In Contempt of Kimba

George Stephanopoulos has a Kimba Wood problem. The former Clinton aide and the New York federal judge are feuding over two passages in Stephanopoulos’s recent memoir All Too Human. In the book Stephanopoulos recalls that Judge Wood’s nomination for attorney general was derailed because she had a “Zoe problem,” a reference to attorney Zoe Baird. Baird’s earlier nomination for attorney general had been scuttled because she failed to pay Social Security taxes for her nanny, an illegal alien. In his book Stephanopoulos recalls that he was “apoplectic” at Wood’s failure to disclose the problem in meetings with White House counsel Bernard Nussbaum and President Bill Clinton.

But Wood maintains that she never had a “Zoe problem.” Wood declined to comment for this story, but in a letter to The New York Times published in February 1993, Wood denied misleading Nussbaum or the president and maintained that her only sin was employing an illegal alien as a baby sitter–not an illegal act at the time. So when Stephanopoulos resurrected the story in All Too Human, he got a stern letter from Wood’s lawyer, John Walsh of Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft.