Suing
the president: Ten years later, John Whitehead looks back at Jones v. Clinton
By Lindsay Barnes III | lindsay@readthehook.com
Published online 9:00am Thursday Jan 24th, 2008
and in print issue #0704 dated Thursday Jan 24th, 2008
Published online 9:00am Thursday Jan 24th, 2008
and in print issue #0704 dated Thursday Jan 24th, 2008
John Whitehead
PHOTO BY JEN FARIELLO
On
a winter day ten years ago, as he was leaving his Charlottesville home to run
weekend errands, John Whitehead suspected something was amiss.
"There
were these guys in skinny ties and white shirts in a black van, looking me
right in the eye," he says.
It
had been three months since Whitehead had agreed to take the case of Paula
Jones, an Arkansas woman who was suing President Bill Clinton for sexual
harassment, and in that time the world's media had been watching Whitehead and
his office at the Rutherford Institute, his Charlottesville-based civil
liberties law organization. But now he realized a more clandestine adversary
was following his every move. The following Monday, he hired a former National
Security Agency surveillance expert to inspect his office and confirm what he
had already guessed.
"The
whole office was bugged," says Whitehead. "I told him about the van,
and he told me that if I saw them, they wanted me to see them and that it was
meant to intimidate me."
