Living History (33 page)

The Lyons report, which cost $25,000 and took a mere three weeks to complete, proved that Bill and I were equally liable with the McDougals for the original loan that we took out to purchase the Whitewater land and that we had lost tens of thousands of dollars on the investment-the final figure was more than $46,000. Ten years and tens of millions of dollars later, the independent counsel’s final Whitewater report released in 2002 supported Lyons’s findings, as did a separate investigation commissioned by the Resolution Trust Corporation. After the campaign released the Lyons report in March 1992, the press dropped the story. Some Republicans and their allies did not give up so easily. In August 1992, a low-level RTC investigator, L. Jean Lewis, filed a criminal referral concerning Madison that attempted to implicate Bill and me. Chuck Banks, the Republican U.S. Attorney in Little Rock who had been nominated by President Bush to be a federal judge, came under pressure from the Bush Justice Department to take action on this referral and issue grand jury subpoenas that would inevitably become public and signify that we were somehow involved in a criminal investigation. Banks refused, expressing surprise that the RTC had not sent him this information three years earlier when he had been investigating Jim McDougal. Banks said that this referral gave him no basis to suspect us of criminal conduct or to investigate us, and that he was afraid any last-minute investigative activity by him would leak and prejudice the presidential election. Somewhat surprisingly, the final Whitewater report actually documents the involvement of the Bush Administration in trying to create an “October Surprise” just weeks before the election.

Not only was Attorney General William Barr involved, but White House Counsel C.

Boyden Gray tried to find out about a potential criminal referral from the RTC involving us. When the rumblings of Whitewater resurfaced in the fall of 1993, none of us in the White House could have imagined the array of forces about to converge in what would become―for our adversaries―a perfect political storm.

In mid-November, while David Kendall was immersed in his fact-finding mission, The Washington Post submitted a long list of questions about Whitewater and McDougal to the White House. For the next several weeks, an internal debate simmered within the administration about how to handle media requests. Should we answer questions? Show them documents? And if so, which ones? Our political advisers, including George Stephanopoulos and Maggie Williams, favored dumping the documents on the media. So did David Gergen, who had served in the Nixon, Ford and Reagan White Houses and had joined Bill’s staff. Gergen contended that the press wouldn’t rest until they got information, but once they did, they would move on to something else. There was nothing to hide, so why not? The story would mushroom for a while and then die.

But David Kendall, Bernie Nussbaum and Bruce Lindsey, all lawyers, argued that releasing documents to the press was a “slippery slope.” Since the record was still partial and might never be complete, we didn’t know the answers to lots of questions about McDougal and his business dealings. The press would not be satisfied, always thinking we were holding something back when we didn’t have anything left to tell them. As a lawyer, I tended to agree with this view. Bill didn’t pay much attention to the issue, since he knew he hadn’t done anything as Governor to favor McDougal, and besides, we had lost money. Consumed with the demands of the Presidency, he told me to decide with David how to handle our response.

Because of our experience with the Nixon impeachment in 1974, Bernie and I believed that we should cooperate fully with the government investigation so that no one could fairly claim that we were stonewalling or claiming executive privilege. So I instructed David to advise the government investigators that we would voluntarily provide them with all documents and cooperate with a grand jury investigation. I did not believe―

wrongly, it turned out―that the media would continue to blast us because we hadn’t turned over the same documents to them, so long as we had provided them to the Department of Justice.

Even before the justice Department issued a subpoena, we agreed through David to cooperate fully and without delay, offering to produce all the documents we could find relating to Whitewater and waiving all privileges with respect to the documents we were producing-including any work Vince Foster had done for us as our personal lawyer.

Still confident that this non-scandal would blow over as it had during the campaign, we headed off to Camp David for Thanksgiving. This was a bittersweet time for us. My father would not be at the table vying with Hugh and Tony for one of the drumsticks or asking for more cranberries and watermelon pickle, two of his favorites from childhood.

And we knew that Virginia’s health was failing. This might be our last Thanksgiving with her, and we were determined to give her a good time, taking care of her without fussing over her, which was just not her style. Virginia required a blood transfusion every few days, so we arranged for her to be transfused at Camp David, which is fully equipped to provide medical care for the President, his family and guests and the sailors and Marines stationed there.

Virginia’s husband, Dick, who had served in the Navy in the Pacific Theater during World War II, loved coming to Camp David. He spent a lot of time visiting with the young off-duty Marines, relaxing in the small restaurant and bar in Hickory Lodge on the base. Virginia liked to sit with him, nursing a drink, listening to a twenty-year-old corporal tell her about his family and the girl he planned to marry. In my mind’s eye, I can see Virginia wearing red boots, white pants and sweater and a red leather jacket, kidding and laughing with Dick and the young men. Anyone who ever had the pleasure of spending time with Virginia knew her to be an American original―bighearted, good-humored, fun loving and totally without prejudice or pretense.

In early November, the press reported that her cancer had returned, but most people didn’t know how serious her condition was, given her positive attitude and how good she continued to look. The makeup and false eyelashes went on no matter how she felt.

Christophe Schatteman, our hairstylist friend from Los Angeles, had flown to Arkansas to fix up Virginia’s post-chemo wigs to look exactly like her hair, an act of kindness that speaks volumes about him.

My brother Tony had recently become engaged to Nicole Boxer, the daughter of Senator Barbara Boxer of California and her husband, Stewart. We were planning a spring wedding for Tony and Nicole at the White House, so I invited Nicole, her parents and her brother, Doug, to join us for Thanksgiving dinner at Camp David.

Camp David was a perennial work-in-progress as each new President and First Lady added their personal touches to the compound. It had been built by the CCC and WPA as a work camp during the Depression in the 1930s. President Franklin Roosevelt first decided to use it for a presidential retreat, naming it “Shangri-la” and upgrading its facilities.

By the time we arrived, it was both a military installation and a retreat. There were ten rustic lodges for guests, all named for trees. The largest guest lodge, Aspen, reserved for the President, sits atop a hill that slopes down to the putting green installed by President Eisenhower and the pool added by President Nixon. The living room windows overlook the forest preserve that surrounds the camp. The perimeter’s security fences, cameras and Marine patrols are out of sight, allowing one to forget that this peaceful setting is a military base, made even more secure because of the special protections afforded the President.

The center of Camp activity is the largest lodge, Laurel, where we gathered to watch football, play games, sit in front of the two-story brick fireplace and eat our meals together.

After spending time there, I thought that the central room in Laurel could be more functional and take better advantage of the view. There were few windows on the long back wall facing the woods, and a large pillar blocked the flow of traffic through the room. I worked with the Navy and my friend Kaki Hockersmith, an interior decorator from Arkansas, to develop plans for a renovation that got rid of the pillar and added windows to bring in more light, opening the room to the changing seasons outside.

The Navy cooks and stewards prepared and served the classic Thanksgiving dinner both sides of our family expected. Melding the traditions of my family and Bill’s meant we had both bread and corn bread stuffing, pumpkin and mincemeat pies. The buffet tables were groaning under the weight of all the food while everyone observed one tradition that transcends all regions: overindulging.

Over the weekend, two old friends, Strobe Talbott, then serving as Ambassador-at-Large to the New Independent States of the former Soviet Union, later to become Deputy Secretary of State, and Brooke Shearer, Director of the White House Fellows Program and my campaign companion, came to visit with their sons. We didn’t talk much about Whitewater, which we saw as a momentary blip on the radar screen. Instead, we discussed the events of the past year. We were more hopeful than ever about the future of the country. We had been through a personally difficult year, but in terms of Bill’s agenda, it had been productive. To use a horse-racing metaphor Virginia would have enjoyed: We might have been slow out of the gate, but we were gaining speed. The country was showing signs of economic recovery and increasing consumer confidence. The unemployment rate was down to 6.4 percent, the lowest since early 1991. New home purchases were up, while interest rates and inflation were dropping. In addition to the economic plan, which was essential to the unprecedented expansion, Bill had signed into law the National Service Act, creating AmeriCorps; the Family and Medical Leave Act, which President Bush had vetoed twice; the motor voter legislation, making it easier for working people to register to vote when they went into their local motor vehicle offices; direct student financial aid, cutting the cost of going to college; and one of Strobe’s priorities, economic aid for Russia, which was intended to shore up that fledgling democracy.

We came back from the holidays a few pounds heavier but refreshed. I was particularly pleased that Bill signed the Brady bill on November 30, 1993. Like the Family and Medical Leave Act, this bill had been opposed by President Bush. Long overdue, it was commonsense legislation to require a five-day waiting period to check the background of any purchaser of a handgun. The bill wouldn’t have been possible without the tireless efforts of James and Sarah Brady. Jim, a former White House press secretary, had suffered brain damage when he was shot in the head in 1981 by a deranged man attempting to assassinate President Ronald Reagan. He and his indomitable wife, Sarah, had dedicated their lives to keeping guns out of the hands of criminals and the mentally ill. Their perseverance resulted in the immensely moving scene in the East Room when Bill, flanked by the Bradys, signed into law the most important gun control bill in twentyfive years. In the years since, no lawful gun owner has lost his guns, but six hundred thousand fugitives, stalkers and felons have been stopped from buying them.

NAFTA was ratified on December 8, 1993, which meant the administration could finally turn its full attention to supporting health care reform. To keep up the momentum, Dr. Koop and I hit the road again. On December 2, we addressed eight hundred doctors and health care professionals attending the Tri State Rural Health Care Forum in Hanover, New Hampshire.

Dr. Koop had become an increasingly enthusiastic advocate of our health care plan.

When he spoke, it was like listening to an Old Testament prophet. He could deliver the hard truth and get away with it. He could say, “We have too many specialists in medicine and not enough generalists,” and an audience filled with specialists would nod in agreement.

The New Hampshire forum was televised, so it was a particularly important event for our advocacy and a great opportunity to explain the virtues of the Clinton plan. I became engrossed in the discussion. At some point, I looked toward the audience and saw my aide-de-camp Kelly Craighead crawling down the center aisle of the auditorium. She was gesturing frantically, slapping the top of her head and pointing at me. I kept on talking and listening, unable to figure out what she was doing.

It was another hair crisis. Capricia Marshall, who was in Washington watching her television, noticed that a stray piece of hair was sticking straight up from the center of my head. She suspected that the audience would be staring at my hair instead of listening to what I was saying, so she got Kelly on her cell phone: “Get her hair down!”

“I can’t, she’s sitting in front of hundreds of people.”

“I don’t care, send her a signal!”

When Kelly told me the story after the event, we all laughed. Just shy of a year into my new life, I was finally catching on to the significance of the insignificant. From then on we worked out a system of hand gestures, like those of a coach and a pitcher, so that I would know when to smooth my hair down or wipe the lipstick off my teeth.

Back in Washington, the White House Christmas season rituals were in full swing. I could now appreciate the surreal planning I had been urged to begin on a warm day back in May, when Gary Walters, the chief usher, said to me, “You know, Mrs. Clinton, it’s getting late to start preparing for Christmas.” He told me I had to settle on a design for the White House Christmas card, pick a theme for the decorations and plan the parties we would hold in December. I love Christmas, but Thanksgiving had always been a fine time to start thinking about it, so this represented a big change in my planning style. I dutifully adjusted and soon began sorting through pictures of snowdrifts on the White House lawn as the scent of magnolias wafted through the windows.

All those months of preparation paid off. I decided to make American crafts my theme and invited artisans from around the country to send in handmade ornaments, which we hung on the more than twenty trees placed throughout the residence. We hosted, on average, one reception or party every day for three solid weeks. I liked planning menus and activities and overseeing the dozens of volunteers who flock to the White House to help hang ornaments. One sad result of the attacks of September 11, 2001, is that the White House is no longer as open as it was during our time there. That first Christmas season, some 150,000 visitors came through the public rooms to view the decorations and sample a cookie or two. Because we wanted to include people of all faiths in the holiday season, we lit the menorah I had commissioned for the White House that December to celebrate Chanukah. Three years later, we held the first Eid al-Fitr event in the White House to honor the end of Ramadan, the Muslim month of fasting.