Does DA Vance have the steel to go after Strauss-Kahn?

Did a man ever look jauntier than Dominique Strauss-Kahn a month ago, any woman more effervescent than the loyal wife at his side, Anne Sinclair?

The sex assault charges that had doomed the IMF chieftain's prospective run for the French presidency were in tatters. The allegations were shot down by a brutal story in The New York Times, in which two anonymous law enforcement officials said the alleged victim, housekeeper Nafissatou Diallo, was a demonstrable liar and that phone taps showed she was chasing a big money settlement.

Hot on the heels of this came a story in the New York Post claiming, on the basis of another anonymous source, that Diallo was a seasoned prostitute.

From the office of District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. trickled predictions that soon the charges against DSK would melt away, reduced at most to a misdemeanor. Tidings from France also came that a renewed DSK presidential challenge might not be far off, once the New York case had been tidied away.

But here we are a month later and, if such a thing were possible, DSK looks even worse than when he was dragged off by the New York police to Riker's Island, charged with rape.

First, the French writer Tristane Banon reaffirmed her accusations that eight years ago, in Paris, DSK locked the door and jumped her during an interview. Banon said she barely fought off the frightening physical assault and that he was like "a rutting chimp."

A brisk war of similes soon followed. Banon's mother, Anne Mansouret, was quoted, in 2000, saying to French police she had a voluntary, but "clearly brutal" physical engagement with DSK and that he'd comported himself like a filthy drunk, heedless of all needs but his own, among which the need to "dominate" was paramount.

This was a Wendi Deng-style right hook to DSK's defenders who had claimed the former IMF director couldn't keep his pants zipped, but that he wasn't the violent type.

The overall impression that DSK might merit an entry in any update of Krafft-Ebing's "Psychopathia Sexualis" was heightened by news stories saying that Diallo was his third sexual engagement. His lawyers claim the sex with Diallo was "consensual" in the hours before he quit the New York Sofitel.

Now Diallo has given interviews to Newsweek and ABC, giving what Newsweek's Paris bureau chief Chris Dickey has described on ABC as a "convincing" account of her alleged attack. Diallo described going into DSK's suite and being assaulted by a white-haired, naked man. She went on to say she was forced to her knees with the man's penis shoved into her mouth. She then spitted out the ejaculated semen on her uniform. It was later found on the carpet, collected along with her saliva by the cops — establishing the DNA traces.

I've always thought Diallo's lawyers had done her no favors by keeping her under wraps. Diallo is a homely looking, vigorous 32-year-old West African woman with an ample bust, which is probably what caught DSK's eye. If they'd introduced her to the public back at the start of the case, it would have been harder to trash her in The New York Times interview.

As it turns out, certain charges during the demolition job on Diallo were entirely false. Perhaps most damaging, was the accusation in The New York Times that seconds after the traumatic assault experience, Diallo went back to cleaning another room on the same floor. Not so. It seems Diallo's room key was hooked to a computer record that showed she'd returned to the other room for less than a minute, trying to establish whether DSK had left his room and checked-out.

The charges by Murdoch's New York Post about Diallo being a prostitute seem equally tendentious, doled out by DSK's defense team, with zero substantiating evidence.

DA Vance is now in a tricky position. Propelled into his post by big liberal money, he raced to throw the book at the alleged rapist DSK, imposing savage demands for bail conditions. Then, when Diallo was caught telling a few fibs to U.S. asylum officials, to boost her chances of legal status in the U.S., one of two things happened.

Either Vance panicked and gave the green light for the leaks to The New York Times, or enemies in his office or in the New York police department decided to leak a highly prejudicial story against Diallo to the Times.

Diallo was then left to sink into obscurity as a liar and potential blackmailer. The only hand left for her lawyers to play was to go public. Thus far, the strategy has been devastating to DSK. Now, it's all up to Vance. If he allows DSK to escape with a misdemeanor charge or no charge at all, he'll be discredited not only among the big liberal backers who paid for his run to be DA, but also popular constituencies in New York that will be important for his future political career, whether as DA or beyond.

On the other hand, if he presses for a full attempted rape case against DSK he'll go into the courtroom with a witness whose record of truth telling is — however understandable — less than 100 percent.

DSK's wife, the enormously rich Anne Sinclair, drew a parallel between her husband's travails and the Dreyfus affair — DSK is Jewish — which is silly. Is a case that convulsed France for years really to be compared to DSK's case? Are there intimations of anti-semitism? The answer is no, but the case is still alive and there's no reason to suppose that a New York jury — assuming Vance goes that route — would have any compunction in handing down a guilty verdict to DSK.

The next hearing is three weeks away, on August 23. Then we'll see what sort of steel is in Vance's spine.

Alexander Cockburn is co-editor with Jeffrey St. Clair of the muckraking newsletter CounterPunch. He is also co-author of the new book "Dime's Worth of Difference: Beyond the Lesser of Two Evils," available through www.counterpunch.com. To find out more about Alexander Cockburn and read features by other columnists and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.

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