A Vast Conspiracy: The Real Story of the Sex Scandal That Nearly Brought Down a President [Hardcover]

Jeffrey Toobin (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 11, 2000

In A Vast Conspiracy, the best-selling author of The Run of His Life casts an insightful, unbiased eye over the most extraordinary public saga of our time -- the Clinton sex scandals.  A superlative journalist known for the skillfulness of his investigating and the power of his writing, Jeffrey Toobin tells the unlikely story of the events that began over doughnuts in a Little Rock hotel and ended on the floor of the United States Senate, with only the second vote on Presidential removal in American history.  This is an entirely fresh look at the scandal that very nearly brought down a president.

Packed with news-making disclosures and secret documents published here for the first time, Toobin unravels the three strands of a national scandal - those leading from  Paula Jones, Kenneth Starr, and Monica Lewinsky - that created a legal, personal, and political disaster for Bill Clinton.  A Vast Conspiracy is written with the narrative drive of a sensational (if improbable) legal thriller, and Toobin brilliantly explores the high principle and low comedy that were the hallmarks of the story.  From Tripp to Goldberg, Isikoff to Hyde, the complex and tangled motivations behind the scandal are laid bare.

While misguided, outlandish behavior was played out at the very highest level, Toobin analyzes the facts and the key figures with a level of dignity and insight that this story has not yet received. The Clinton scandals will shape forever how we think about the signature issues of our day -- sex and sexual harassment, privacy and perjury, civil rights, and, yes, cigars.  Toobin's book will shape forever how we think about the Clinton scandals.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

What--another book about the messes Bill Clinton got himself into? Well, yes, but with a difference: Jeffrey Toobin's A Vast Conspiracy is the first to provide readers with comprehensive behind-the-scenes details of the machinations of independent counsel Kenneth Starr's team of prosecutors, lawyers for Monica Lewinsky and Paula Jones, and congressional members as the president's "inappropriate relationship" snowballed into the country's first impeachment proceedings in over a century.

Toobin's narrative is one of the most levelheaded versions of the 1998 scandal yet published, although he has very few kind words for anybody involved. "No other major political controversy in American history produced as few heroes as this one," he notes, and "in spite of his consistently reprehensible behavior, Clinton was, by comparison, the good guy in this struggle." While debunking Hillary Rodham Clinton's claims that she and her husband were the victims of a "vast right-wing conspiracy" (a claim that ignores Clinton's responsibility for his actions), Toobin does demonstrate how lawyers for Paula Jones collaborated with Linda Tripp and Lucianne Goldberg to build the most damaging case possible against the president. (He also suggests, not without cause, that Newsweek reporter Michael Isikoff worked more closely with Tripp and Goldberg than he reported in his own book, Uncovering Clinton.)

While for the most part discreetly judgmental, A Vast Conspiracy sometimes borders on cruel in its descriptions of Monica Lewinsky: after describing a 45-minute discussion between Clinton and his sometime sex partner, Toobin comments, "An actual conversation with Lewinsky may have been the thing that cured the president of his infatuation," and then later, "There were few better measures of Tripp's dedication to her book research and Clinton-hating than the simple fact that she tolerated Lewinsky's inane chatter for so long." Yet his portrayal of Lewinsky as "a genuine, if occasional, sexual partner as well as an obsessed, unhinged fan" is, thanks to his rich storytelling abilities, compelling. (Whether it's true remains to be seen; some readers of his previous book, The Run of His Life, believe that Toobin's portrayal of O.J. Simpson seriously underestimated the suspected killer.) And, although it will no doubt get overlooked amidst all the salacious details of the case, Toobin makes a good argument for how the whole brouhaha was an inevitable result of several decades of "legal activism," in which lawsuits were used to achieve broad political changes. Between Richard Posner's musings on the legal aspects of the impeachment hearings in An Affair of State and Toobin's narrative reconstruction of the events leading up to the impeachment, we have the beginnings of a calm consideration of just what exactly happened to American politics during Clinton's second term. --Ron Hogan

Review

Praise for Jeffrey Toobin's national bestseller The Run of His Life: The People v. O. J. Simpson


"His prose is fluent, direct and supple, his assessments pithy and succinct. . . . He uses his legal expertise to assess defense and prosecution strategies, highlight crucial developments and sketch in the background of principle players in such a way that the stories create a mosaic of life."
        --The New York Times

"An irresistibly readable new overview of the whole ugly case."
--New York Daily News

"A well-written, profoundly rational analysis . . . Toobin's book possesses fresh insights."
--USA Today

"Toobin's book is literate, well-researched, penetrating and evenhanded, laying blame where it belongs, offering a reasonable perspective on this shabby case."
--Detroit Free Press

"A gripping and colorful account of the crime and trial that captured the world's attention."
--The Boston Globe

"What makes the book both important and entertaining is the way [Toobin] fills in the gaps left by more partisan authors."
--San Francisco Chronicle

"A real page-turner . . . blunt, sardonic, often morbidly funny."
--Entertainment Weekly

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 448 pages
• Publisher: Random House; 1st edition (January 11, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0375502955
• ISBN-13: 978-0375502958
• Product Dimensions: 9.6 x 6.4 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (135 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,603,271 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #30 in Books > Law > Current Affairs

More About the Author

Before becoming a staff writer at The New Yorker in 1993, Jeffrey Toobin served as an Assistant United States Attorney in Brooklyn and as an Associate Counsel in the office of Independent Counsel Lawrence E. Walsh--which provided material for his book Opening Arguments: A Young Lawyers First Case--United States v. Oliver North. A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard Law School, he lives in Manhattan with his wife and two children.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

123 of 134 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Makes everyone look bad, January 12, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: A Vast Conspiracy: The Real Story of the Sex Scandal That Nearly Brought Down a President (Hardcover)

In spite of all the accusations that Toobin is a DNC lackey and a Clinton apologist (even in the New York Times), I am hard pressed to see where he grants the president any leeway. As an attorney, he carefully distinguishes between legal and ethical questions; as a journalist, he is scrupulous about stating (and hedging) facts. His account is entirely credible, and it appears that he is critical about his sources.

It gets less than a perfect score because Mr. Toobin too often succumbs to the temptation of his own moralizing and gossip, even beyond valid criticism of questionable legal practices here and there. The facts about the individuals speak for themselves.

Undoubtedly, Clinton-haters will also hate this book, since it doesn't support their views. Toobin's main point - that there are political operatives in this country who do not respect the democratic process and instead seek redress in the legal system - is amply demonstrated in the Clinton/Lewinsky/Jones/Whitewater fiasco. This is the real news in this affair, not that presidents have uncontrollable egos (and libidos).

I recommend this book to anyone who is interested in the whole chain of events and is unafraid of being disgusted even more by everybody.

53 of 57 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Biased But Good, January 17, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: A Vast Conspiracy: The Real Story of the Sex Scandal That Nearly Brought Down a President (Hardcover)

Before I read this book, I thought the president should have resigned. After I read this book I still thought the president should have resigned. However, the author doesn't share that view. In some ways he is an apologist for the Clintons and that is rather crudely evident. However, I had no idea how unsavory were the forces aligned against him. Toobin gives us a view into a very unsavory and I think immoral group of characters who in some ways were every bit as wrong and immoral as Clinton. Even though I found myself cringing at times with his defense of the president (and don't doubt it, he defends him) I was cringing at those points in the book which did show that a rag-tag bunch of shady characters was trying to overtrow an election through the judicial process. That is evident from some of the insider-perspectives Toobin gives his readers. It's scary to think that one day, a group like this will succeed against a president I really like.

39 of 42 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars I thought I had read it all..., January 8, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: A Vast Conspiracy: The Real Story of the Sex Scandal That Nearly Brought Down a President (Hardcover)

... but Toobin has shown me how much I missed in the mainstream media, and even in the "off the beaten path" outlets like Salon. I had vowed never to read another impeachment book (burned out on the topic). I'm delighted I broke that vow. This book is filled with telling details and revealing connections among the many players (you just think you already know about them). As a fellow author I am in awe of Toobin's fine investigative skills, grasp of the big picture, and inviting writing style. I heartily recommend this title to anyone who wants to know what forces converged to create the impeachment mess. No one is let off the hook. The one thing I would have suggested, had I been Toobin's editor: delete the unnecessary put downs to specific individuals when relating factual information. It tells us more about Toobin's attitude toward the individuals than it does about the people themselves. A couple of examples: Toobin seems unable to resist making mean-spirited remarks about Paula Corbin Jones's hair bows and curls, and Monica Lewinsky's intellectual powers. I have no reason to question his accuracy; only his need to include such pointless observations.