High Crimes and Misdemeanors: The Case Against Bill Clinton (23 page)

• First, the Clintons were equal partners with James and Susan McDougal in Whitewater, the failed Arkansas land deal. Some of the fraudulent loans issued by McDougal on behalf of Madison went to prop up the ailing Whitewater Corporation. The Clintons and their flacks repeatedly note that they “lost money” on the Whitewater land deal.
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While it is possible the Clintons were completely innocent of criminal intent with regard to the Whitewater venture, the fact that they lost money on the deal has absolutely nothing to do it. McDougal was stealing from Madison to prop up Whitewater: If Whitewater had succeeded, the Clintons stood to make a large profit, having put little of their own money down. Mrs. Clinton’s defense—repeated incessantly—that they “lost money” is the equivalent of stealing money to buy a lottery ticket and then saying no theft occurred because the lottery ticket didn’t win.

• Second, wherever the Clintons’ full share of Whitewater payments were coming from, they were not coming from the Clintons. Even if the Clintons knew nothing of McDougal’s financial double-dealing with Madison, they had to know they were not paying their fair share in the Whitewater partnership, raising the possibility that McDougal was using his Whitewater partnership with the Clintons to bribe the young attorney general and then sitting governor. There is a reason the thieving owner of a corrupt S&L might have wanted to bribe the governor.

The Clintons have maintained that they were merely passive investors uninvolved in the day-to-day details of the Whitewater venture. Thus, their story is, if they were being bribed, they didn’t know it.

At least one Resolution Trust Corporation (RTC) officer investigating Whitewater doubts the Clintons’ purported naivete. And, as the
New York Times
has noted, Mrs. Clinton must have been at least vaguely familiar with the workings of Madison Guaranty since she was one of its lawyers.
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• Third, if McDougal thought he was paying bribes, he got all he could have wanted out of Clinton. The Senate Whitewater Committee turned up a series of favors Mr. Clinton performed for Madison Guaranty while he was governor of Arkansas, concluding that “substantial evidence supports Mr. McDougal’s claims that he had ‘clout’ with the governor.” These included sending valuable state leases to Madison, and signing special interest legislation intended to benefit Madison. While back-scratching is nothing new to politics, most politicians could expect to see their presidential aspirations dashed for such back-scratching with a crook.

Governor Clinton cast a crucial veto in June 1987, striking down legislation that was designed to help Madison Guaranty, Jim Guy Tucker, and Tucker’s business partner.
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But prior to casting the veto, Clinton was unaware of the bill’s intended effect on Madison. Members of his “political family” did not waste time in bringing this detail to the governor’s attention by leaving a message for Mr. Clinton, asking whether the veto would stand and “mention [ing] a meeting between [Clinton], Tucker, and Jim McDougal a couple years ago which involved $33,000.”
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As the governor’s secretary noted on the phone message, the caller was “pretty cryptic.” A few weeks later, Clinton reversed his veto, and the bill became law.
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At one point, the governor’s wife was lobbying the governor’s appointee on behalf of Madison—a matter in which the governor had a financial interest. The Clinton-appointed securities commissioner, Beverly Bassett Shaffer, approved some of Mrs. Clinton’s requests on behalf of Madison, though apparently not for any nefarious purpose. Interestingly, however, top White House aides were not confident about that. According to notes taken by then-White House Communications Director Mark Gearan at a January 1994 White House meeting on Whitewater, Clinton’s top aides were extremely concerned about what Shaffer might say. Harold Ickes, Clinton’s deputy chief of staff, was quoted in the notes saying: “Bassett is so f—ing important, if we f—this up, we’re done.”

Of course, as Clinton would later say of shady contributors to his presidential campaigns, “I don’t believe you can find any evidence of the fact that I had changed government policy solely” out of political patronage.

• Fourth, Madison’s legal work was performed by the once prestigious, now infamous, Rose Law Firm. McDougal said that, under pressure from the governor, he arranged for his S&L to pay the Rose Law Firm a monthly retainer simply as a personal favor to Hillary. He admitted this even while still trying to “protect” the president, on cross-examination during his 1996 trial. McDougal’s claim is supported by contemporaneous notes James Blair took of a conversation with Mr. McDougal in 1992. Blair is the longtime Clinton back-scratcher who helped Mrs. Clinton place her fabulously lucrative cattle futures trades. The Clintons deny McDougal’s claim.

• Finally, whether or not McDougal’s retainer payments to the Rose Law Firm were intended as a bribe, the arrangement led to the peculiar situation of the governor’s wife lobbying the governor’s appointees on behalf of Madison Guaranty. The retainer also gave Hillary the opportunity to perform much of the legal work that enabled McDougal to pass bad loans, bankrupting the S&L and costing the taxpayers $60 million. The transaction at the heart of Castle Grande—one of Madison’s most fraudulent schemes—hinged on a legal document drafted by Hillary Clinton.

As we will see, it is undisputed that Mrs. Clinton drafted a document used to defraud the RTC. But a prosecutor would have to prove that she did so knowing that the document would be used to defraud. The only thing that stands between Hillary and a prison cell for her work on this document is the possibility that instead of being a criminal lawyer, she is an incompetent lawyer.