but little else. We've also confirmed that Gore was in Portland and, presumably, since it's easy to verify, received a massage from a woman there. Beyond that we simply have an accusation nearly four YEARS old that was withdrawn, reinstated and then dropped by the Portland police for lack of evidence. "The woman, according to Detective Wheat, said she planned to take her case to the media. " My impression is that was the idea from the start.

When the whatever happened happened, the police said she refused to even report a crime, and her lawyer canceled interviews with them because "the matter would be handled civilly. " Not, "you committed a crime against me and should go to jail" but "you're exceptionally wealthy and I'm not so I bet you'll pay me not to slander you. " Two YEARS later the case was reopened and suddenly she's willing to be interviewed by detectives (hmm, wonder if Gores lawyers told her lawyer to go to hell.... ) At that point she says,

She realized an APPEARANCE. She was mortified by what she THOUGHT SHE SAW! Doesn't mean Gore DID anything. That may be the crux of this, either because she was predisposed to expect some sort of come on or because she was trying to engineer the appearance of impropriety.


She seems to be alleging rape without actually stating the accusation, because she admits there's no evidence of any such thing. Wonder how many lawyer rewrites that statement took.

Meanwhile, I'm expected to believe that the former Vice President of the US, on the eve of winning a Nobel Prize, is so hard up and badly connected that when he's all alone in Portland his best hopes for ANY kind of sex is a masseuse not ten years younger than his wife. I did find some more "details" about the incident at the following link; apparently the woman in question took a page from Monica (or Linda Tripp) and decided to carefully preserve her soiled slacks as "proof" of Gores assault; since she admits she has no DNA evidence I guess that little gambit failed. My personal favorite part is at the end:



I'm not interested in making money, but rather than reporting a crime I just want the police to have a statement from me on file while my lawyer pursues this civilly, and if nothing happens on that within a couple years I'll go ahead and call the cops, who'll drop the charges because I have no evidence, which I'll excuse by saying I didn't know what to report since I had no PROOF of "completed rape. " At that point I'll request all the police documents so I can "take it to the media" (i.e. beg the Inquirer for $1 million to tell my story. )

I think for once our roles may be reversed.

I'm not going to say nothing happened, but I will I say I think it's at least as likely nothing happened as it is that something did. It's not entirely clear WHAT she's accusing him of, since she's very careful not to make a clear ACCUSATION, but the implication is she's alleging attempted rape in a way that doesn't leave her vulnerable to a defamation of character suit.