My Word for July 9, 2001

The family of Chandra Levy are asking for congressman Gary Condit to take a lie detector test.

He ought to. It's a start that might go some way in making up for lying to police in two separate interviews … until Friday when he finally admitted what was frankly obvious, that he was having an affair with a woman younger than his own kids.

In addition, what Condit ought to do is move … into a hotel room, and he ought to send one of his congressional aides over to the police department with the keys to his apartment.

The police should then give his apartment a full forensic search, where they gather up hairs and take the pipes apart looking for blood.

Combine a lie detector test, which is a recognized screening device, not a truth device, with a full scale search of his apartment ... If the police still say he is guilty of nothing more than being involved in an ill fated love affair... Then fine, the congressman can go in peace.

But until the apartment is searched, this is an investigation that is not turning over every rock.

Condit's attorney, the much respected Abbe Lowell, says the cops should turn to the 99 other people who they've interviewed and demand a lie detector test of them all.

Lowell says it's time to turn away from Condit in the search for Chandra.
Nice try, counselor, but it doesn't sell.

If any of the 99 others were having an affair with Chandra and lied about it ... Yes, they should be given a lie detector test, same as Condit.

But Lowell is trying to deflect what is an obvious truth that has turned his client into a de facto suspect: He lied about his intimate relations with Chandra Levy at a time when the truth might have been very useful in the search for her.

And for those of you who believe the cops say the congressman isn't a suspect and we should leave it at that... Don't be fools.

The cops have no obligation to tell anyone the truth about who they suspect, and at this stage of an investigation they seldom do.

Figure it out for yourself. In the absence of any other person who would qualify as someone who would want to either harm or hide Chandra Levy, congressman Condit is number one on the hit parade. It's that way not because I say so, but because he says so. He made it so when he lied.

If it turns out later that some deranged stranger abducted Chandra, the congressman is off the hook.

That may happen. But it hasn't happened yet.

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