Private Investigators Examine Intern's Apartment

Wall Street Journal - June 27, 2001

Private investigators Dwayne Stanton and Joseph McCann, hired by the lawyer for parents of missing intern Chandra Levy, examine her third-floor studio apartment, the Scripps-McClatchy Western Service reports. Rep. Gary Condit, a self-described "good friend" of the missing intern, is a center of attention; Scripps-McClatchy reports that "FBI agents working with Washington police have already interviewed a flight attendant who'd come to know Condit."

Writing in the New York Press, Christopher Caldwell offers the pithiest summary we've heard of why the Chandra story fascinates: "If the O.J. trial married the Lewinsky scandal and the two had children, they'd look like the Condit case." Caldwell also shoots holes in Condit's "good friend" claim: Condit and Levy met last fall, when she and her friend Jennifer Baker made an impromptu visit to his Capitol Hill office. Baker was offered an internship. Levy, it appears, was offered something else.

According to the Modesto Bee, last Dec. 23 Levy sent an e-mail to a friend saying, "My man will be coming back here when Congress starts up again. I'm looking forward to seeing him." In the same e-mail, Levy said she had told Baker her boyfriend was from the FBI, to throw her off the trail. At home for Passover two months ago, she told a relative she was having an affair with Condit.

Condit has said only that they were "good friends." If Condit wasn't the boyfriend Levy mentioned, who was? If he was such good friends with her, why doesn't Condit know who she was dating? Why did she want to dissemble to her dear friend Jennifer Baker, who worked for Condit, and nobody else? If that's not what Levy was doing, then where's the FBI guy? Who else has Condit's personal pager number?

The Village Voice called all 54 members of the California congressional delegation for comment on the case and reports, "A few sided gingerly with Condit, a Democrat from Modesto. No one criticized him. And most important, no one asked for a more aggressive police investigation."