Paula Jones Undergoes Plastic Surgery

Paula Jones’ profile is dwindling. The woman who sued President Clinton for sexual harassment underwent rhinoplasty at the Park Avenue office of plastic surgeon Dr. Thomas Loeb, two New York newspapers reported Sunday.

The new nose is the latest incarnation for Jones, who appeared with a new hairstyle and wardrobe on Jan. 17 at Clinton’s deposition in her now-dismissed lawsuit. Jones, 31, has said she would appeal.

The New York Post and Daily News said Jones was seen leaving Loeb’s office Saturday morning with her nose heavily bandaged; it should take about three weeks to heal.

It was unclear who paid for the $9,000 nose job. Jones, a former Arkansas secretary, is a housewife living in Long Beach, Calif., and her husband, Stephen, lost his job as an airline ticket agent last year, according to the Daily News.

John Whitehead of the Rutherford Institute of Virginia, a conservative think tank that has covered some of Jones’ legal costs, told the Daily News that her legal defense fund could not be used to pay for the surgery. “It would have to be related to litigation somehow,” he said.

The Post, citing unidentified sources, said the money came from an anonymous donor.

Questioning Private Ryan

Steven Spielberg took a page from Oliver Stone, questioning authority and depicting the horrors of war in his World War II drama, Saving Private Ryan.

Starring Tom Hanks and Matt Damon, the film follows a team of soldiers trying to extricate one enlisted man from action after all his other brothers die in combat. For Spielberg, the seemingly straightforward humanitarian mission raised broader concerns.

“The moral question at the heart of the story: Why do we send eight boys on a mission to save one, simply because that one lost all of his brothers within 48 hours of each other?” Spielberg asks in Sunday’s Daily News in New York. “Is this a . . . Washington public-relations mission?”

The critically acclaimed film bothered some with its sometimes grisly depictions of combat during and after the famed D-Day invasion of German-occupied France, including showing Americans guilty of wartime atrocities.

“There are soldiers today, in their 80s, who candidly come out and talk about shooting prisoners,” Spielberg said. “It’s something that happened, and I just wanted to show it the way it actually happened.”

Updating a 1961 classic

Dennis Quaid couldn’t say no to playing the divorced father in the remake of The Parent Trap.

“Every woman I know insisted,” Quaid says in the August issue of Cosmopolitan in New York. The husband of Meg Ryan said his wife was first on the list.

“Meg was like, `You have to do it,’ ” he said.

Doing the updated version of the 1961 classic, in which two long-separated twins (Hayley Mills in a dual role) meet accidentally and try to get their parents back together, agreed with Quaid for personal reasons too.

“It was one of my favorite movies as a kid,” Quaid said. “I had a huge crush on the star, Hayley Mills.”

Shalala smoked like a journalist

Health and Human Services Secretary Donna Shalala confesses she was a smoker in her youth, but said Sunday in Washington, D.C., she was just trying to act like reporters.

Appearing on Fox News Sunday, the former chancellor of the University of Wisconsin was asked: “Did you ever smoke when you were young?”

“I did,” she replied.

“And did you smoke because of advertisements that you saw? Or did you smoke because everybody else that was doing it was cool?”

“Well, I think I smoked because I wanted to be a journalist and I thought all journalists smoked,” Shalala said.

The health secretary was assured by the moderator that “you can be a journalist now because we’re smoke-free.”

ALMANAC

It’s the 201st day of the year; 164 days are left in 1998. On this day:

* In 1944, an attempt by a group of German officers and officials to assassinate Adolf Hitler failed as a bomb explosion at his Rastenburg headquarters only wounded him.

* In 1969, Apollo XI’s Neil Armstrong and Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin became the first humans to walk on the moon.

* In 1976, America’s Viking I robot spacecraft made a successful, first-ever landing on Mars.

* In 1993, White House deputy counsel Vincent Foster Jr. shot himself to death in a park near Washington, D.C. Thought for today: “Courage without conscience is a wild beast.”

Agencies