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Posted on Fri, Feb. 13, 2004 | |
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Here we go again? The worlds of politics and the media were all atwitter yesterday over a report on the popular Internet site, the Drudge Report, that Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry - the Democratic presidential front-runner - may be brought down by a sex scandal. Six years ago, it was a similar item on the Drudge Report that brought the world's attention to the affair between then-President Bill Clinton and intern Monica Lewinsky - sparking the scandal that led to Clinton's impeachment. Late last night, Matt Drudge - the conservative gossipmeister who runs the site - said several leading TV networks and newspapers had been trying to confirm an alleged relationship between Kerry, who is married to ketchup heiress Teresa Heinz Kerry, and a young woman that started in spring 2001. An earlier item said the woman had worked for the Associated Press for a short time. "After being approached by a top news producer, the woman fled to Africa, where she remains, the Drudge Report can reveal," the Web site breathlessly reported. Drudge also suggested that the woman left the country at Kerry's behest. But there's one huge problem with the story, which raced through newsrooms across the country like a computer virus: Nobody has been able to confirm that it was true. "This rumor has been out there for months and months," Neil Oxman, the prominent Democratic consultant based in Philadelphia, said last night. He said there were various versions, including several that had Kerry dating a young woman well before the 2000 election, when Al Gore looked at Kerry as a potential running mate. Oxman said there's just no way to judge whether the story is really damaging to the Kerry campaign until any facts come out. Even stranger, the Drudge item said that Wesley Clark, the retired general and former candidate, spread the rumor by telling a group of stunned reporters that "Kerry will implode over an intern issue." But then it was reported last night that Clark today will endorse Kerry - the decorated Vietnam War candidate who has captured 13 of 15 Democratic primaries and caucuses. Indeed, other accounts last night said Clark was instead referring to Kerry's reportedly wild bachelor days between the breakup of his first marriage and his 1996 wedding to Teresa Heinz Kerry. Kerry reportedly dated actress Morgan Fairchild and other starlets. Numerous fingers for the uproar were pointed last night at Clark's top aide, Chris Lehane, who was Gore's campaign press secretary in 2000. Washington insider Craig Crawford of Congressional Quarterly said in a widely circulated e-mail that Lehane had been "shopping" the story to reporters for a long time. "The Kerry camp has long expected to deal with this, and have assured party leaders they can handle it," he said. If the story were true, Kerry would have a harder time handling his wife, the widow of Pennsylvania Sen. John Heinz, who was killed in a 1991 midair collision in Lower Merion. She told Elle magazine that she warned her first husband on the subject of adultery: "If you ever get something, I'll maim you. I won't kill you. I'll maim you." |
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