| We won't be certain that Congressman Gary Condit is guilty until Alan Dershowitz defends him. But the possibility that Condit wasn't involved in the disappearance of intern Chandra Levy grows less remote with each passing day. And not only because of who's already defending him.
Because you can't turn on the TV without seeing breaking news on the Levy investigation, this is like explaining who "John Kennedy Jr." was, but: Levy is the 24-year-old graduate student from the University of Southern California who had just finished her internship with the federal Bureau of Prisons and was about to head back to California when she vanished without a trace from her apartment near Dupont Circle on April 30.
The longer Levy remains missing, the more likely it is that she will not emerge alive. She didn't fit the profile of a runaway (and runaways tend not to leave their purses behind). There is no ransom note.
If Levy has been the victim of foul play, chances are overwhelming, from a statistical point of view, that she was the victim of someone she knew. It's been two months and the police still haven't found a body. Suicides don't hide the body, random street criminals don't hide the body, even serial killers tend not to hide the bodies. Police dogs have searched nearby jogging trails, and Levy's running shoes were in her apartment.
If she were involved with someone, the possibility that that such person is involved is even higher. If she were involved in an adulterous relationship with a married man, the odds again increase. If she disappeared during a period when the married man's wife suddenly came to town, the odds increase further.
Levy was having an affair with Rep. Gary Condit. His wife arrived in Washington days before Levy disappeared.
Supplementing this mounting suspicion is Condit's practice of acting guilty. Even as the days grew into weeks and weeks grew into months with no sign of Levy, Condit kept lying about the affair. We learned in the Clinton era that affairs are "private family matters" and "everyone lies about sex." But this was beginning to look like a murder investigation.
So it was odd that Condit still engaged in Herculean efforts to conceal his affair. (He must have thought he was being pretty smooth, but everyone knew anyway. As a rule of thumb, whenever a congressman calls an intern a "good friend," he's having sex with her.) If the affair and Levy's disappearance are unrelated, why would Condit persistently lie about the affair?
After issuing preposterous denials for two months, Condit finally did the honorable thing and owned up to his relationship with Levy -- right after Levy's aunt went public with the affair. Condit also lied to Levy's parents about when he had last spoken with Levy, later giving the Clintonian explanation that he meant "in person" as opposed to "on the phone." Continued... |