job in the bloated Pentagon.

She becomes a part-time secretary, takes taxpayer-paid junkets to a rain forest and enjoys the other perks of a truly sordid Democratic administration. She shifts her husband's $1 million life insurance policy to her children to avoid debtors, sells their home but manages to keep a second home in Vail, Colo. Hard-up, but apparently not destitute.

Willey wasn't interested in filing a criminal charge against the president or even in lodging a complaint. As she asked a not-too-swift television interviewer: To whom to your report a pass, sexual harassment or even a sexual assault by the president of the United States, in particular this one, the Arkansan who has brought so much dignity and esteem to the office?

Democrats don't want to admit it, but in their dark little hearts they know this guy is a sexual predator driven by quirky, dangerous lusts. A big, powerful guy who cornered a small woman, distraught and unusually vulnerable this day, in a small, private place, removed the coffee cup from her hand, took her in his strong arms. Overpowered her, she said. The stuff of romance novels. Except she wasn't willing, and then it becomes harassment. Or assault.

But Clinton was still her best chance for a meal ticket, so she wrote stupid, laudatory letters and sought a better position, more money, maybe even an ambassadorship in some far-off, exotic land. Kathleen Willey had silly dreams. But the guy owed her.

Sure, Willey comes with baggage, but enough to commit perjury by making up a grandiose story that she can't prove, a story that hasn't changed substantially in five years?

Meanwhile, our chief executive -- did anybody ever think we'd see a time when the White House newshounds would have the effrontery to ask the press secretary if the president of the United States is taking medication to curb his sexual appetite? What would that be? Chemical castration like they give rapists and child molesters?

Maybe we simply will have to put the guy behind bars. They would crimp his style.

W.K. Zellmer

Cape Girardeau