From Lucianne

Late Breaking News!

Fox News Reporting D.C. Police Will Ask Condit for Lie Detector Test. Negotiating With Abbe Lowell for Ground Rules. Condit's apartment to be searched within 24 hours. Police have obtained cell phone and bank records from Condit.

-- Anonymous, July 10, 2001

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Fox

Police to Get Condit Polygraph, DNA Sample, Apartment Search

Tuesday, July 10, 2001

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D.C. Police Chief Charles Ramsey said on Tuesday he would accept Rep. Gary Condit's offer to take a lie detector test, provide a DNA sample and allow his apartment to be searched by investigators looking into the disappearance of Chandra Levy.

"As far as the timeline, that whole thing is being discussed, but the sooner the better," Chief Ramsey said at an afternoon press conference. The chief said he could not specify when the apartment search would take place, but added he hoped it would happen in "the next day or two," after discussing the issue with Condit's lawyers.

"An offer has been made and it would be irresponsible of us not to take advantage of it," Ramsey said, when asked why police seemed to be stepping up their contacts with Condit. "We're prepared to go now."

Condit's office issued a statement after Ramsey's press conference saying they would honor the request, which followed an offer on Monday by lawyer Abbe Lowell.

Lowell had said Condit, a California Democrat, has already satisfied investigators' demands and that the police and press should shift their attention to others possibly involved in Levy's disappearance.

"Surely the time has come to focus less on Representative Condit and more on the ninety-nine other people police have identified who might be as helpful in providing information that could find Chandra," Lowell said.

Billy Martin, the attorney for Susan and Robert Levy of Modesto, Calif., said the family was pleased that Condit would take the test and believe he has a wealth of information about their daughter.

Condit "would know her state of mind" at the time of Levy's disappearance because he was having an intimate relationship with her, Martin said.

On Friday, Condit admitted to Washington, D.C., police he had had a long-term romantic relationship with the missing federal intern, a police source told Fox News.

Police requested the third meeting because they were "uncomfortable" with what they had learned in the first two interviews, according to Executive Assistant Police Chief Terrance Gainer.

[Remainder is a rehash]

-- Anonymous, July 10, 2001

Wednesday July 11 4:34 AM ET

Police Search Condit Apartment in Probe

By Deborah Zabarenko

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Police searched California Rep. Gary Condit's apartment in the early hours of Wednesday, looking for clues to the disappearance of Washington intern Chandra Levy, police sources said.

Investigators entered Condit's apartment around 11 p.m. EDT on Tuesday evening, according to CNN, which carried live footage of police entering the building.

Pool cameras showed police cars leaving the apartment shortly before 3 a.m. and CNN reported that police left carrying two bags of material.

Washington Police Chief Charles Ramsey earlier told reporters that police would conduct the search. He said police would also give the Democratic congressman a lie-detector test and get samples of his DNA as they pressed the search for the missing intern.

Eleven weeks after the 24-year-old Californian woman was last seen, Ramsey said he planned to take Condit up on his offer of assistance in the high-profile case.

``Relative to the collection of DNA samples, search of the apartment and taking a polygraph examination,'' Ramsey said, ``we want to take him up on that offer.'' He was referring to an offer on Monday by Condit's lawyer.

NOT A SUSPECT

Ramsey repeated that Condit -- a 53-year-old Democrat from central California -- was not a suspect in any crime.

Ramsey said a lie-detector test would provide details of ``the exact nature of the relationship, any information they might have about state of mind, any locations where he feels she might want to go.''

Levy's parents demanded the polygraph test on Monday, and their attorney Billy Martin said it could provide ``powerful'' details about Levy's mood when she disappeared.

``If (Condit) was having an intimate relationship with her at the end of April, beginning of May, he of all people would know her state of mind,'' Martin told reporters after Ramsey spoke. ''We'd like the congressman to tell us not just when and where he met with her, but what they talked about and what was her mood. That could be very powerful in this investigation.''

Martin said the family believed Condit should have come forward earlier, adding that the family felt Condit had lied when he denied having a relationship with their daughter in a telephone call with Levy's mother, Susan, in early June.

``The family is going through a living hell,'' Martin said. ''They're missing their daughter; it's been 11 weeks; they don't know where she is.''

A spokesman for Condit, Marina Ein, noted that Condit's attorney, Abbe Lowell, had offered on Monday to open Condit's apartment, telephone records and offer any other cooperation to assist investigators.

INTERVIEWED THREE TIMES

``This is the first time that they have asked to search the apartment,'' Ein said by telephone. ``It's also voluntary on our part; we've invited them to search the apartment. There had never been a previous request.''

Although police do not consider Condit a suspect, authorities have interviewed him three times. His wife, Carolyn, has also been interviewed.

In the first two interviews, Condit reportedly described Levy as a friend, but in a late Friday interview, the Washington Post and others reported he told police that the two had a romantic relationship. Condit has generally avoided the media since Levy's disappearance was first reported, soon after she was last seen at her health club on April 30.

Levy's internship at the Bureau of Prisons had just ended and she told her family she was heading back to California. She has not been heard from since.

Levy's aunt, Linda Zamsky, served as her confidant during her internship and said in a statement Levy told her she was having an ``intimate'' relationship with Condit.

-- Anonymous, July 11, 2001

``If (Condit) was having an intimate relationship with her at the end of April, beginning of May, he of all people would know her state of mind,''

I think more likely that Condit was oblivious to the emotional harm he was causing her.

-- Anonymous, July 11, 2001

Well, he is a politician, so does not have a reputable brain.

-- Anonymous, July 11, 2001

Jack Dunphy

Family Ties & Lies Condit’s common tale.

Mr. Dunphy* is an officer of the Los Angeles Police Department July 14, 2001 12:00 p.m. ot quite three weeks ago, my editorial masters at NRO HQ solicited my thoughts on the Chandra Levy case. I demurred, reasoning at the time that the matter invited only idle speculation, a surfeit of which was already erupting across the airwaves and the Internet. Such speculation did nothing to aid in the search for Miss Levy, but rather served only to compound the unfathomable grief being borne by her family and friends. But in the time that has since passed some things have become clear. Foremost among them, most sadly, is that Miss Levy is all but certain to have come to harm. I regret adding my voice to those who would deny the Levys their fleeting hopes that their daughter will one day be found alive, but she has been missing since April 30 and the prospects for her safe return have grown dim. Twenty years in law enforcement have taught me that evil does indeed walk the world. Chandra Levy, I fear, has become its victim.

But in whose guise has evil come to claim her? The swirling speculation has thus far focused on Rep. Gary Condit, and not without considerable justification. When police officers searched Miss Levy's apartment they found a photograph of her with Mr. Condit, who, when first asked about his relationship with Levy, characterized it as a "close friendship." He continued his denials of a sexual relationship with her until last Friday, when at last he admitted to investigators that he and Levy had been lovers. He had been steadfast in his denial of a sexual relationship "to protect his family."

In this belated admission Mr. Condit has followed a script, one authored by a much more prominent politician. Though I had hoped never again to write about Bill Clinton, doing so is unavoidable under the present circumstances, such was his mastery of the self-serving yet manifestly absurd denial. In denying his affair with Monica Lewinsky, Mr. Clinton employed — and encouraged others to employ — all manner of intellectual and etymological contortions, to the point that those who hoped to unravel the mysteries of the Oval Office had to resort to the grade-school exercise of diagramming sentences. And when finally cornered in his own web of lies he reluctantly admitted the truth, but said he had lied because he wanted to protect his family from the meanies who so relentlessly hounded him. What it boiled down to was something similar to this: "I didn't." "I wouldn't." "I couldn't have." Then, finally, "Okay, I did, but it's none of their business."

So, what of Mr. Condit? Let us put aside for the moment the speculation that he is somehow responsible for Miss Levy's disappearance. He may indeed be, as we say in the trade, as clean as a Safeway chicken. An alternative theory, just off the top of my head, is that Chandra was done in by some rival suitor, one who became enraged on learning of her affair with Condit. By denying the affair as long as he did, Condit prevented detectives from even considering this avenue of investigation. When responding to a report of a missing person, investigators must quickly immerse themselves in the quotidian details of the person's life, so as to make an informed decision on the direction the investigation may then take. In withholding the truth about his relationship with Miss Levy, Mr. Condit impeded the investigation at its most critical juncture.

Every televised update on the Levy investigation is accompanied by images of Condit briskly walking hither and thither through a phalanx of reporters, cameramen, and still photographers, presumably in attendance to his continuing congressional duties. And as he flits about he seems to be constantly and incongruously grinning, grinning, and grinning some more, like some Cheshire cat loaded up on lithium. What in creation, we may ask, has he to grin about? Granted, there is no evidence to suggest that he has harmed Miss Levy, or even that he had any role her disappearance. But, at the very least, his behavior in the matter has been dishonorable, even disgraceful. And in another echo of Mr. Clinton's White House shenanigans, other women are coming out of the woodwork to say that they, too, had affairs with Condit, some of them simultaneously with Chandra Levy. Is it possible that Mrs. Condit will prove to be as numb to insult as was Mrs. Clinton? Mr. Condit may not be headed for a criminal courtroom, but some divorce court must surely await him.

We as a country used to expect more from fathers and husbands, and even more from those who would serve as our leaders. Nearly every day of my 20 years as a cop I have dealt with the fallout from the diminution of the family in American life. This will come too late for Mr. Condit, but I offer a few words of advice to all the other intern-grabbers and skirt-chasers out there: The time to protect your family is before you have the affair. If you can't live up to your vows then get a divorce. I'm tired of cleaning up after you.

(*Jack Dunphy is the author's nom de cyber. The opinions expressed are his own and almost certainly do not reflect those of the LAPD management .)

-- Anonymous, July 11, 2001

I suspect his views are shared by many of his constituents, albeit mostly the feminine part.

-- Anonymous, July 11, 2001