Death of American Virtue - Ken Gormley [112]
On August 17, 1995, just one year after he was appointed independent counsel, Ken Starr indicted Jim McDougal, Susan McDougal, and Governor Jim Guy Tucker on multiple counts of defrauding the federal government. These charges involved different transactions from the failed 1990 prosecution of Jim McDougal and Susan’s brothers involving Madison Guaranty and Castle Grande; there was no double-jeopardy problem (the defendants were not being retried for the same offense). The clock was ticking on the statute of limitations—OIC felt the need to move. Once again, this new action represented the culmination of an investigation begun by Robert Fiske.
Despite later accounts advanced by pro-Clinton advocates, suggesting that Ken Starr, in his role as Whitewater special prosecutor, was a partisan zealot from start to finish, the record fails to support this portrayal. Rather, Starr tended to be deliberate and cautious (at least initially), following closely in the footsteps of his predecessor Fiske.
The ingredients were the same; the principal difference was in how the soup was cooked. And for how long it simmered.
CHAPTER
14
PAULA JONES ON FILM
One detail that is often overlooked, in assessments of the train wreck that came to be known as the Clinton scandal, relates to causation: With or without Ken Starr, the Paula Jones case was barreling down the track, headed toward President Bill Clinton.
Part of the path that the Jones litigation took was as foreseeable as a tornado touching down in Arkansas. Journalist Michael Isikoff had quit the Washington Post after a standoff with his editors, jumping over to Newsweek. Here, the determined reporter was drilling into the facts of the Jones story with renewed vigor. From the start, it was easy to predict that the suit would eventually lead to the questioning of Bill Clinton, under oath, about “other women.” Yet the White House somehow missed that clue.
President Clinton would struggle, years later, to sort out the myriad acts of God that converged to humiliate him in the Jones lawsuit. Sitting in his study in Chappaqua, squinting against the sun that streamed through the window, the former president weighed his response carefully. In terms of his own view of what motivated Paula Corbin Jones, he answered slowly: “It couldn’t have been what she [Jones] said.” He paused. “Why do I say that? Because she said she wanted to clear her name. I didn’t besmirch her name. The American Spectator besmirched her name.” Besides, Clinton added, “Nobody reads the American Spectator in Arkansas, and if they did, they wouldn’t know who she was. And when I was asked about it, after she became public, I said it wasn’t true. I said exactly what she wanted me to say.” The former president squeezed his fist and reiterated, “So, it wasn’t a desire to clear her name.”
Paula Jones, on the other hand, would later insist that all she wanted was vindication. “I was at the point where I was angry about it,” she said, dipping her bread in olive oil in a cozy North Little Rock restaurant. “And I just wanted to get my good name back.” It had already been floating around, thanks to the Spectator piece, that she had gone to Governor Clinton’s hotel room. Moreover, Jones refused to back down from her charge that Bill Clinton’s conduct constituted sexual harassment. “The reason why I felt it is,” she said, “is because he was my boss, first of all. Ultimately my boss, because he was the governor for the office that I was working for. And Anita Hill claimed that a pubic hair on a Coke can was sexual harassment, and [that] had nothing to do with it [her work]. Well, this man took me up to a