Condit Agrees to 4th Police Interview
W A S H I N G T O N, July 25, 2001 -- Law enforcement sources tell ABCNEWS that Rep. Gary Condit has agreed to meet for a fourth time with investigators looking into the disappearance of Chandra Levy.
The questioning will mark the second time FBI agents have participated in police interviews with Condit. Also joining this week's meeting will be an FBI victimization profiler. The profiler hopes Condit can help shed more light on Levy's life in Washington. This interview is expected to take place before the weekend.
Agents and police also want Condit to provide greater detail about the timeline of his activities on May 1, the day Levy vanished.
Police say Condit is not a suspect in Levy's disappearance. But the married congressman has acknowledged to police, sources say, that he carried on an affair with the 24-year-old Federal Bureau of Prisons intern.
Investigators also are expected to ask Condit about a watch box he was seen discarding in a trash bin in Northern Virginia hours before police searched his apartment on July 10.
Law enforcement sources say the watch box was traced back to a former Condit staffer, now 29 and married, who has told the FBI she had a sexual relationship with Condit while working in his Washington office in 1994. The woman has told police she gave the watch to Condit as a gift.
According to another former Condit aide, the woman worked first as a receptionist and later, after Condit's personal tutoring helped her learn the policy ropes, was promoted to legislative aide. Congressional records confirm the woman was an employee in Condit's office in 1994.
A former Condit aide says the young woman carried on an affair with Condit for at least a year in Washington, a relationship that continued after she left Washington and moved to San Francisco in the fall of 1994.
After she left the congressman's office, the source tells ABCNEWS, the female staffer became a "phantom employee," a term of art on Capitol Hill for a person who no longer works in an office but continues collecting pay. Though the source said she was a phantom staffer for at least a month, ABCNEWS has been unable to confirm a departure date to match against congressional payroll records.
The affair was well-known among Condit's Washington staff, the source said, and even among fellow congressmen.
"I noticed they constantly went out together and even double dated with other congressmen and their mistresses," the source said.
But Condit laid down rigid rules of secrecy for the relationship, the source said, including a code for leaving nonverbal messages on her answering machine using buttons on the phone. The secrecy "was so overwhelming for her," the source said, "she would have emotional eruptions throughout the day."
"I was blind to the affair until finally I confronted her about why she kept bursting into tears and running out of the office," the source said. "I noticed she would go in to meet with him and then come out crying. But no one on the staff ever spoke of it."
Another source of friction allegedly was jealousy.
"'I can't have any friends," the source quoted her saying. "'He gets jealous. He's very jealous.'"
The source has not been contacted by police or the FBI. While police say they are suspicious about the timing of Condit's decision to dispose of the watch case he received from this young woman, sources say there is no evidence at this time to link the incident to Levy's disappearance.