This is a strange story. Cindy and Doug Hampton were close friends with John and Darlene Ensign. After a burglary at the Hamptons, they moved in with the Ensigns. That’s where the affair started. It was quickly discovered, but it continued. Now the story gets strange. Doug Hampton and Darlene Ensign are calling around trying to get someone to put a stop to it. The story is told as if Cindy was a passive character in the story. Finally, Hampton gets the group at the C Street Christian Fellowship to intervene. In the Meeting, Ensign agrees to end things – writing a letter to Darlene and maybe agreeing to some kind of financial settlement. Apparently, shortly after the meeting, Ensign called Cindy telling her to ignore the letter – he’d been blindsided by the meeting, and the affair continued until August.
Somewhere in all of this, Ensign gets Doug another job and pays off Cindy. Ensign’s wife Darlene was apparently involved in trying to relocate the Hampton’s. Lawyers are meeting throughout all of this, but how it finally blew up is unclear. Hampton’s story gets confusing and it becomes impossible to determine what actually happened. Mutual accusations seem to be the rule now, and I expect the whole unadulterated truth will never be clear [Solomon might have used his sword in a different way with this case since there appear to be no innocents in the whole piece].
Forgetting the other players for the moment, this is a fundamentalist christian Senator having an affair with his good friend’s wife [both being employees] under the nose of his wife and her husband. When confronted by his super-christian colleagues, he puts on an act, and continues cavorting. He finally comes clean when faced with exposure. All of his public confession and his letter written in front of his colleagues was cached in terms of christian morality, though none of his behavior seemed to have anything to do with his stated morals.
Sorry to be off topic as usal. I just read that my congressman Rush Holt released the letter about how the CIA has been misleading Congress. I just called his DC office to thank him for doing a great job. He is also one of the signers of the letter.