Living History (36 page)

Our next stop, Minsk, Belarus, was hands down one of the most depressed-looking places I’ve visited, its architecture evoking Soviet-style bleakness and the lingering aura of authoritarian communism; the weather, rainy and gray. Despite Belarusian efforts to build an independent and democratic country, they faced high odds against success. The intellectuals and academics I met who found themselves trying to run the government after the collapse of the Soviet Union seemed no match for the leftover Communists. Our itinerary was filled with reminders of the disasters of the Belarusian past. At Kuropaty Memorial, we laid flowers in memory of the almost three hundred thousand people who had been murdered by the Stalinist secret police. My visit to a hospital treating children who suffered from Chernobyl-related cancers painfully drove home the Soviet Union’s cover-up of the accident at the nuclear plant and the potential dangers of nuclear power, including the proliferation of nuclear weapons. The one bright spot was a magnificent performance of the ballet adaptation of Carmina Burana in the State Academic Great Opera and Ballet Theatre. Chelsea and I sat on the edge of our seats in sheer delight. The years since our visit have not been kind to Belarus, which is governed again by an authoritarian regime of former Soviet Communists who have cracked down on press freedom and human rights.

On January 20, 1994, the administration’s one-year anniversary, Janet Reno announced the appointment of Robert Fiske as special prosecutor. A Republican, Fiske was highly regarded as a thorough and fair-minded lawyer with prosecutorial experience.

President Ford had appointed him U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, and he had stayed on through the Carter Administration. He now worked for a Wall Street law firm. Fiske promised a quick and impartial investigation, and he took a leave of absence from his law firm so he could devote all of his time and energies to finishing the investigation. If he had been left to do his job, my concerns, and those of Bernie, David and Bill, would have proved unfounded.

A few days later, the President delivered the State of the Union Address. The speech was forceful and hopeful. Over an objection by David Gergen, Bill added a few theatrics to his remarks on health care: He held up a pen over the podium, promising to veto any health care bill that didn’t include universal coverage. Gergen, a veteran of the Nixon, Ford and Reagan Administrations, worried that the gesture was too confrontational. I sided with the speechwriters and political advisers who thought it would be an effective visual signal that Bill would stand strong for his beliefs. Gergen’s concerns turned out to have merit as we struggled for any ground on which to compromise.

After weeks of tension, I jumped at the chance to lead the American delegation to Lillehammer, Norway, for the 1994 Winter Olympics. Bill asked me to go, and I decided to take Chelsea. Despite the mishap at the end, she had enjoyed our visit to Russia, and I was happy to see her relax and smile more. Since moving to Washington, she had suffered so many losses: two grandparents; a school friend from Little Rock who died in a jet ski accident and Vince Foster, whose wife, Lisa, had taught her to swim in the Fosters’

backyard pool and whose children were her friends. Moving to Washington and being part of the First Family had not been any easier for her than for the rest of us.

A charming village, Lillehammer provided a picture-perfect Olympics venue. Our traveling entourage was assigned rooms in a small hotel outside of town with its own ski run. For the opening ceremonies, where we were supposed to represent our nation, Chelsea and I looked like we were from the North Pole so layered were we in warm ski clothes. In comparison, the European delegation, mostly royals like Princess Anne from England, walked about in elegant cashmere coats, bareheaded. We also saw hardy Norwegians camping in the snowy woods so they could claim good observation points along the trails for the cross-country events. A highlight of the trip was my meeting with Gro Brundtland, a medical doctor, who was then Prime Minister of Norway.

Prime Minister Brundtland invited me to breakfast at the Maihaugen Folk Museum, in a rustic lodge with a big roaring fireplace. The first thing she said to me as we sat down to eat was, “I’ve read the health care plan, and I have several questions.”

From that moment, she was a friend for life. I was so happy to find somebody who had read the plan, let alone wanted to talk about it. Of course, it helped that she was a physician, but I was impressed and de lighted. Over a feast of fish, bread, cheese and strong coffee, we compared the relative merits of the European health care models and then delved into other related topics. Brundtland later left Norwegian politics to head the World Health Organization, where she championed initiatives I supported on tuberculosis, HIV/AIDS and anti-smoking.

This was my first official overseas trip without the President. I enjoyed representing him and my country, and took advantage of a relaxed schedule. I did a little skiing, cheered our athletes like downhill and slalom medalist Tommy Moe and stood in the snow, watching very fit people rocket past me in a blur. I also had a chance to talk to Chelsea away from the fray. She is bright and inquisitive, and I knew she was following the Whitewater saga in the news. I could tell she was torn between wanting to ask me about it and wanting to let me forget it. I was torn between wanting to share with her my frustrations about what was happening and wanting to shield her as much as possible, not only from the political attacks, but also from my own outrage and disillusionment. This was a constant emotional tug-of-war, and both of us had to work hard to keep our equilibrium.

As expected, the appointment of a special prosecutor quieted the Whitewater uproar for a few days. But just as predictably, a spate of new accusations and rumors filled the scandal vacuum. Newt Gingrich and Republican Senator Al D’Amato of New York clamored for Banking Committee hearings in both the House and the Senate to probe Whitewater allegations.

Robert Fiske managed to forestall the hearings, warning the combative Republicans that they risked interfering with his investigation. He was moving quickly, as promised, slapping subpoenas on witnesses and hauling them before grand juries in Washington and Little Rock. Fiske questioned several White House aides about the criminal referrals against Madison Guaranty by the Resolution Trust Corporation, which was a Treasury agency. He was interested in any West Wing contacts with Deputy Secretary of the Treasury Roger Altman about the referral and about Altman’s decision to remove himself from his duties as temporary head of the RTC. As I understand the sequence of events, the White House and Treasury Department discussed this matter only when press inquiries―

which were the product of improper leaks from the RTC’s supposedly confidential investigation―started in the fall of 1993 and required them to respond; otherwise, it never would have come to their attention. Although Fiske and subsequent investigators judged the contacts to be legal, as with so many other aspects of the Whitewater imbroglio, the Republicans kept up a steady stream of accusations against Altman and others.

When the final Whitewater report was published in 2002, confirming the contacts the Bush White House had made with RTC officials in the fall of 1992, I did not hear any similar outcry. Eventually, Roger Altman, an honest and extremely able man who served the President and the country well, resigned to return to private life, as did my old friend Bernie Nussbaum, another dedicated public servant.

There were mornings in the spring of 1994 when I woke up aching for all the close friends, associates and relatives who had passed out of our lives or had been unfairly attacked: my father, Virginia, Pence, Bernie, Roger. And some mornings, the press coverage was so wild that it even appeared to affect the stock market. On March 11, 1994, The Washington Post ran a story headlined WHITEWATER RUMORS PUSH DOW DOWN

23―PERCEPTION, NOT SPECIFICS, SPOOK MARKETS. On that same day, Roger Ailes, then President of CNBC and now running Fox, accused the Administration of “a cover-up with regard to Whitewater that includes … land fraud, illegal contributions, abuse of power… suicide cover-up―possible murder.”

Then in mid-March, Webb Hubbell suddenly resigned from the Justice Department.

Newspaper articles reported that the Rose Firm planned to file a complaint against him with the Arkansas Bar Association for questionable billing practices, including overcharging clients and padding his expenses. The allegations were serious enough for him to step down. By this time, however, I was used to fielding untrue charges, so I assumed that Webb was also being falsely accused. I met with him in the Solarium on the third floor of the White House to ask what was happening. Webb told me that he had gotten into a dispute with some of our former partners over the costs of a patent infringement case he had handled on a contingency basis for his fatherin-law, Seth Ward. Webb had lost the case, and Seth refused to pay the costs. Knowing Seth, I had to admit that seemed plausible. Webb told me he was working on a settlement with the Rose partners and assured me that the dispute would be resolved. I believed him and asked what I could do to help him and his family during this period. He said he had put feelers out for business and was confident he would be fine “until this misunderstanding blows over.”

The Whitewater investigations and press inquiries were now being handled by the Whitewater Response Team that Mack, Maggie and other senior staff had recommended that we set up to centralize all discussion of the issue.

There were four reasons for creating the team, nicknamed “the Masters of Disaster”

and led by Harold Ickes. First, we wanted the staff to focus on the important work of the Administration. Second, if an issue is everyone’s business, it becomes no one’s responsibility.

Third, Fiske’s team was sending so many subpoenas that we had to have an organized system for searching files and providing responses. And finally, if staff members talked about Whitewater with Bill or me or among themselves, they would become more vulnerable to lengthy depositions, legal fees and general anxieties.

I was particularly worried about members of my own staff―Maggie Williams, Lisa Caputo, Capricia Marshall and others who had worked so hard and were being rewarded with subpoenas and frightening legal bills. Once Maggie was caught up in the investigation, I couldn’t seek her advice about it or offer her any comfort. It’s a tribute to her personal strength and the fortitude of everyone working for me that nobody complained or walked away from the challenges we faced.

David Kendall was becoming my main link to the outside world, and he was a godsend.

From the very beginning, he advised me not to read newspaper articles and not to watch television reports about the investigation or any of the related “scandals.” My press staff summarized what I needed to know in case I was questioned by the media. David urged me not to dwell on the rest of it.

“That’s my job,” he said. “One of the reasons you hire lawyers is to have them worry for you.” David, of course, read everything and worried obsessively about what would happen next. I’m something of an obsessive personality myself, and these were hard instructions to follow. But I learned to let David take over the watch.

Every few days, Maggie would poke her head in my office and say, “David Kendall wants to talk to you.” When he came in, she would leave the room. At each meeting, David continued to unravel the story of Jim McDougal and his personal and financial dealings, and I learned something every time.

I tried to deal with the new information by myself. I talked to Bill only when something critical came up. I tried to spare him so that he could concentrate on the duties of his office. It’s often said that the President has the loneliest job in the world. Harry Truman once referred to the White House as “the crown jewel in the American penal system.”

Bill loved his work, but I could see the political war taking its toll, and I tried to protect him from whatever I could.

David was able to fill in most of the gaps in the record, which supported our contention that we had lost money on the Whitewater deal and were never involved in McDougal’s wheelings and dealings with his S&L. David also brought us some uncomfortable news about errors he had found in our old financial documents. He had sifted through every piece of paper we could find like a miner panning for gold, and he had come up with a few lead nuggets. One was a mistake in the Lyons report that calculated our Whitewater losses at more than $68,000. We had to reduce that figure by $22,000 after David found that a check Bill had written to help his mother buy her house in Hot Springs had been incorrectly identified as a Whitewater loan payment. David also discovered that our certified public accountant in Little Rock had made an error on our 1980 tax return. An incomplete statement from a brokerage firm led him to claim a loss of $1,000

for us when, in fact, we had made almost $6,500 on trades. The statute of limitations had expired, but we voluntarily decided to make things right with the state of Arkansas and the IRS by writing a check for $14,615 for back taxes and interest.

As more of our financial records were released or found their way into the press, they generated additional stories. In mid-March, The New York Times ran a front-page article headlined TOP ARKANSAS LAWYER HELPED HILLARY CLINTON TURN BIG

PROFIT. The story accurately reported the profits I had made in the commodities market in 1979. But it falsely implied that our close friend Jim Blair had somehow engineered my windfall in order to gain influence with Bill Clinton on behalf of his client Tyson Foods. The story was filled with inaccuracies about Blair’s and Don Tyson’s relationship with Bill when he was Governor. Yet again, I wondered why such stories were printed before they were verified. If Tyson had Bill in his pocket, as the Times alleged, why did Tyson back Bill’s opponent Frank White in the 1980 and 1982 Governor’s races?

Jim was generous enough to share his expertise in trading commodities with his family and friends. With his help, I got into this volatile market and turned $1,ooo into $100,000 in a short time. I was lucky enough to lose my nerve and get out before the market dropped. Could I have done it without Jim? No. Did I have to pay my broker over $18,000 in brokerage fees on my trading? Yes. Did my commodity trading influence Bill’s decisions as Governor? Absolutely not.