"LET HE WHO IS WITHOUT SIN..."

By EILEEN MCGANN

Later on Friday Dick Morris' wife, lawyer Eileen McGann, gave the following account of the couple's trying week:

I'm concerned with helping Dick get through this. I think he will. He has great survival instincts, ever since being born prematurely at 2 1/2 lbs. This is a 20-year relationship. People have painful times in relationships, and this is one of them. Friends keep calling and faxing, and that is making him feel better. But he's unfortunately not able to be distant. He's feeling the pain.

On Tuesday afternoon I checked the messages on our phone at the Sheraton in Chicago. There was a weird one for him from the Star. It said, "Call us back--you're going to want to hear about this." I didn't think much about it, given the source. On Wednesday afternoon he got the call from the Star. We were planning to go to the Art Institute that afternoon with my niece Katie. My sister and her husband were also there. He asked them to leave the room, and then he told me about the story. I felt very upset. We talked about it, but I didn't grill him on the details. It was very difficult, because we had invited about 25 friends to the suite for an early dinner. We didn't say anything. That was very hard.

After dinner I went to the convention and left Dick in the hotel. After the Gore speech, I called him. I wanted to make sure he was O.K. He was very upset, and he was also moved to tears by the Gore speech, since his mother had died of cancer. He said he wanted to protect me as much as he could.

After I got back to the hotel that night, Dick told me he thought he would resign. I was surprised, but I thought he was right.

When we got up in the morning Thursday, we called some friends and my sister, who came up to the suite. Then the other consultants came over--Bob Squier, Doug Schoen, Bill Knapp, Mark Penn. Dick was so choked up he couldn't talk. He grabbed my laptop computer and said he was having trouble talking, and he started to type. He wrote a note on it for them to read that said how much he valued them and how he hoped they would carry on.

Before we left, he wanted to make sure my niece Katie could see the President's speech. So he made arrangements for the right credentials. Then his staff went with us and got us to the airport.

When we landed, we drove to our apartment in Manhattan. I had a legal brief I had to get out to a client. Dick's a faster typist, so he typed it up for me. While we were in the apartment, that's when the President, the Vice President and the First Lady called. They had been trying to reach us in Connecticut.

Later Thursday evening I drove us back to Connecticut. Reporters were on our property taking pictures. My mother, who was staying at our house, was scared and had called the police, who came over. They arranged to meet our car a mile from the house to escort us home. Reporters had surrounded the house and were shining lights at the car. I kept honking and driving in slowly. I called a friend who has a private security service, and he sent two guards over. Some friends had brought food and had dinner waiting on the table.

Dick and I talked about the story again that night. He was very, very upset about it and how it would make me feel. He was forlorn. I thought it would be destructive to ask about the details and try to find out what was true. I'm an adult. I accepted Dick's apology. I said, "Let he who is without sin cast the first stone." My advice was that we just had to get past it.

On Friday we had lunch on our little terrace overlooking our garden. There were press creatures lurking in the wildlife preserve behind our house, trying to take pictures. Our golden retriever Dizzy--his real name is Disraeli--has been following Dick around offering him comfort. Tomorrow a friend is going to bring us another puppy, which I'm going to name Bismarck and we'll call Bizzy. Maybe that will help. We're going to try to heal. When you've had a long relationship, even when you're hurt, you can integrate all the good times with the bad for a complete picture. We're all human, and we all make mistakes.