WASHINGTON — While the Senate drones on about a patients’ bill of rights, and the pundits ponder the president’s latest polls, the city is transfixed by a tragic mystery.
Sometime around April 30 or May 1, a 24-year-old woman named Chandra Ann Levy prepared to leave Washington to return to her parents in Modesto, Calif. Her internship at the Federal Bureau of Prisons was over, and she was expected at a hometown commencement to pick up her master’s degree from the University of Southern California. Her apartment had been scrubbed, her luggage was packed, her bank account was closed and her airline voyage to California beckoned. But she never, apparently, arrived at Reagan National Airport. After several days, her frantic parents in California notified the Metropolitan Police in Washington, and the search was on.
It produced nothing. Apart from a few random sightings, including video footage from a convenience store, all within the period before her scheduled departure, Levy seems to have vanished. The police dredged the rivers, combed the parks and interviewed people who had known the young woman. Such standard procedures for missing persons came up empty, and given the general incompetence of District police, the case of Chandra Levy was destined for oblivion.
Except for two things. Unlike the families of other young women who have disappeared from the streets of Washington in the past few years, Levy’s parents know something about working the media. With much fanfare, they have made repeated visits to the District, posted notices around town, held a press conference and hired an attorney with connections to the Clinton/Lewinsky case.
And of greater interest, the unaccustomed spotlight that shone on Chandra Levy revealed a connection to 53-year-old Rep. Gary Condit, her hometown congressman. From the very beginning, Condit has characterized Levy as a “great person and a good friend,” expressed his concern that she quickly be found and stoutly denied that their relations were anything other than correct. His staff has been called upon almost daily to issue categorical denials that Levy and Condit were lovers.
The pressure grew sufficiently intense, however, that Condit, too, was moved to hire a criminal lawyer with connections to the Clinton/Lewinsky case, one Abbe Lowell. As if on cue, Lowell issued a suitably Clintonian declaration: His client, he said, “has resisted and will continue to resist efforts by the media to dissect and mischaracterize his and his family’s private lives. Unlike some, Congressman Condit remains singularly focused on what is and remains the central mission at this time — locating Chandra Levy.”
What Lowell did not address, of course, was whether his client and Levy were lovers, or question the veracity of six other women who reportedly have come forward since Levy’s disappearance to report their own affairs with Condit.
As always, in Washington, this is as much a lesson in public relations as a morality tale or whodunit. No one would much care if Condit had been yearning for love between quorum calls — “It’s very lonely being a congressman,” says a veteran Washington correspondent, with a smile — and befriending interns or redheaded flight attendants. Indeed, it is difficult to imagine why a six-term congressman would have any good reason to harm Chandra Levy: Even if she had threatened to go public with their good friendship (she seems to have filled in any number of acquaintances with the details), his Golden State constituents would probably smile and shrug their shoulders. Condit is a muscular, self-infatuated fellow who once posed for a calendar of Capitol pinup boys.
Yet, from the beginning, the congressman has issued a series of self-serving pronouncements, contradictory at times, certainly cryptic and vague, now filtered through the mouthpiece of Abbe Lowell. His wife was first described as something of an invalid, back home in California, but is now shown to be a healthy, good-looking blonde who was present in Washington when Levy disappeared. The police have complained that their interviews with Condit have been frustrating (although that could be explained by the officers’ competence) and Mrs. Condit long refused even to talk with the cops.
In any case, no matter the truth, Condit has done nearly all that he could to make himself an object of suspicion and conjecture. And at some cost: His self-immolation forced him to cancel public appearances in Modesto, his party’s leadership is leaking suggestions that he quit, and he has hired Marina Ein, a PR consultant with disaster expertise. The worst sign, however, has come from the media. Having carefully avoided partisan labels, reporters now refer to Gary Condit as a “right-wing Democrat.” There’s no avoiding the fact that Condit is a Democrat; it’s the “right-wing” part that makes sense of it all.