With no new Condit

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With no new Condit posts since the congressman admitted to his affair last Friday, a reader wrote in and asked if maybe my silence was because someone had ‘gotten to me.’ The funny thing is I’m not completely sure he was kidding …

Anyway, a number of papers are reporting on their websites tonight that the police will be giving Congressman Condit a lie detector test. But they’re getting way ahead of themselves. The police have asked. Abbe Lowell told them he’d get back to them.

And that gets back to the point I raised earlier: whether Gary Condit, whatever other legal difficulties he may face, may have a malpractice case against Abbe Lowell.

It’s difficult to imagine that Lowell realized just how quickly and eagerly the DC Metro Police Department would go for his offer to provide various pieces of evidence. When DC Police Chief Ramsey gave his press conference this afternoon he had the look of someone whose quarry had fallen into a trap.

Ramsey accepted Lowell’s ‘offer’ of a lie detector test for Condit. But, as I note in an article to be published tonight in Salon.com, that was an offer that Lowell never really made. He said he’d be willing to talk to police about it. Nothing more. In fact, if you look at Lowell’s news conference yesterday it looked very much like he got maneuvered into the lie detector remark in an impromptu exchange with reporters.

Lowell quite clearly intended to offer the search of the apartment and the phone records. But there was no mention of a willingness to take a lie detector test in his original prepared statement. That only came up in response to two reporters’ questions. And Lowell’s willingness to have his client undergo a lie detector test seemed to increase over the course of each answer and from one response to the next.

Here’s the first

QUESTION: Does that include a lie detector test?

LOWELL: I have just said that I will work with the police and I will do with the police what they find useful. And the congressman will be as cooperative as he can possibly be. With respect to lie detectors, I know there is a great public appeal to lie detectors, but I know from my own practice that they leave a lot to be desired.

If the police call me and tell me that at some point they think that, no matter how suspect it might be, can be helpful, I will discuss it with them, but I will discuss it with them, and not with you.

And here’s the second

LOWELL: You heard my statements today and my statements today were that the police have said that he has answered all questions to their satisfaction, they have said that he has been cooperative, they have said that they are comfortable with his answers, there is no question to test. There is nothing that a lie detector could test. He has not been inconsistent to the police and he has answered their questions.

So let me reiterate, that if the police get back to me say, you know what, even though we think as you think, lie detectors don’t really work very well, if they find that useful at some point, I will listen to them, and we will respond accordingly. But let me say today that the congressman is going to make available what the police ask for that they think is helpful. And if it is a search of his apartment, if it is something as somebody said, a sample, if it is anything else, let it come.

It’s impossible to say what was in Lowell’s mind. But listening to his impassioned press conference, it was hard not to wonder whether he didn’t let the passion of the moment (his deep desire to communicate his client’s lack of anything to hide) get the better of him and lead him to say more than he wished to or should have.

He didn’t really offer to let Condit take a lie detector test. But he came close. Apparently close enough for Chief Ramsey to feel he could pounce. If Condit can take that lie detector test there’s no problem. If he can’t, he’s in a hell of a bind. And so is Abbe Lowell.

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